Illegal woodcutters

[Gologit]

The wood was not cut properly. Technically the permit requires you to partially cut 'logs' (even just 6 footers) in a manner where they can't be used as posts.

I ran afoul of this a couple of years ago. The feds were doing some thinning on ground that ajoined ours.
Every day I'd see these nice cedar poles all stacked for burning, eight footers, ten footers, whatever. Being in the used cow business I can always use cedar fence posts and these were prime.
I checked with the local office and they gave me a firewood permit for the area....said I could take all the cedar I wanted off of the burn piles as long as I didn't make a mess.
Saturday comes and at daylight I'm bucking cedar poles into eight footers and throwing them in the back of the pickup. Just about had a load on when the FS gal showed up. She told me, and was most adamant, that taking eight footers was a violation of the permit...I had to make them short enough that they couldn't be used for any other purpose than firewood. Big argument then commenced.
I told her I'd buck them up when I got them home. I tagged the load, tied it down and drove off with her still jawing at me. I watched for the flashing blue lights in my mirror all the way home but nothing happened.
Was I technically in violation of my firewood permit? Probably. But there was nothing on the permit that said I couldn't take my firewood in any length I wanted.
Was the FS gal just doing her job? Of course she was. And I met up with her later and apologized for my behavior. She also apologized for her's. But...she could have exercised a little common sense in the matter and the FS could have been more instructive on the terms of the permit.

 

[2dogs]

Paint Colors

In the NF where I wil be working this spring and summer USFS uses sky blue paint to mark the trees we can take down. A horizontal stripe and a vertical stripe down to the soil. White spots mark the surveyed trees. Is the color system uniform throughout the FS (and BLM) or does each forest use whatever color it wants to?

 

[slowp]

In the NF where I wil be working this spring and summer USFS uses sky blue paint to mark the trees we can take down. A horizontal stripe and a vertical stripe down to the soil. White spots mark the surveyed trees. Is the color system uniform throughout the FS (and BLM) or does each forest use whatever color it wants to?

It is supposed to be uniform. We've been kind of an outlaw district here and have used green for firewood until now. Our reason? Wildlife trees have been marked in yellow and the painting on ends of logs--another requirement of timber sales, is yellow. The same shade of yellow. So, we have been forced to change and the logging outfits will probably do their painting after the logs are on the trucks. I stick up No Woodcutting signs as well. Blue is a cut color, and I will have to start using green for my marking soon so others can check up on what I do. But, we have a lot of old units where we've already got painted trees in them and have to use another color because the prescription is changed. We are also having more and more units with Designation by Description. The contract spells out the description and the loggers paint their own trees and I check 'em. Boundaries are white or orange with blue flagging and tags. Gotta be flexible! :greenchainsaw:

If a timber marker wants to get me mad, :censored: all they need to do is to forget to put a stump mark on a tree or put it up too high. That is the MOST important mark on FS marked trees. Unfortunately, that is the lowest paying job in Timber so the quality can suck unless they work for a politically incorrect tyrant like I did for several years who screams obcenities and threatens to CAN THEM if they don't get their stump marks down on the stump. He'd get canned nowdays.

 

[Gologit]

Hey Slowp and Smokechase11

Do your districts do Accountability Checks...where they check the log trucks coming out of the woods for the green tag and brands and shovels and axes and lost log cards and all that stuff?
They usually have the summer employees do that down here. Sometimes it gets real entertaining.

 

[joesawer]

I ran afoul of this a couple of years ago. The feds were doing some thinning on ground that ajoined ours.
Every day I'd see these nice cedar poles all stacked for burning, eight footers, ten footers, whatever. Being in the used cow business I can always use cedar fence posts and these were prime.
I checked with the local office and they gave me a firewood permit for the area....said I could take all the cedar I wanted off of the burn piles as long as I didn't make a mess.
Saturday comes and at daylight I'm bucking cedar poles into eight footers and throwing them in the back of the pickup. Just about had a load on when the FS gal showed up. She told me, and was most adamant, that taking eight footers was a violation of the permit...I had to make them short enough that they couldn't be used for any other purpose than firewood. Big argument then commenced.
I told her I'd buck them up when I got them home. I tagged the load, tied it down and drove off with her still jawing at me. I watched for the flashing blue lights in my mirror all the way home but nothing happened.
Was I technically in violation of my firewood permit? Probably. But there was nothing on the permit that said I couldn't take my firewood in any length I wanted.
Was the FS gal just doing her job? Of course she was. And I met up with her later and apologized for my behavior. She also apologized for her's. But...she could have exercised a little common sense in the matter and the FS could have been more instructive on the terms of the permit.

