Dodged a bullet, $7500 fine

[nwwoodsman]

re: "If it's good enough for Weyco it should be good enough for the rest of us.".....yes....as soon as you and I have a couple quadrillion acres to care for, closely bordering on as much public forest land and untold miles of rivers and other ecosystems, I'm sure we can make suitable arrangements.

Because you deem yourself a peasant you don't feel worthy of the same level of protection afforded to a corporation. Got it

 

[Mecanik]

If the citizens only knew how much corruption and back room deals that have been made between timber companies and political figures in government and how much the citizens have been raped of their use of "public" lands there would be a revolution tomorrow morning.

 

[41mag]

"Because you deem yourself a peasant you don't feel worthy of the same level of protection afforded to a corporation. Got it"

so you turn harsh because we disagree on your notions of application of use of LEOs on public land?

I know some of the shenanigans that go on in both ends of the 'ownership/access' issue. My own property bordered a road with a locked gate a number of years ago. And since I was a peasant that couldn't afford the kind of steel the evilTimberBandits could, it was amazing to see what trespasseurs and other outdoorsy adventurers would do to the fences of local peasantry. It was also heartwarming to see what the conspirical LEOs would do to attempt to solve the issues of trespassing/destruction of peasant property. Seemed pretty close to the same package of services as far as that incident was concerned.

Good luck in your role as Prince of the Forest Lands though.

 

[RVTECH]

The guy's got bigger nads than me to be confronting/blockading people he doesn't know that have fire arms, out in the middle of no-where.

Yea and the 'blockading' part might fall under some law HE was violating - being a cynical bolstard (and critical of everyone/everything in general) I would have looked into that one!

 

[ZigZagZeke]

re: "If it's good enough for Weyco it should be good enough for the rest of us.".....yes....as soon as you and I have a couple quadrillion acres to care for, closely bordering on as much public forest land and untold miles of rivers and other ecosystems, I'm sure we can make suitable arrangements.

And what kind of a property tax situation does Weyerhauser enjoy with their millions of acres? I pay $4K for 3 acres. How much do they pay for 3 million? I'm sure that over the years their tax situation has been crafted to take into account the idea that they have kept the land available for recreational use by the public, and I'm sure they've gotten breaks for timber production, etc. If they want to play hardball then maybe the state should be playing by the same rules.

 

[The Heretic]

Any timberland owner that harvests trees, gets a break on taxes, just like any farmer. We pay taxes on the value of the land only without the trees, because the trees are a crop. Then when we harvest the trees we pay taxes on that harvest - just like any other farmer with crop land.

Surprisingly - most people don't want to build a house on a steep mountainside, 100 miles away from any jobs, where there is no city water, no well, no septic, no electricity and no roads, so the appraised value of the land itself is not very much since its only commercial value is to grow trees. I can't imagine why, but there it is.

 

[kilimanjaro]

I used to appraise the stuff. Timberland is generally worth between $500 and $1500 an acre. The timber has value, but it is a crop, as stated above, and taxed when it is removed and sold for money. The soil and slope determine the range of values, low to high.

If you want to buy a half-section or so from a timber company and build a house on it, they'll gladly sell it to you at double the value, plus a share of the cost of the ten miles of road they built to reach it, and the two or three million dollars worth of bridges crossing the big streams.

Weyco used to have corporate campgrounds on their land, open to the public. Hunters were welcome, they printed up thousands of browse maps indicating where the elk would find the best food.

The public has changed. Now their lands are used for dump sites, hazardous waste disposal, vandalism, ecoterrorism, arson, theft of wood, timber, landscape stone and plants, pot farms, slob shooters, a bunch of problems that existed at very low levels 40 years ago but now have exploded into a serious set of issues ranging from the cost to clean up the medical waste dump site or the chemical-laced pot farm, or replacing signs and gates shot full of holes, to serious safety concerns for employees, from stray bullets on one hand to felling trees with 300 bullet holes in them on the other.

You don't let the public use your land, for good reasons. Neither do they.

 

[elsie]

I used to appraise the stuff. Timberland is generally worth between $500 and $1500 an acre. The timber has value, but it is a crop, as stated above, and taxed when it is removed and sold for money. The soil and slope determine the range of values, low to high.

If you want to buy a half-section or so from a timber company and build a house on it, they'll gladly sell it to you at double the value, plus a share of the cost of the ten miles of road they built to reach it, and the two or three million dollars worth of bridges crossing the big streams.

Weyco used to have corporate campgrounds on their land, open to the public. Hunters were welcome, they printed up thousands of browse maps indicating where the elk would find the best food.

