Get Your Hands Dirty: Building & Maintaining Forest Roads...

Managing your woodland for a suite of objectives will require your active participation in a number of subject areas, some of which you'll engage with ease and others that will challenge your brain and (yikes!) your budget.

Depending on background and personality, some folks quickly master tree identification techniques while floundering with how to negotiate a contract with a forester, mill, logger, or all three. Another landowner readily excels at handling his personal forestry tax situation but winces at having to properly consider the seeming complexity of BMP (Best Management Practices) application within his property.

To many private landowners, the idea of building a road in the forest is sobering, if not down-right intimidating, and rightly so. Road building often conjures up visions of criss-crossing scars in the soil, regulators in orange vests, and mile-high pieces of excavation equipment relocating piles of earth.

Your forest road, however, needs none of these specters. Forest roads can be planned, managed, and implemented with careful commitment and smart contracts.

Fret not! Oregon State offers help once again- Click Below

"FOREST ROAD CONTRACTING, CONSTRUCTION, AND MAINTENANCE FOR SMALL FOREST WOODLAND OWNERS"

This resource is a publication of the Forest Research Laboratory, College of Forestry, Oregon State University.

Map It! Check to see if your local government offers free GIS services

Technologies formerly available only to specialty occupations or to folks privileged enough to afford them are increasingly accessible to the masses- meaning landowners, foresters, farmers, loggers, interest groups, etc. Among the most intriguing of these is online mapping technology, often referred to as 'GIS,' meaning Geographic Information System, which takes a variety of forms depending on the local body (usually local government) that hosts the information.

Near NWOA's headquarters, for example, many counties allow taxpayers to make their own maps online for free. By choosing and stacking visual layers on top of each other, users create specific and customized pictures of features they deem necessary, and choices often include aerial photography, property boundary lines, area zoning, water features like creeks, rivers, ponds and lakes, mandated buffer zones, and many others commonly offered.

These custom maps allow landowners to observe changes in local landscapes over time, determine whether their activities might produce impacts outside of their own boundaries, plan for buffer space along their slice of a watershed, or even evaluate the effects a neighbor's activities might have on adjacent properties. The list of useful features is vast enough to discourage us from providing a complete accounting here.

So how do you find such a great resource? First, try searching for your local town, county or state government website and look for any links that say "maps" or "mapper," "GIS," "land- use," "online data," "cartography," or "property search." These are good starting points and if they don't yield immediate results, be patient and give the town or county a call. Some municipalities make their online map products obvious and easy to find, and others have them partially buried within a revenue or land planning office website. If your local government hasn't yet made the move to online mapping, lobby your officials to make the changes necessary to allow it. The information is worth it to you as a landowner, and you have a right to easily access it.

From one generation to the next- OSU videos detail family forest challenges

Sometimes visual depictions make an impact that written words cannot, and for some landowners, Oregon State University's site devoted to family forests may be the ticket- with three free videos and volumes of clickable estate planning resources. If you're still interested, the companion guide to the videos can also be ordered from the school's website.


Video stories

'Tis the Season- Can Your Land Grow Christmas Trees?

Growing Christmas trees can pay off, but it takes a good bit of investment- both in time and dollars. Many extension offices around the country have written useful material on the subject and you can click on the regional links below to see what growing the holiday season's famous icon is all about:



Northeast

Midwest

Southeast

West

Is Your Home FireWise?

The FireWise program has been around and cooking for awhile, and has helped many individuals and communities assess fire risk and create 'defensible space' around homes and properties. Firewise's main website now boasts interactive content- you can also watch video and presentations, read articles and download screensavers for free.

Getting yourself and your woodland community involved is a great way to ensure that if the worst happens, your house, yard and land are ready. To visit FireWise, simply click below.

FireWise

Watch and Learn Online with Forest*A*Syst!

Forest*A*Syst, originally developed for woodland owners in the southeast, has grown into an impressive set of online resources for owners nationwide. Watch high quality video, try 'profiling' your land, and read useful tutorials. It's as easy as clicking the link below.

Forest*A*Syst

Tiny, green, and destructive -- the Emerald Ash Borer at work

The Emerald Ash Borer has recently garnered the same amount of attention in the mid-West and mid-Atlantic as have the Asian Longhorn Beetle and the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid in the northeast and southeast. Moving wood, especially firewood, from place to place has become an increasingly risky activity for landowners, forest operators and wood processors who depend on such shipments for their financial survival. While it is probable that this invasive insect will continue to infest and kill ash trees, there are steps you can take to mitigate the risks.

