Timber Acquisition & Management

About Forestland Management Group

Forestland Management Group is a subsidiary of Middlesex Energy Partners LLC and has been involved in the acquisition and management of standing timber, and timberland for over 30 years. If you are handling your own timber sale, we would be happy to give you a competitive bid, if you would like help selling, or managing your woodlot, we offer forestry services. In any event, any evaluation is free and without obligation. Explore the information below to see how we execute a timber harvest, the reclamation after the harvest, and how we manage timberland to maximize its future value.

Timber Harvest

We make extensive use of topographic maps and aerial photos to locate your property and evaluate your timber.

This tree was felled correctly, so that it did as little damage as possible to surrounding trees.

We can usually give you an estimate of your timbers value by a visual inspection of the wood lot. Once you know the approximate dollar value of your timber, you can decide if you are still interested in pursuing a harvest. Prior to signing a contract, we will mark exactly what would be harvested and the planned location of all access roads, log landings, and skid trails. We will be able to tell you how long the harvest would take to complete. After you are comfortable with your decision to sell, and the contract terms involved, we enter into a contract with you. You will be paid in full upon signing.

A tree does not magically disappear from the woods and end up on a log truck. It has to be felled, topped, and transported from where it stood, to the log landing, to await trucking. When we mark a tree for cutting, we understand this reality. A good logger can make a tree fall where he wants, so that he minimizes damage to the remaining trees. A sloppy incompetent logging crew can damage and destroy many trees due to poor felling and reckless skidder operation. We only use the best crews. Good loggers make for a good job.

Reclamation

How your property looks after a timber harvest depends on many factors. The make – up of your woodlot before the timber is marked; and what, and how, your timber is marked for harvest. The manner in which the logging job is set up and managed, how the reclamation is carried out after the harvest also affects the esthetics of the remaining woodlot.

Most skid trails are too shady to grow grass, but will quickly grow natural vegetation if erosion is controlled.

A properly installed haul road and gate improved the
landowners access to this property after the timber harvest

A good catch of conservation mix grass seed on a large log landing. This picture was taken about a year after the harvest was completed.

This picture shows a down hill skid trail. Note that a water bar was installed to combat erosion.

Timber Management

After the evaluation of your timber we will help you decide how to best manage your timber to achieve your goals for your property. There are many parcels where timber management is not a viable option. Either the property is going to be cleared for development, or the timber has become overly mature and essentially, unmanageable. In the overly mature woodlot, the large trees have been allowed to monopolize the woods to the degree that regeneration of smaller trees has been prevented; leaving no in growth, or future crop to replace the trees being harvested. In those cases, all you can do is maximize the income from your current harvest. If you are interested in managing your timber as a long term investment, the most common method we use is to make a select harvest, a uniform crown thinning of the woodlot.

The Select Harvest, A Uniform Crown Thinning

Timbers value comes from two components: quantity, how many board feet of timber you have, and quality: the size and species of your timber, and therefore, the grade of logs it produces. You can affect the quantity and quality of your timber by proper management. To effect quantity and quality, and therefore, maximize value, we follow two main rules:

1. Harvest any diseased, damaged, or genetically inferior trees.
2. Thin the woodlot in a uniform fashion, favoring the most valuable species.

By always cutting diseased, damaged, or inferior trees, we maximize your current value by utilizing something that is, or will be worthless. We also effect future value. The harvest of a tree, whether healthy, or unhealthy, will let the remaining trees use the water, nutrients and available sunlight once used by the harvested tree, increasing growth rates, and therefore the quantity of timber The quality of the woodlot is also improved by removing a source of disease, or infestation.

When we thin a woodlot in a uniform fashion favoring the more valuable species, we attempt to harvest a portion of the trees, being careful to leave a uniform spacing of the remaining trees, and therefore, a uniform canopy, or crown of tree tops over the forest floor. This lets in enough light to stimulate growth of the remaining trees, but not so much as to encourage the sprouting of additional branches on their trunks, known as epicormic branches. The branches would decrease the quality of the future crop. Remember, we want to do this while favoring the more valuable species. This means that during the thinning process, we want to harvest only the most mature of a valuable species, but will cut even immature trees of a less valuable species that are competing with our valued trees.