The public has changed. Now their lands are used for dump sites, hazardous waste disposal, vandalism, ecoterrorism, arson, theft of wood, timber, landscape stone and plants, pot farms, slob shooters, a bunch of problems that existed at very low levels 40 years ago but now have exploded into a serious set of issues ranging from the cost to clean up the medical waste dump site or the chemical-laced pot farm, or replacing signs and gates shot full of holes, to serious safety concerns for employees, from stray bullets on one hand to felling trees with 300 bullet holes in them on the other.

You don't let the public use your land, for good reasons. Neither do they.

A classic case of "tragedy of the commons". It's because people suck.


elsie

 

[erudne]

Corporations normally donate to both political parties local and national because if they don't they will be bullied and regulated out of existence. The public has vandalized private lands, the increase in ATVs and other motorized equipment has allowed more PPL to go further onto private lands, then there is the outright criminal activity from arson to drug labs to worry about. Corporations have to spend millions just to preserve their assets from these threats

 

[ZigZagZeke]

Surprisingly - most people don't want to build a house on a steep mountainside, 100 miles away from any jobs, where there is no city water, no well, no septic, no electricity and no roads, so the appraised value of the land itself is not very much since its only commercial value is to grow trees. I can't imagine why, but there it is.

Great! Then I should be able to buy 1000 acres somewhere in the outback of Oregon for $50K, right? Hmmm, doesn't seem to work that way. The last time I was in the market for "rural" land I was offered 125 acres near Maupin with an 800 sf house built in 1920 for $450K, and that was supposed to have been a bargain.

 

[The Heretic]

The public has changed. Now their lands are used for dump sites, hazardous waste disposal, vandalism, ecoterrorism, arson, theft of wood, timber, landscape stone and plants, pot farms, slob shooters, a bunch of problems that existed at very low levels 40 years ago but now have exploded into a serious set of issues ranging from the cost to clean up the medical waste dump site or the chemical-laced pot farm, or replacing signs and gates shot full of holes, to serious safety concerns for employees, from stray bullets on one hand to felling trees with 300 bullet holes in them on the other.

You don't let the public use your land, for good reasons. Neither do they.

You forgot the ad-hoc meth labs

 

[The Heretic]

A classic case of "tragedy of the commons". It's because people suck.


elsie

It's because people propagate.

Oregon has about 4 million people today.

Back in the late 70s, when I could hunt and shoot on timberland, usually without asking anybody, it had about half that number.

The denser the population, the more people act like idiots.

It is only going to get worse. That is why I live 30 miles away from my job, on a mountain, on 20 forested acres, and my commute is an hour each way; because this is how I stay safe and sane. I was raised on a farm about 5 miles from where I lived, then, to make a decent income, I took jobs in the city, and lived in the suburbs. But about 4 years ago I had enough and moved out into the countryside. And still people dump their garbage out here, even along my private road.

 

[The Heretic]

Great! Then I should be able to buy 1000 acres somewhere in the outback of Oregon for $50K, right? Hmmm, doesn't seem to work that way. The last time I was in the market for "rural" land I was offered 125 acres near Maupin with an 800 sf house built in 1920 for $450K, and that was supposed to have been a bargain.

You can buy that 1000 acres for $500 if you don't mind living at the bottom of a ravine that has been logged off, with no road into it, no electricity and probably no water source (certainly no septic).

Myself - I paid $12+K per acre on average, and now it is valued at between $18K and $20K per acre, and most of that is not buildable because of a gully that runs through the middle of it, but I do have a house and shop, and a well and septic and a paved private road.

 

[kilimanjaro]

Great! Then I should be able to buy 1000 acres somewhere in the outback of Oregon for $50K, right? Hmmm, doesn't seem to work that way. The last time I was in the market for "rural" land I was offered 125 acres near Maupin with an 800 sf house built in 1920 for $450K, and that was supposed to have been a bargain.

ZigZag, you weren't buying forestlands, you were buying rural residential, not the same thing. That was an 'estate setting', and the house was a 'cozy cabin'. Isn't realty wonderful?

 

[The Heretic]

Location, location, location.

Value of land depends first on location. Most people need to work for a living, and therefore need to be near their workplace. Most timberlands are nowhere near most jobs. Even my property is on the edge of what most people would consider being close enough to work - even for me, and I was used to long commutes due to commuting in and out of Seattle with its bad traffic. When it comes time to sell, I will have to target a much smaller market segment - those people who either don't need to commute, or those willing to have a longer commute to live here. It takes me ten minutes just to get down off the mountain to the flat lands, then another ten minutes to get to the edge of town, then my real commute begins as I have to deal with traffic. Most people won't put up with a commute that is twice as long as average.

Then there is suitability for purpose. Most timberlands today are not suitable for farming, being too steep and/or rocky (that is the only reason that building was allowed on this property). This often also makes them much less suitable for residential purposes. Of my 20 acres, only 4 to 5 of them are suitable for building a residence with a well and septic. The rest are either inaccessible (no way to drive to them) or they are too steep to build on.