A great web resource is posted below:

www.emeraldashborer.info

Joint web site of USDA Forest Service, the Michigan Department of Agriculture, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service(APHIS) as well as Michigan State University, Purdue University and Ohio State University.

Texas Forest Service to help landowners count carbon

The Texas Forest Service recently announced its approval as a "verifier" for the CCX, or Chicago Climate Exchange, which enables it to help landowners assess their carbon stocks and potential for sale to emerging carbon markets.

TFS News Release

Show Me! Essential Guide Now Available Online for Washington State Landowners and Managers

Washington State is BIG- well, HUGE, actually, and loaded with private woodland owners who may be interested in an easy to read guide to the state's forest practices. Luckily, WA Dept. of Natural Resources has posted it online for viewing and download in PDF format. Tax dollars at work! Just follow the link below.

Forest Practices Illustrated

Publication of Washington State Department of Natural Resources

Growing Hazelnuts -- the Filbert may be in your future...

Hazelnuts in Minnesota

University of Minnesota Extension Publication

Ever wonder just what your land is made of? Find out with a little help from this free online tool...

The NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) recently launched the latest version of an awesome online web program that helps people locate their own property (or any other) on an aerial photograph and find out which soils hide underneath. Drag a box around an area of interest, select a few options and Voila! a custom map of your soils will appear along with important information about them. Very cool, indeed.

NRCS Web Soil Survey

Want to try your hand at Shiitake mushrooms?

Shiitake Mushroom Starter Guide
Courtesy of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service

Free software helps landowners and managers write Stewardship Plans

The Forest Stewardship Program, created and administered by federal and state agencies, is an ongoing effort to encourage private landowners to practice sound forest stewardship by clearly stating their ownership objectives, management techniques, and timeline for activities -- all crucial pieces of the puzzle.

STEWPLAN is a software program that makes writing comprehensive management plans both easy and enjoyable, and ensures management plan compatibility with the local, state and federal agencies, some of whom allow lower tax rates on lands assessed as working forests. While costs for management planning occasionally deter otherwise willing landowners from making the leap, this electronic tool is sure to help.

Stewardship Plan software

Help from the USFS Southern Research Station --- Growing Great Oaks & Minding Your Forest's Health

Compass, Issue 9

Pheasant hunting pumps new life into farming community

Seattle Times article

The Taxman Cometh! Tax Tips for Forest Landowners for the 2007 Tax Year

US Forest Service Co-op Forestry & the Southern Research Station have published 2007 Tax Tips for forest landowners seeking advice on taxation related to timber sales, Form T, establishing 'basis,' and other common, related landowner questions. It is a good primer -- and is best followed with visits to:
http://www.timbertax.net/ (Siegel Timber Tax Chronicles)
http://www.timbertax.com/ (Links to Tax Preparers & Assistance)
http://www.timbertax.org/ (National Timber Tax Website)

No New Farm Law Until 2008: Farm Bureau Chief

Reuters/New York Times article

2007 Farm Bill Update

While the 2007 Farm Bill appears to be stalled for awhile in the Senate, it shouldn't discourage you from reading about its status, changes, and potential to impact your life as a private landowner. To visit the website of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, Click Here

In Title VIII, 'Forestry', of the proposed Farm Bill, the administration recommends four major initiatives:

• Comprehensive Statewide Forest Planning
• Landscape-Scale Forestry Competitive Grant Program
• Forest Wood to Energy
• Community Forests Working Lands Program

You're a forest landowner- what's your next step?

So you own woodlands and have to absorb all of the positive and negative things that go with ownership. All of the usual suspects are present- estate planning, taxes, government regulation, management plans, cost-share programs, etc- and likely to stay, and you wonder if your voice can be heard by the people who make decisions about such things.

So how do you figure out what your next step is? Well, the National Woodland Owners Association is a great place to get started, and we can help you organize and establish a town, county, region, watershed, or statewide woodland owners group and in turn your group will ultimately help shape local, regional, and national decision-making.

Sound interesting? Post a comment or Email NWOA Staff

Please take our survey!

Greetings!

The team at the National Woodland Owners Association is comprised of landowners and foresters who are very interested in the issues affecting our members on a daily, yearly or lifetime basis. We'll occasionally post small surveys to help you tell us where we should focus our energy; you'll find the survey just a little lower on the page.

Thanks in advance for your input.

Welcome to the weblog (blog) for the National Woodland Owners Association

Welcome! We're excited to offer a spot on the web for our members and affiliates to communicate with us about their regions, associations, meetings, conferences, legislative action, fund-raising activities and, of course, the daily issues facing private woodland owners! Check out our main website at www.woodlandowners.org, and join a growing network of citizens passionate about owning and managing private land.