This process increases the growth rate of the remaining trees, as the remaining trees fill in the canopy, and therefore, the quantity of timber. Properly implementing our procedure results in the maximum number of valuable trees growing at the maximum rate.

Timber Value

Timber is often the most important component of rural land value. In many rural areas, it is the main value. On a parcel purchased to grow timber commercially, maximizing your timber value maximizes your land value. Most of the time that is not the case. Most properties are not primarily timber properties, but derive their value from their recreational, or development value. Look at the large Beech tree in the adjoining picture. If your aim is a future timber crop, you would cut that tree immediately. It is not a valuable species and it is taking up half an acre of space as it crowds out more valuable trees. If, on the other hand, your properties primary value is its use as a hunting and recreational property, you would let it be. It is a pretty tree that adds esthetic value and provides food for wildlife. In one instance cutting the beech tree makes you money in the long run, in another, cutting the Beech tree loses you money and resale value. We understand this truth. We are in the business to maximize the value of our clients properties.

True, timber investment properties are a rare find. To me, a timber investment property should have these main attributes: You should seek areas of low surface values, and high timber values, and you should seek timber stands that are going to make significant jumps in value. Let me explain.

A good timber property doesn’t look like a park, it is well stocked with valuable hardwoods in a range of sizes, growing at a good rate. The above property resulted in the timber cruise below.

If you are investing in standing timber, you want as little money allocated to the surface, i.e. “dirt value” as possible. In most rural areas, there is little appreciation of the land value anyway. It also keeps your primary expense, real estate taxes, low. You can structure your purchase in a way that gives you a high cost basis in your timber, and a low, cost basis in your surface. This minimizes the real-estate tax assessment increases, after purchase, and minimizes capital gains taxes from your future timber sales.

Finally, the best timber investment properties are those that are close to making jumps in value. Let me explain. As hardwood timber grows, its uses, and values change. A tree that is ten, or twelve inches in diameter is still pole timber, and is primarily used for pulp, or firewood and has a correspondingly low value. Now, let that tree grow to fourteen inches in diameter, and it can be utilized as a saw-log and its value goes up significantly. If, it is a high-quality woodlot, some of your fourteen-inch trees will grow to 18 inches, and greater and parts of them will be utilized as veneer, and those trees will make another jump in value. A good woodlot, of course, has all of this happening at the same time, as the biological growth of the trees continue; poles becoming saw logs, and some saw-logs becoming veneer quality trees.

A timber cruise is an inventory of the standing timber on a property. The numbers can tell us what the timber is worth now, but also what we can expect in the future.

The above timber cruise shows us that the Red Oak, which is the dominant species on this property, consists of 781 trees that are 15 inches in diameter, or larger, and there is a total of 103,873 board feet. With those figures we can calculate the value of that timber today, but it doesn’t tell the entire story. The tally distribution in the right hand column shows us that 318 of those trees are only 15, or 16 inches in diameter. Given the quality and tally distribution, this woodlot is an excellent timber investment parcel, as it is poised to make substantial gains in value as some of these 15 and 16 inch diameter saw-logs, transition into veneer quality logs.

As mentioned earlier, good timber investment properties are a rare, and special find. If you are lucky enough to own such a property, we can help you maximize its value now, and upon re-sale. If you are looking for such a parcel within our operational area, we always know of some properties with potential.

Operations

In Pennsylvania, we operate in the following counties – Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Cambria, Clarion, Clearfield, Crawford, Elk, Erie, Forest, Jefferson, Lawrence, McKean, Venango, Warren and Westmoreland.

In Ohio, we operate in the following counties – Ashtabula, Mahoning, Portage, Trumbull, Geauga, and Lake.

In New York, we operate in Chautauqua, and Cattaraugus County.

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