The Rural Voice, 1998-10, Page 30Maximizing your woodlot assets
Think of each tree as a share in a company, West
Virginian forester tells Ontario woodlot owners
By Keith Roulston
ndividual trees in a woodlot are
assets and you can improve your
rate of return on those assets by
proper management.
That was the message brought to
Ontario woodlot owners attending
the Provincial Agroforestry
Conference in Woodstock,
September 11 by Gary Millar a
manager of the 5,000 -acre Fernow
Forest for the U.S. Department of
Agriculture Forest Service in West
Virginia.
Trees are like shares in different
companies: sugar maple is increasing
at one rate, oak is increasing at
another value, Millar said.
Management decisions can increase
that rate of return.
There is a penalty to pay if you
withdraw your investment ,too early.
If you cut the tree at it's optimum
size, you will get the most return on
your investment. The rate of return
(of the growth of the tree) may have
been so high at the time that you cut
the tree that in another few years you
might have doubled your return on
investment. If you let someone talk
you into cutting the tree too soon,
you will be the one to lose.
In his area of the Appalachian
Mountains, Millar said, too often the
woods are ignored "until we need a
new pick-up or we have to send our
kid to college then we go out and we
26 THE RURAL VOICE
cut wood from out woodlot. That's
not what I call management — that's
more or less withdrawing from the
bank."
Forests can be managed, he said.
There are things that can be done to
make them more productive and
produce more value. Value is tied to
the kinds of trees growing in the
woodlot and whatever we can do to
improve the quality of species, bring
a better return for the management.
Species composition is a long-
term project, he said. If you just cut
trees and leave the bush, you are
creating environmental conditions
that will affect the kinds of trees that
will grow over the following years.
"We may not be around and perhaps
our children may not when those
trees are harvested but we have had
an influence in the way that we have
caused disturbances in that forest."
In Ontario, stumpage prices range
from $1,200 per thousand board feet
for maple, through $1,000 to black
cherry to $150 for beech or $100 for
poplar. It means that the kind of tree
that grows has a great effect on the
revenue generated from the same
space.
"If you have a stand that starts
with 400 trees per acre at age 10, and
you have many, many different
species, you want to work for the
high value species. You want the
Your woodlot is a valuable part of
the farm and a little care can
increase its value, speakers say.
limited growing space to be allocated
to the trees you choose."
Think of a forest as a given
amount of growing space, Millar
said. This space is three-dimensional,
below the ground and in the air.
There is competition for light, water
and nutrients. You can influence
which trees grow in a young stand by
giving the growing space to the most
valuable trees.
Showing slides of an example of
this kind of management, Millar said
there was a double effect of the
thinning. The space freed up went
both to the crop tree they selected for
growth and to the regeneration of
younger trees of valuable species.
"All we did was influence this
stand by one small disturbance at the
proper time," he said.
"Regeneration is a long term
investment but we can do things that
don't cost a lot that can influence
species composition for many, many
years just by understanding the
biology of the species."
Some species are very tolerant to
shade and can produce
seedlings and grow to saplings
under dense tree canopies but others
like white ash, white birch and black
cherry, need full sunlight early in
their development. If you leave
partial shade you are discriminating
against these shade -intolerant
species, he said.
Only a few species can regenerate
from seed stored in the forest floor,
he said. For other species, if you
don't have advance seedlings already
present, when you remove the
canopy the species that don't need
shade are going to germinate and