Down here you have to have a B liscense to harvest poles. I assume it is state wide. It is not hard to get or expensive, just another pain in the posterier. You also have to submit a harvest plan and get it approved.
On the other hand our local FS employees who over see the fuel reductions are very helpful to fire wood gathering. They even have us seperate oak out into easily accsessable areas for the local people to cut. Of course we have to be careful to protect ourselves from the liability until the job is over.

 

[slowp]

Do your districts do Accountability Checks...where they check the log trucks coming out of the woods for the green tag and brands and shovels and axes and lost log cards and all that stuff?
They usually have the summer employees do that down here. Sometimes it gets real entertaining.

I do that stuff too. We can't afford to hire many people here. We did hire a couple of boys just out of high school but I didn't want them to do anything because of the "entertainment" factor. I usually check when a truck is stopped tightening binders or just leaving the landing. I heard about the chaser headiing down the road on top of a load last summer. I don't know if he was supposed to be branded and painted. Two operators really good at the accountability, two need frequent checking and the words Shut Down Haul mentioned. It is harder now but they used to miss log ends on the 5 log loads! And a guy who now has his own logging side said he got fired while working as a chaser cuz he missed one log and the haul got shut down. I asked him how many logs were on the load and he said 6. Duh! Sorry, branding and painting has been a constant battle.

Oh, for you loggers in the East, the loggers out here have to hammer brand and paint the log ends yellow so we can see them easily if they end up in the export yards. I have been told that the brand will show up in an x-ray even if they cut the ends off. Compression of wood fibers or something. Nobody likes to do it. The truck drivers whine about overspray hitting their trucks, the loggers whine about it taking up time, I whine about the lousy quality of some of it, and the scalers whine if too many staples get put on the load ticket.

 

[smokechase II]

Firewood clean-up

John Paul Sanborn:

"I've always wondered how much fuel reduction a crew of supervised volunteer firewood cutters could do. The talk that the scrub is not economically viable to cut leads me to this thought."

-----------------------

A few years ago we were putting out public service announcements thanking the woodcutters for helping us clean-up all the dead Lodgepole Pine (Mtn Pine Beetle aftermath).

Actually, if we don't deal with the limbs and tops we have a worse slash/fuels mess initially than if the snags were left standing.

So woodcutting can be an important first step to reducing hazard fuels.

One needs to pile that slash and safely burn or dispose of in some other manner (chipper is good).

 

[2dogs]

It is supposed to be uniform. We've been kind of an outlaw district here and have used green for firewood until now. Our reason? Wildlife trees have been marked in yellow and the painting on ends of logs--another requirement of timber sales, is yellow. The same shade of yellow. So, we have been forced to change and the logging outfits will probably do their painting after the logs are on the trucks. I stick up No Woodcutting signs as well. Blue is a cut color, and I will have to start using green for my marking soon so others can check up on what I do. But, we have a lot of old units where we've already got painted trees in them and have to use another color because the prescription is changed. We are also having more and more units with Designation by Description. The contract spells out the description and the loggers paint their own trees and I check 'em. Boundaries are white or orange with blue flagging and tags. Gotta be flexible! :greenchainsaw:

If a timber marker wants to get me mad, :censored: all they need to do is to forget to put a stump mark on a tree or put it up too high. That is the MOST important mark on FS marked trees. Unfortunately, that is the lowest paying job in Timber so the quality can suck unless they work for a politically incorrect tyrant like I did for several years who screams obcenities and threatens to CAN THEM if they don't get their stump marks down on the stump. He'd get canned nowdays.

What is the stump mark? Is that the vertical mark running down to the soil?

 

[slowp]

What is the stump mark? Is that the vertical mark running down to the soil?

Yes, that is the stump mark. It doesn't have to be vertical. I usually go horizontal at ground level. Vertical is good for snow country though and they probably have been told to do it that way. The mark really really needs to be ground level when a processor is used. I've had to have the processor operators cut higher than they really wanted to so we'd have stump marks left. That protects you guys from a timber theft accusation/investigation also. But with Designation by Description, no stump marks required because we measure the diameter of the tree at 4 inches or so to check.

 

[smokechase II]

Firewood rules

"Was I technically in violation of my firewood permit? Probably. But there was nothing on the permit that said I couldn't take my firewood in any length I wanted."