But the land is good for trees if properly managed. The problem with timberland is even if managed for fast harvest, you have to wait at least 40 years for the harvest after planting. Meanwhile you have to make sure what you planted grows and isn't eaten by deer, overrun by competing "junk" trees (maple and other scrub brush), or burnt down by people or lightning started fires, and people don't abuse the land for trash dumping (an increasing problem) and so on. Then you have to thin out the trees that are not doing well so the other trees have room and sun to grow. And a LOT of other maintenance, including the roads and bridges and so on. Then the cost of harvest. All that and betting that when it comes time to harvest the market will be there.

It is a very long term investment and risky. The last time my property was logged, was before I was out of diapers, possibly before I was born, and I am turning 62 this year.

 

[kilimanjaro]

Yup, one lightning strike, escaped campfire, or big windstorm, and your timber assets are worth only salvage prices, and you might not have any soil to start over with, if the fire was hot enough.

 

[The Heretic]

I forgot to mention, that in Oregon at least, once you harvest, you have to cleanup leftover scrap wood - and there is a LOT of that. You have to then burn the slash piles - which is a major chore if you don't pay the harvester to do that. Then you have to replant. You are not allowed to just clear cut and run.

Small landowners like myself, who live on our timberland, also have to maintain a certain ratio of trees to acreage, unless we can get a zoning variance to change the purpose of the land. I didn't clearcut like my neighbors did - I thinned small trees and large trees too close to other trees or buildings. So I maintained my ratio of forested acreage to cleared land.

I also have to rework/level large parts of the ground in my forest because the harvesting equipment left big ruts. I am still cutting up firewood from left over maple and alder that was of no worth to the lumber mill except for firewood and therefore not worth hauling off the property.

The private road which wasn't in the best of shape to start with, was destroyed by the hauling the lumber and equipment in and out, so that had to be completely rebuilt. My share was half the "profit" from my timber, the rest went into property improvements and taxes.

 

[Dungannon]

You're doing a good job of educating people on the challenges of managing timber lands. Hope the critics of Weyerhauser are reading all your responses. Folks might not like Weyco's changes regarding public access on their private lands, but given the problems Weyco has experienced it really should not come as a surprise. Don't know about the USFS, but the BLM has Law Enforcement contracts with a number of counties: BLM provides funding, and the county sheriff adds roads on public land to their patrols.

 

[Mecanik]

In the end the problem will be solved in the future through a "economic revolution" involving the laws of eminent domain and the public's right to survive. Land is something that's not being manufactured any more and as the population increases and the amount of land available is diminished the two powers will clash. Our country is living on borrowed time economically and within a generation we will certainly see an economic crash that will make the great depression look like a small ripple in the economy.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

I have a small acreage of timber land at this point. It was last harvested about 40 years ago. I have some trees that would qualify as commercial, but mostly it will be another decade before any more logging can be done. I have no illusions about the work involved, even with a small parcel. Since buying it last year I have hauled out 80 cubic yards of garbage. I have 1/4 mile of driveway that needs new gravel and grading, as well as drainage work. I have an access road that has not been repaired since the loggers destroyed it 40 years ago. I have ruts and pits, and piles of rock that need to be leveled. I just spent the holiday weekend with a crew of 3 removing downed and dead trees, and thinning what is healthy. I also planted 100 new Douglas firs last winter, and am now working to keep the deer from eating them. In my spare time I have been eradicating the poison oak, which no one had tried to control for 40 years. I had poison oak vines as thick as my arm going 70' up mature firs. I had shoulder high hedges of poison oak where the trees had been cleared. Showering after work on the property has become a science. I'm benefitting from all the hazmat training I've had over my working career. And I need to buy stock in Tech-Nu.

So yes, I understand that there's more work involved than just sitting on the porch watching the trees grow. What I'm trying to get across to people is that Weyerhauser and other timber companies have enjoyed a good public image for a long time due to their willingness to allow the public reasonable recreational use of their privately held lands. The public, and the government that serves the public have, in turn, allowed financial concessions to these companies in the form of land grants, tax deferments, production subsidies, production assistance, law enforcement, and other favorable treatment and legislation.

And it's not like they went out and bought this land outright. Back in the 1800's the largest of the public land grants to railroads was about 40 million acres. Much of this land is now controlled by the corporate descendants of the railroads, Weyerhaeuser, Plum Creek Timber, and other timber and mining corporations. Many local economic and environmental problems stem from the corporate abuse of these public land grants, and some have been revoked on that basis.

I understand the reasons for the timber companies wanting to close their lands. They can do so any time they want. I don't have any say in that decision. But I think that if their policies toward the public are changing then whatever obligations and benefits they may have inherited under those original public land grants need to be reexamined.