Post Harvest Improvement

 

 

 

During a timber harvest, a landowner receives revenue as the forest products arrive at the mills. Upper Valley Forest Management generally recommends earmarking a percent of the timber revenue to invest back into the land and further improve upon the forest growth dynamics. For instance, many many areas in our region are affected by beech bark disease, the presence of which will prevent desirable tree regeneration. Once beech takes hold, it will become the dominant tree species. Unless active control measures take place, in the long term it will become the dominant- and sometimes only- tree species. When beech is an issue, timber revenues can pay for beech control measures that will alter this trajectory and improve the odds of a diverse and healthy composition of tree species.

Oftentimes, there will be opportunity to perform timber stand improvements, which generally refers to non-commercial thinning around future crop trees, or pruning high value hardwoods in order to grow veneer-quality trees.

In much of the Upper Valley, invasive vegetation can present major challenges to preserving a natural forest ecosystem. While funds can be available from the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service, landowners can always pay out of pocket for invasive vegetation control. In terms of forest growth dynamics, post-harvest is a prime time to complete these measures.

Upper Valley Forest Management strongly believes that investing a small amount of timber harvest revenue into forest stand improvement will yield significant returns, and we provide guidance and administration of these services.

 

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