*******************

As I have been taught in that scenario, we are to show the party disputing any rule or reg that rule in the permit.
Don't quote me or live by this as if my life depended on it.

I haven't read any recent firewood permits thoroughly.
Ours did used to state that no post provision.

Although the next question is:
'Should we have a right to charge more for that when it was being salvaged out of a burn pile anyway?'

Many government employees also do not believe we should be able to charge commercial woodcutters more than private woodcutters for the same product.
That may not be going on anymore near you, but it was at onetime.

**********************

One of the problems with our permits is how much verbiage is in one. If you want to break an opponent in a debate. Go with volume. Just look at this post.

Our firewood nazi's just hate all that word and spin master stuff. The first page and a half of our permit is an explanation of why we don't allow that much woodcutting in a cleverly worded twisted moment of public disorientation. Our wood guards just hate this as they want the rules listed simply, up front, in a concise outline. Then references to page __ on the inside.

But NOOOOOOOO. That is not what is important in a permit.



You're all wrong on that side of this issue.

WRONG !

The Federal employee is suffering under the burden of senseless bureaucracy way more than you woodcutters.

Done

 

[hammerlogging]

During an awful period when I was fortunate to be in school, I was in Virginia and got a firewood permit. I laughed that I was told to cut standing dead (or down rotten and soggy wood if I wanted it) when as a cutter I always left them for wildlife- guess the thought is since cutting firewood without machines they knew we were only affecting snags around road edges. So anyhow, my wife would stand at the bottom of the hill on the road and I would hike up to some giant standing dead, drop it and buck it. Most pieces would roll all the way to the road, well, bounce a bump and tumult their way to the road. She would shepherd them out of the road back to the ditch. When I had a load down there, I'd come down and load it up from the ditch and head out. Really, it was a fun little hour or so of exercise, and of course refreshing to get to play in the woods a bit during this break. A little unnerving to cut only trees thsat were among the most hazardous out there to drop but hell, bring on the action. Nothing like a 40' top tipping back at you as she starts to drop eh?

A friend of mine who was a relatively new forester marked a stand that I cut. So many of his stump marks weren't low enough- I probably cut off over half of them onto the butt log but i knew the land manager and we were cutting on shares so it was not a problem getting audited or anything, just a game to me to spite him, Forester eh? I'll show you how we cut timber buddy, low stumps. Eventually I was marking the timber with him, actually getting paid for it, on rain days and weekends, then cutting it on work days- how bout that for conflict of interests. Goes back to what my first skidder driver told me, don't forget your own blue paint.

Blue is usually the cheapest color, why I've heard its used so much.

 

[2dogs]

Yes, that is the stump mark. It doesn't have to be vertical. I usually go horizontal at ground level. Vertical is good for snow country though and they probably have been told to do it that way. The mark really really needs to be ground level when a processor is used. I've had to have the processor operators cut higher than they really wanted to so we'd have stump marks left. That protects you guys from a timber theft accusation/investigation also. But with Designation by Description, no stump marks required because we measure the diameter of the tree at 4 inches or so to check.

Thanks! Snow may indeed be the reason for the vertical mark and a second mark up the stump 3' or so. The snow will stay under the trees until at least June some years.

Is there a prescription for stump height?

 

[smokechase II]

Blue paint

We had a small horse logger sale next to a subdivision West of La Pine.

Marked in blue paint. This is the special double secret blue paint that is kept locked up with additives that can be traced in a lab to catch them there thieving loggers.

Just like you'd expect.

Some local homeowners wanted a road widened in a disputed property ownership area. So they found some blue paint that didn't match all that well and tried to circumvent our democracy.

Just like you'd expect.

*************

We've gotten a good laugh and the off-color trees are still growing. Their moving of property boundary signs also has been entertaining.

What this results in is that this is an area where we should be treating fuels and we are staying away from the southern boundary so as to avoid any further problems until this mess is resolved.

 

[smokechase II]

Blue paint down low

Most of the time the low mark is unique to a specific timber marker.

A dot, a circle, an X, a slash etc.

This is so the a__ chewing on 'who marked this tree' can be applied to the correct individual.

*********************

The other common way of marking is leave trees in orange paint.

This upsets those that can't stand unnatural looking stuff for the next decade.

*********************

If you see a bunch of black paint covering other paint on trees this is part of our new cost efficiency method where we mark an area, a judge says "what were you thinking .........." and we remark it to make someone happier somewhere.

