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Conservation and Ethics

Forestry is a system of processes in which forests are managed to ensure the health of the forest lands and their inhabitants over the breadth of the landscape and time.
It is with necessity that we all understand our obligation to care for these diverse landscapes, as when that obligation is neglected, we all potentially lose a valuable resource.  That obligation is commonly called conservation.
Unfortunately, the neglect of this obligation is too often “standard operating procedure” in the forest industry.  Without a diverse knowledge of forests, applying conservation in forestry is impossible.

IF you are a forestland owner and are
considering assistance...

Consider some of the benefits of contracting Timberline Forestry Consulting LLC for land management assistance:
1. Quality assessments, mapping and careful inventory considerations.
2. Proper prescriptions and treatments to conserve and/or enhance the land to meet your goals.
3. No conflict of interest, as we work for you, not the timber buyer!
4. If timber sales are necessary, strategic marketing to qualified logging contractors which increases the sale price and ensures quality work.
5. Logging contract design that benefits your interests (not necessarily the purchaser).
6. Supervision during the logging operation to ensure contract compliance.

Foresters are the only professionals trained specifically to manage forested lands, yet currently most timber sales on private lands never involve a forester!  Forestry begins on the land, which is real estate.  Real estate is managed by the owner(s) or authorized manager(s) of the real estate.  In the United States, the U.S. government is the largest single owner of forested lands.  The USDA has long understood the many positive values gained through the employment of foresters.  Almost all private forestland owners have the opportunity to realize these same values by hiring a forester, but many do not know that assistance is available.
The first step toward conservation is to enlist quality assitance. For more information regarding quality assistance, click here.

Timberline Forestry Consulting LLC provides work only under the highest ethical standards. Ethical ideals associated with the business are as follows:

I believe in being fair, honest, and ethical.  I do not intentionally participate in activities in which I am aware there is any form of conflict of interest.  My sole interest while providing services is to manage land towards my client’s goals using guidance from my expertise as a forester.

I believe in providing the highest possible degree of quality in the services that my firm offers - I would prefer to serve clients that agree with me that quality should be the first tenant, and production -while also important- is the second.

Other important related issues:

Goals and objectives:  What’s the difference? Goals are what are what you’re trying to accomplish. Objectives are what you set in place to ensure that the goals are met. If deer hunting improvement is a goal, then improving deer habitat is an objective that would reasonably meet the goal of deer hunting.  If timber revenue is a goal, then improving the quality and structure of a forest stand is a rational objective put in place to meet that goal.  These are very basic examples, but it is important to keep the goal in mind throughout the process.

A popular term with the media, ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT is a hoax, literally impossible to conduct under any form of forest management other than that of a closed system laboratory, and that is the reason I do not use the phrase throughout this web site.  Ecosystems are essentially undefinable in size and change too quickly and/or are too advanced to be able to manage all of the extremely complex interconnections at the same time. Forest management is more accurately described as an adaptive management process.  Silviculture is the cornerstone of forestry.  Outcomes of natural events and prescribed treatments have been examined carefully over time. Experience gained from those observations is helpful in having an understanding of what treatment, if any should be prescribed to meet the client’s objectives.

The company I keep: I only belong to two forestry-based associations:  The Forest Guild, which is headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Michigan Forest Association, which is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is my perception based on the members of each group that I have been privileged to meet, that these are two excellent groups.  They both have a diverse membership, and the underlying ideals of each is in a word, conservation.  We can manage forests and still keep the environment intact - in some cases, even improved! I am now (2005-2007) serving on the board of the MFA and am optimistic that this is a group that can bring about positive change in forestry.

The Forest Guild is an impressive organization and I truly believe that it provides a much needed support network for those people who really are in the forefront of conservation.  It is still the only organization in which members must put their “money where their mouths are” in the agreement of the following principle:
“A forester’s first duty is to the forest and its future. When the management directives of clients or supervisors conflict with the Mission and Principles of the Guild, and cannot be modified through dialogue and education, a forester should disassociate”.
If this doesn’t say something about my dedication to conservation, maybe the fact that I am the only consulting forester residing in the state of Michigan who is practicing this virtue does. 

The only true consulting forester is one who never has an interest in buying timber, and does not work for anyone who does.  Consulting foresters help landowners sell timber, they don’t buy it! Timber buyers who mascarade as “consultants” are working for their employer’s interest, which may be counterproductive to the landowner’s objectives and therefore the goals may not be met.

The definition of a “forester” and that which is the legal description have two different meanings.  A forester is someone who takes care of the forests.  A person who is a registered or licensed forester can willingly degrade the forest, but current licensing laws don’t differentiate between the two. The problem of establishing laws to ensure the community is served properly is very complex, which is the main reason that more often than not, the outcome of such laws result in inefficiency of the management process and in some cases, make forest management financially impractical (for example, small landholders in California may spend more on the paperwork required by their forestry laws than what the timber sale is worth!).

Although it seems like every timber buyer on the planet is offering “TOP DOLLAR FOR STANDING TIMBER”, no timber buyer will actually offer a landowner anything remotely near that price unless they have made a mistake in calculating what the timber is worth! There is only ONE way to assess what “TOP DOLLAR” is, and that is through a sealed-bid marketing process.  Unfortunately, there are factors such as small acreage, low total stumpage values, large distance to mills, etc., which make some timber sales hard to sell using this approach, so proper negotiation of the selling price is imperative.

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