Site Discussions

Dave,

I will first divulge I am a supporter of licensing, a practicing consultant and that I am licensed in Maine and New Hampshire. Further I have seen “foresters” or those purporting to be foresters take serious advantage of landowners.

I have been licensed since 1977 in Maine and somewhat more recently in NH (1993).  While you and others raise some good points the fact is that forestry is not just about managing the ecological components of a forest but it we consultants in many instances have an enormous fiduciary responsibility put into our hands when we represent clients. Therefore having a system where there is a consistent and objective system where a variety of users of forestry services could gain assurance that an individual has met an agreed upon set of requirements to claim to be an expert is important and overtime can become a valuable public asset.

You list a variety of reasons why licensing seems like a system looking for a problem that doesn’t exist. Sadly one of the problems is that that many landowners do not understand that there is a set of qualifications, including experience, that separate a logger, timber buyer or other person in the forest resources industry from a forester.  This is not a pejorative statement about other professionals like loggers but a logger and a forester should and do provide two very different services and those services require a very different skill and knowledge set.

To be honest, I would support the bonding or registration of loggers as well to assist landowners in making decisions on that front as well.  Back to the foresters first, however. Many landowners have no idea that the person who plans to manage their lands has no more qualifications to plan the future of their forest then someone off the street who knows what a tree is. The point is often made that landowners need to do their due diligence to determine whether the individual they are hiring or letting manage/harvest their timber is qualified.

In principle that sounds nice. Could you imagine if we did that with law, dentists, doctors, engineers or others professions or important occupations. Over time licensing will serve to better define the different service providers. I have an enormous respect for qualified professional loggers. While I can do some of their work I am not a logging professional.  It is interesting we point to the CLP or LEAP programs that require training as examples of raising the level of professionalism. While we have such certifications as ACF or CF designations those only serve to give guidance, but to claim to be a forester you don’t need to be a member of ACF or SAF.

Further you talk about increased costs to the consumer. The real cost is when unwittingly they think they have a qualified individual working their land and they are taken advantage to the tune of thousands of dollars or in damage to their woods that would take many decades to repair. Do we look at the cost of a medical degree and suggest we should let knowing individuals provide unregulated medical practice. Of course not. The cost of a forestry education is a choice not a demand any more that the cost of college is for any individual. Think of this. You have to be licensed in VT to cut hair but not to sell your services to be a forester.  I really don’t think a bad haircut is nearly as significant or damaging as a bad timber harvest.

I often think that this we don’t need to license foresters is often a reflection on how little the average consumer of these services understands as to the depth of knowledge a forest manager should have to properly manage their land. I could easily name 10-20 disciplines that professional foresters are trained in that that others while knowledgeable in part do not know or understand. Letting landowners and others know that this individual understands and is trained in these many fields should be viewed as a value worth objectively reviewing for the public by our government. Keep in mind the consumer is left with the option to use a licensed forester or not. Most state licensing laws only require those selling the service as foresters to be licensed. They do not require that a landowner must use a licensed forester.

For instance in Maine a landowner can sign their Tree Growth plan, but a forester must be licensed to sign their work for a landowner. A reasonable level of protection. While continuing ed is never perfect I am always frustrated by those that want to kill a program or minimize the impact of CE simply because it is not a perfect system. I am glad that when I go to a doctor I know their qualifications are regularly reviewed and checked, same with an attorney. Does that prevent malpractice, of course not, but it does provide legal, and often criminal versus only civil recourse. One key element that in my opinion leads to a small number of claims as you reported on in NH is that many landowners don’t even realize what happened wasn’t forest management. They may never really understand the financial loss they may have suffered.  If the roofer finishes and the roof leaks that becomes pretty apparent right away. A well done high grade is not so easily recognizable for the layman landowner.  Further the proper valuing of timber is an important role for a forester and if landowners were aware that there was a licensed profession to assist them we might see less timber theft, better stumpage values and many other benefits that foresters bring to their clients.

I know in Maine, a reasonably old licensing program has continually evolved and improved. Some bad actors are reported and prosecuted to the point of losing their right to practice as a forester in Maine. That is a heavier burden then we certainly have in VT which is none. Finally on the cost of licensing to consumers. If a forestry consultant is doing their job in a satisfactory manner their should always be a return on investment to the landowner that is far and away higher than working without the forester. Study after study has demonstrated that foresters pay for themselves handily. I appreciate the views of many of my colleagues who feel licensing is a burden. Unfortunately the burden is on the resource and the landowners who at times are on the end of advice they believe is coming from a qualified individual working in their interest. That is not always the case. I’ll likely raise a few hackles with this retort but I firmly believe that VT needs licensing and over time it will be a real benefit to landowners and the resource. Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Susan,

I have a darling (yes, he is a darling) porcupine that was orphaned, and we intended to release him, then got very attached to him.  Yes, porcupines will snip off branches that are in their way, and during the very hard winters this will provide food for the deer and other creatures, as the twigs fall and lay on the top of the snow.

Our dairy farm has been run by my family for nearly 100 years. Most of that time, the land was open to hunters. However, some hunters have no respect for our property. They cut fences, shot at electric fence boxes, drove four-wheelers which dug up roads, refused to wear red or orange clothing and one hunter narrowly missed shooting my father while he was leaving the woods. In addition, many deer have been shot illelegally and left to rot. Therefore, before my Father passed away, he and my brothers decided to post our land. We still have a guy, on the Rutland Town Selectboard mind you,who still rides his four-wheeler over other posted land, brings his buddies and sneaks onto ours despite the posted signs! This “hunter” writes for Sam’s Good News and has often complained about people trespassing on his land. He has often approached people who were on Rutland City property and badgered them as to what they were doing! It’s people like this guy who drive farmers crazy so they post their land. Then, to make matters worse, this same guy has the audacity to complain about farmers who are in the land use program because they won’t open the land to people like him. He claims people like him are enabling farmers to get the land use rates. He has a sense of entitlement, albeit self-perceived. It’s people like him and groups of trespassing snow-mobile riders who ruined it for the average hunter. I don’t blame my family for posting and I doubt any of you will either!