 

[slowp]

Is there a prescription for stump height?

Yes. Stump height is in the A section of the 2400-6 contracts. Ours specify it to 12" max measured from the uphill side but also says higher if stump mark won't show. In the days of the pumpkin old growth, it used to be 12" or a third of the diameter. Of course, there's always reasons for a few higher stumps and that's why I'm out there a lot.

I was on a forest where an environmental group bought some orange paint and marked more leave trees. I got sent into exile so don't know how that turned out. The stumps in the corridors and on skid trails will get the bark rubbed off, so I try to get paint in crevices or holes or scars where it might survive better. In corridors it'll sometimes stay better on the uphill side of the stump. Some of the old marking paint, you could get high on. I only had it happen twice (that I know of) and my head cleared when we quit for lunch. Kind of a light headedness. Now our paint is waterbased and if I have to paint when it rains....75% of the time, I tell the guys to cut 'em before it washes off.

 

[smokechase II]

Health

Slowp:

Just what were the other health risks with the old paint?

*******************

We had some loggers doing a fairly effective scam when they buried marked leave stumps under burn piles.
They got caught by an environmental lawyer from Sisters Oregon and He changed the world.

The really amazing thing was how the logging company that got caught felt about it. It was their right to take those trees and they actually threatened investigators.

 

[slowp]

Health Risks

Well, one logger here calls it the old dead baby paint.

Yellow, red and orange used to contain lead. I never was tested but a friend who had marked the same amount of years as I did was and they found high levels of lead in her system.

Several people blamed the paint for birth defects or sterility. I read the study and it didn't really find a relationship between paint and birth defects but to be safe, the new waterbase formula was developed. If you read the ingredients, they are much the same as the old paint.

The study also found that several of the testees came back from a weekend with higher levels of paint chemicals. They had been painting their house.

The hysteria was so great for a while, that wildlife people, who tried to palm their marking off on us, dressed up in hazmat stuff to mark a few trees. My guys wanted respirators but didn't want to shave off their beards. I think that is part of the reason we are having the purchasers mark.

 

[Zodiac45]

I'll say this much, You guys got allot of regs out west!
In Maine here paper companies owned more of the state than the state does and until lately the regs have favored the rape and pillage methods. We have far too few Wardens for the turf and people get away with allot of BS. The paper industry is hurting now and winding down some, so things are getting better land management wise. All you have to do is take a plane or helicopter ride too still see the excesses of the past though, the clearcutting era. It is getting slowly better now and hopefully we'll continue to replant and manage in a more enviromentally friendly manner.:greenchainsaw:

 

[2dogs]

Well, one logger here calls it the old dead baby paint.

Yellow, red and orange used to contain lead. I never was tested but a friend who had marked the same amount of years as I did was and they found high levels of lead in her system.

Several people blamed the paint for birth defects or sterility. I read the study and it didn't really find a relationship between paint and birth defects but to be safe, the new waterbase formula was developed. If you read the ingredients, they are much the same as the old paint.

The study also found that several of the testees came back from a weekend with higher levels of paint chemicals. They had been painting their house.

The hysteria was so great for a while, that wildlife people, who tried to palm their marking off on us, dressed up in hazmat stuff to mark a few trees. My guys wanted respirators but didn't want to shave off their beards. I think that is part of the reason we are having the purchasers mark.

Never tested huh? That explains a lot.

Here in Santa Cruz a few days ago animal rights extremists did a home invasion during the middle of the day. The victim was at home with her kids and the intruders scared the poop out of the young kids. These environmentalist wackos are terrorists in dirty clothes and the now the FBI is on the case. We are also dealing with tree sitters on the UCSC campus. The last week I have been dealing with the State and the local PD/SO and Parks getting transient camps cleaned up. The bums have been cutting the fences and the cows have gotten out. Last summer the bums started a fire at the lowest point in the pasture but fortunately it didn't go anywhere. I can just imagine lots of orange paint being sold just before a timber harvest up in your AO.

 

[slowp]

Wow. 2 dogs has given me an idea! I can blame everything on being exposed to marking paint! My hardhat is coated pretty well so I can use that as evidence. I also contributed to global warming today....shouted nasty words when Twinkle got stuck in a tree at the top of a cutbank and the wedges and stuff were down in the pickup....all because of Marking Paint Exposure. I think it is better than the Twinkie defense. Thanks, I have it made!
Ruh roh..just realized I have done what the hooktenders do. But my tree was small and broken.