By Ken Ward Jr.
STAFF WRITER
SUPPOSE you want to sell some timber. Maybe you inherited some land when
your grandfather died. Selling some of the trees might help send your kids
to college.
Or maybe you're hoping some income from cutting a few trees off your land
will add a little to your retirement income.
But suppose you don't know much about timbering. You've never sold any
of your trees before.
How will you find someone to do the cutting? Will you be able to get a
good price? How will you figure out which trees to have cut down and which
to leave? Can you make sure the forest is protected so you can hike and
hunt in it after the loggers leave?
These questions trouble many West Virginians.
They could become even more troubling. The amount of timber cut in West
Virginia every year has doubled since 1987. New timber plants need even
more wood.
Some worry that West Virginians who don't know better might sell their
good hardwoods to chipboard companies or pulp mills to make a quick buck.
How are people supposed to know they would make more money if they let
the trees grow a few years and sell th em to a sawmill or furniture plant?
Most forestry consultants are trained mainly in how to grow trees as a
crop or work directly for the timber industry. So how are landowners supposed
to find out how to protect their forests if they don't want to cut down
any trees?
State foresters, forestry professors and industry officials agree West
Virginia isn't doing enough to education landowners about good ways to
sell their timber or protect their forests.
"I feel very strongly this is a big concern," said Bill Maxey,
director of the state Division of Forestry.
Consider the Forestry Division itself.
The agency is supposed to provide help to landowners who want to better
manage their land or sell some of their timber. But it has only 50 service
foresters, not even one for each of West Virginia's 55 counties.
If a landowner calls the Forestry Division to help him or her draw up a
forest plan or figure out if timber is ready to be sold, it takes anywhere
from a month to six months for a service forester to get to the landowner.
Maxey says service foresters work hard. But there just aren't enough service
foresters to help out all of the more than 260,000 private forest owners
in West Virginia, Maxey says.
The Forestry Division is also now saddled with a lot of other duties -
everything from regulating ginseng harvesters to overseeing the state's
voluntary timber best management practices and fighting forest fires, Maxey
says.
"Our responsibilities have mushroomed," Maxey said. "We
had to shift our priorities accordingly.
"We try to do the best with what we've got, but the added responsibilities
have taken us away from landowner assistance," Maxey said.
Steve Hollenhorst teaches land use policy at West Virginia University's
forestry school and is a frequent critic of Maxey and the Forestry Division.
But Hollenhorst agrees that the division doesn't have enough resources
to help landowners with timber plans, let alone with ways to protect wildlife
and biodiversity.
"I think the foresters in the state division really want to help the
landowners articulate their goals for their property and come up with some
sort of plans to proceed," Hollenhorst said.
"Bill Maxey is right," Hollenhorst said. "They don't have
the resources."
Even if a landowner is lucky enough to get help from a state service forester,
those foresters are only allowed to spend three days a year with an individual
landowner.
So the Forestry Division is increasingly likely to refer landowners to
private, consulting foresters who have registered with the state.
The division keeps a list of foresters it recommends. But the agency checks
only to make sure the consulting foresters have a four-year forestry degree
before adding him or her to the recommended list.
The Forestry Division also administers another, more detailed program through
which private foresters help landowners manage their land.
Under this program, private foresters will help landowners write detailed
forest stewardship plans. Private foresters are paid $5.50 an acre for
this. The U.S. Forest Service pays 75 percent of the cost. The landowner
pays the rest.
Foresters who take part have to complete Forestry Division training which
focuses not only on timbering, but forest recreation, other forest uses,
and biodiversity.
The program has been successful, Maxey says. More than 2,000 plans covering
380,000 acres have been written in the four years since the program began
in West Virginia.
With another grant from the Forest Service, the state is helping to form
the West Virginia Woodlands Association. The group will educate forest
owners about ways to manage forests for logging and other uses, such as
recreation, wildlife management and ol d-growth forest considerations,
Maxey said.
Some of the larger timber and paper companies that operate in West Virginia
also help landowners with forest management. These include Westvaco Corp.
and Georgia-Pacific.
Normally, these companies will help landowners come up with plans for managing
their forest and future timber sales. In exchange, the companies ask to
bid on the timber sales when they occur.
The existing West Virginia Forestry Association is also doing its part
to help landowners, said association lobbyist Dick Waybright.
The association offers a packet of information that includes a discussion
of ways to plan timber sales and deal with timber taxation in West Virginia.
"That's one of the biggest things, ever since we had a tree here -
to make sure people know how to manage their forests," Waybright said.
"It's something we should be thinking a lot more about."