I have a pond down the street that is clean and deep, it also is loaded with crayfish.  If I were to havrest some would they be safe to boil up and eat?

I am in the process of creating woodcock habitat on our farm in the Town of East Troy, Walworth County, Wisconsin.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a writer and editor, as well as a transplanted flatlander who has never hunted and never will, but it seems to me the issue revolves around the word “hunting.” That means going after something. Which is not the same as “trapping” or “baiting,” both of which mean luring something in. Active vs. passive; sporting chance vs. blindsiding. Same as in human law, where we have different rules about pursuit of a criminal and entrapment, or “stings.” One size does not fit all. So it’s kind of hard to support a ban that tries to shove everything under one black-and-white umbrella. At the same time, using one word to discuss all the different gray-area scenarios helps them get misunderstood. In my opinion, therefore, the first step in the debate is to stop calling trapping and baiting “methods of hunting.”

Always have let nature do its thing (usually involved putting them up high away from critters) and then used bleach. But I like the have-a-heart idea followed by H2 Peroxide.

I am a major skull collector, along with many other woods artifacts. My wife calls my collection my own personal musuem.

I didn’t invent this idea, but it makes sense to me when creating the proper angle on the bit.  Clamp the axe with the pole on the bench and the edge on top of a piece of wood.  The thickness of the wood determines the angle of the edge being sharpened. Then you only have to keep the file parallel to the workbench.

My nephew has come upon 3 bear in the last few years of woods biking. Not something the bears always appreciate!

Does anyone know what type of weed or grass irritates the eyes, knows, and throat when mowed? My eyes keep earing, my nose runs, and I keep coughing when I mow the lawn.

Your story reminds me of the time my son and I were backpacking in the Pemigewasset Wilderness and we’re kind of lost. We were at a fork in the trail in dense forest. My son went up one fork to see if the trail was marked. I got out a map and was trying to determine our location. I heard footsteps coming down the other fork, and thought, good other hikers, I can ask them. I raised up my head and found myself eyeball to eyeball with a large female moose. She looked at me and I looked at her, no more than 10 feet away. It seemed like forever. Finally, since I wanted to share the experience with my son, I called out his name, and she went off into the forest.

What a great post - you should submit it to a bicycling magazine.

Anyone who has an issue with ordinary citizens hunting deer is insane.  Just like with “free markets”, let hunters naturally hunt and stop trying to impede them with these crazy pseudo-scientific models.  As the article says, cars kill 18,000 deer per year in one state and, a friend of a friend in the insurance business said that 95% of their claims in PA are due to deer strikes.  Hello, people!  It’s reached a point where the deer are killing people!

Let the hunters hunt.

As for what’s happening on the Paglia farm in VT, that’s just horrible.  Same is true in NH, like 5 deer/sq mile.  In my area in MA the deer and yotes are all over the place, 20-30/sq mile in some areas.

Best wishes,
Sam

On this site and elsewhere I read: According to some plate-tectonics geologists, New Hampshire is “exotic terrain”—a former slice of the continental crust that once belonged to what is now Africa. It became stuck to the edge of the North American continent during the creation of Pangaea and, like all immigrants, became modified in the process.

How can a lay person figure out which theory is likely to be correct?

A nest the size of a regular orange with the hole the size of nickel in the side. There is a bird flying in and out but too small to see.  The pictures here are too big . This nest is all enclosed.  Thank you

Judith Harding.

Thank you for helping solve this mystery for me.  I found this plant just yesterday growing near a log in upstate NY in a semi mature forest.  I had no idea what it was but am thrilled to have this information. 

Love your story. Wild blackberry patches surround our cabin and each August I enjoy the bloody sport of picking as many as possible for my wife’s jam making… wading thru the bramble, finding the hidden ones, I emerge with scratched arms and a crop which has ranged from 4 to 20 quarts.  Beetles, blue jays and an occasional bear compete for these jewels. The scratches take some explaining but the jam is delicious.

INSTEAD OF SPRAYING FUNGICIDES ON APPLES, WHICH MAKES THEM UNMARKETABLE TO HEALTH CONSCIOUS, ORGANIC PEOPLE, PLEASE FORCE SUPERFICIAL, AESTHETIC FANATICAL CONSUMERS TO ACCEPT THE HARMLESS SCAB AND BUY YOUR HEALTHY, UNSPRAYED APPLES. Please educate them that the scab is harmless and the apple is perfectly fine to eat with the scab. WE don’t pick good looking fruit because its toxic from spraying!  WHO SAYS SCABBED APPLES ARE UNMARKETABLE? -THE PESTICIDE INDUSTRY?

Dave, I read your piece on skulls with more than average interest.  I wrote an article for Northern Woodlands in the summer 2006 issue titled, “Skull Session”, about this bony subject.  I used to teach a high school biology class in which preparing animal skulls was a lab activity, and the kids absolutely loved it!  Back then, we primarily used the “pick and grin then boil” technique and had great success.  I must admit, though, that most of the odoriferous boiling was done at home in my garage over a Coleman stove.

I have used dermistid beetles for shrews and small birds.  They do a very fine job but the odor is something to get used to or not.  My next colony might just have an air vent system that uses nice active dirt as the filter… Set up a little computer fan that turns on a couple of minutes an hour.