The Cutting Edge of Conservation:
On the Trail with a Certified Forester
by Scott Landis
Chip Chapman has been a forester for nearly 20 years and laments the lack of stewardship he sees in the field. "A lot of really important decisions get made with a paint gun." To learn how those decisions get made, I spent two days last spring walking the woods in Kingston, New Hampshire, where Chip was marking timber for harvest on a 104-acre parcel.
The Kingston property was donated to the N.Hampshire Department of Fish & Game by the heirs of a private estate. The agency enlisted the help of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (SPNHF) in conducting the inventory, developing a management plan and overseeing the harvest and sale of timber.
The 96-year old nonprofit manages nearly 30,000 acres of land in 101 different parcels around the state and was in the midst of its own Smart Wood certification. The Kingston property served as a pilot project for field-testing their new inventory tools. Chip's company, Northeast Ecologically Sustainable Timber (N.E.S.T.) was hired to implement the management plan and oversee the harvest and sale of timber.
Forest Management is Art and Science
The Kingston property, like so many N.England forests, is a patchwork of overgrown fields that were cleared in the 17th and 18th centuries and grazed by cattle for a hundred years or more. The woods are laced with tumbledown stone walls, built by settlers who farmed there. Very little humus or woody debris has accumulated on the floor of this second-growth forest, resulting in nutrient-poor, sandy soil and a sparse understory.
The overstory is a closed canopy of mainly red oak and white pine. Most industrial operators would sell off the valuable sawlogs and chip the rest, creating plenty of daylight but removing seed sources and whatever nutrients such a forest might provide.
The new owners of this property are interested in enhancing wildlife habitat and improving forest health rather than in a liquidation sale, and Chip's flexible approach - combining individual tree and group selection with small patch clearcuts - is well-suited to their objectives.
"The beauty here is we've got five different nut producers," Chip explains as we head into the woods. The varied menu produced by hickory, beech and three different species of oak mast trees helps support a healthy population of wild turkey, deer and rodents. One theory has it that the proliferation of pine in this forest is due, in part, to the heavy litter of nuts, which attract the animals, causing them to "till" the soil with their rummaging hooves and paws. "Everybody knows how to manage for game species, the charismatic megafauna," Chip says. He pays as much, or more attention to the salamanders, the bats and raptors who pollinate and disperse seeds.
The large hardwoods that have long passed their prime commercial years are worth more as wildlife habitat. As they decompose, dead branches and hollow cavities offer prime perching layers for hunting, nesting and breeding birds.
Standing on a patch of high ground, Chip scans the crowns of a few scraggly white pines. He decides to remove them to favor a nearby cluster of white oaks. Aiming his paint gun, he fires several slashes of blue paint at each tree (As the job proceeds he checks the cut stumps for blue paint to ensure the loggers have been faithful to his prescription). As a rule, Chip leaves white pine alone if one quarter of its crown appears vigorous and if it's not shading another tree he prefers.
Skid trails and logging roads are a major cause of damage in any woodlot and Chip takes pains to lay them out carefully, avoiding wetlands and steep grades. He squirts a light-blue "B" on the trunk of a spindly oak that flanks a skid trail. This marks it as a "bumper" tree, which will be left to shade the trail and protect a nicely shaped young oak and pine behind it from being debarked by skidded timber.
We're pushing springtime and Chip is wary of the damage that a grapple skidder can do to soft ground. "As soon as the ruts get this deep, we're out of here," he says, pointing to furrows in the trail. He's satisfied by the telltale dusting of snow that remains in the ruts, indicating his loggers are steering clear.
The property is dotted with vernal pools, shallow pockets of standing water that comprise a nutrient-rich medium for salamanders, newts and other amphibians and the insects they feed on. These are the principal agents for digesting the woody debris of the forest. The seasonally wet pools, along with bogs, marshes and other wetlands, are gaining notice as a keystone habitat of the northern forest. Chip stays clear of these microsites when he lays out roads and skid trails, leaving a hemlock fringe to protect their perimeter and provide a wildlife corridor.
Balancing such a diversity of forest function is more art than science. Kneeling by a thawing pool, Chip wonders if he intruded too much when he marked several pines for removal near the edge of the wetland. Had he compromised his integrity in the interest of "releasing" (providing sunlight for) a nearby stand of hickory? He points to two red maples nearby that he left to protect the pool. In the past, he would have taken them down for firewood.
Chip Chapman: nest@nh.ultranet.com; http://www.nh.ultranet.com/~nest/Chip
from Understory