Forest Society Demonstrates Sustainable Timber Management Practices on Hay Forest Reservation
More than 30 people attended a Timber Harvest Tour last Saturday at the Hay Forest Reservation in Newbury, NH.
As the owner of the property, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests has specific management objectives for the land. Forest Society Director of Education and Volunteer Services Dave Anderson explained the organization’s land management goals: Not only does the Forest Society seek to improve the value of the standing timber while carefully removing mature trees and poorly-formed and lower quality timber, but it also places a priority upon enhancing and protecting non-timber values through careful forest stewardship. When conducted properly, timber harvesting can improve wildlife habitat, improve recreational access and scenic resources, protect water quality and wetlands, keep sensitive natural areas intact, minimize soils erosion, and avoid damage to cultural features, such as historical cellar holes and stonewalls.
To develop and implement a plan for achieving these objectives, the Forest Society’s staff forester, Steve Perron worked closely with Jack Bronnenberg, a professional logging contractor who owns and operates Bronnenberg Logging and Trucking. According to Bronnenberg, timber markets have a tremendous impact upon the land management choices made by foresters and landowners, who select forest areas to cut to meet market needs.
The tour began at the landing – the central area of the timber harvest operation where logs are sorted and stacked for transport. Here logs are categorized by species, quality and available markets.
Large machinery dominated the site. Although weighing several tons, the equipment was designed to have a low impact on the forest floor. We were introduced to the feller buncher: an impressive, high-tech machine that is carefully driven right to a tree. The tree is held in place by an articulating arm while the base is sawed off. Next, a skidder drags the cut tree to the landing, where it is delimbed, cut, and sorted by a giant crane. Finally, an imposing 20-inch chipper shreds the excess wood to chips.
A short hike up a snow-covered skid road led from the landing to a small clear-cut area. Before it was cut, this slope had been covered by white birch and beech, two low-grade tree species that had replaced the more valuable white pine that dominated the site prior to the 1938 hurricane. Once considered the weeds of the forest, low-grade wood is now in high demand thanks to the emerging and robust wood energy markets including wood pellets. The advent of small, institutional wood chip burning operations provided a regional venue for local loggers to sell their products and keep jobs and revenue within the state.
While the wood pellet market provides a modest, short-term revenue stream for the property’s low-grade trees, for the long term, the Forest Society prefers to grow higher-value hardwood species, including red oak, sugar maple and yellow birch sawlogs that can be used for lumber, furniture, and other applications. During the cutting, care was taken to preserve groups of sugar maples with the goal of reseeding for future regeneration. With planning, today’s clear-cut would encourage the growth of higher value hardwood tree species in the future.
The tour continued down another skid road to a glade that featured high quality white pine sawlogs that might have been cut. However, the loggers operating the site had carefully avoided a historical stone wall as well as a sensitive woodland hawk nesting area.
In wet areas, a skidder bridge was used to avoid damaging the damp earth below. In some cases, the selected trees had been cut by hand and surgically dropped to avoid harming other trees or damaging the forest floor. Piles of slash and stumps had been placed by the loggers throughout the forest to provide habitat for wildlife. Near streams, buffers of trees were left to help keep the water temperature cold enough for trout, which are sensitive to the increases in temperature that result from the removal of trees along the water’s edge.
“We try to encourage people to come out and see our timber management practices whenever we do a harvest,” said Anderson. “We’re planning ahead, responding to changing timber markets while managing the land for the future enjoyment.
“We’re in this for the long haul.”
Founded in 1901, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests is the state’s oldest and largest non-profit land conservation organization. Supported by 10,000 families and businesses, the Forest Society’s mission is to perpetuate the state’s forests by promoting land conservation and sustainable forestry.