Winterberry Forestry Consulting

APPRAISALS AND ASSESSMENTS

Forest economics is phrase you don’t hear often when consultants are offering their services to landowners. However, what is on your property and its value will be an important component in developing a management strategy. Knowing the species composition, its amount and value are critical to managing the forest resources found on your property. This covers the entire range of resources found there whether its timber, minerals, wildlife, edible plants or water. All the resources found on your property have a value to both you and society at large. Appraisals and assessments help to quantify those resources allowing you to make informed decisions on the management of your property. Over the course of my career I have been in involved with over 500 timber sales, a half dozen timber theft appraisals and prosecutions and the leasing of thousands of acres for natural gas development. I am not a real estate agent, log buyer for a sawmill, or a land man for a gas company.
  • Damage/Trespass Appraisal - Timber theft valuations, court testimony, damage appraisals.
  • Feasibility Studies - Recommendations on the feasibility of your plan or proposed property purchase, or timber sale.
  • Inventory/Appraisal/Cruising - Timber cruising by 100% tally, fixed or variable plots customized to the landowners wishes. Appraisals for property purchases and loans.
  • Land Acquisition - Evaluation of the pros and cons of your proposed acquisition.
  • Timber Sale Marking – Will mark and cruise timber for the landowner or other entity based on landowner objectives and stand need.
  • Timber Stand Improvement – Layout and marking of improvement blocks. Feasibility of applying the practice. Marking for home use firewood.

FOREST MANAGEMENT

Forest management is defined as being an art and a science. In the grand scheme of things, the actual management strategy for a particular tract of land has no “right” or “wrong”. Managing a forest for old growth characteristics is just as viable management strategy as managing it for a short term wood fiber rotation of ten years. The “right” or “wrong” comes into play in how the management strategy is implemented on the ground. All management strategies and activities involve making trade offs and compromises among the many values a forest is expected to provide. It is simply not possible to enhance and promote every resource on every acre. The primary responsibility of the forest manager is to ensure all the various values are available somewhere on the landscape they charged with managing, they are not permanently degrading those values across the landscape and they are improving that landscape as a whole. I will work with you to develop and implement a management plan and strategy to help you meet your goals and objectives for your property.
  • Agroforestry – Incorporating livestock grazing, nuts, mushrooms and other agricultural products into a properties forest management
  • Carbon Projects – Evaluation of which project best fits your needs and plans, quality control checks for forest carbon projects.
  • Ecological Assessment – Forest, ecological and landscape typing and assessment. Invasive species management and control.
  • Forest Insect and Disease Protection – Insect and disease identification and control.
  • General Forest Management – Incorporating all of these services listed on this web page into a coherent long term plan.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Infrastructure is the backbone upon which good forest management is practiced. Road and trail systems are a necessity for access into a property and moving products to markets. Boundary lines and property corners are essential for knowing where your property ends and your neighbor’s begins. Water drainage structures keep your roads and trails from becoming impassable. Infrastructure maintenance is an expense that comes with owning a piece of property. I spent over twenty (20) years of my career dealing with infrastructure issues that comes with having over 500 miles of roads, thousands of cross drain culverts, a hundred bridges and almost as many miles of boundary line and property corners to repair and maintain. I am not a surveyor, but have extensive experience at finding and locating missing boundary lines.
  • Access Road – Layout of main and secondary haul roads for access into a property.
  • Boundary Location and Management – Finding and locating boundary lines and property corners, boundary line maintenance, boundary line marking. I am not a surveyor, but have extensive experience at the above services.
  • Forest Recreation Management – Motorized and nonmotorized trail and road layout, campsite development, vista development, and hunting and fishing management.
  • Repairing – Evaluation and repair recommendations for existing infrastructure maintenance issues.

MINERAL RIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT

I have extensive experience in mineral rights leasing, development and restoration. This experience includes coal mine restoration, natural gas well pad development and restoration for both conventional and unconventional gas wells. I have been hunting in a shallow gas field since the mid 1970s that is over 90 years old and have first hand knowledge of how natural gas infrastructure ages over time.

I oversaw the well pad development and restoration on over 100,000 acres of leased and severed gas and oil rights for both shallow and Marcellus gas wells. I was involved in the restoration of over 500 acres of abandoned surface mine lands over seven different projects along with a number of passive treatment systems for treating acid mine drainage issues.
  • Abandoned Mine Land Restoration – Assessment, management options, Appalachian Region Reforestation Initiative (ARRI), Planting plans
  • Oil and Natural Gas Management – Well pad, access road and pipeline location, well pad restoration, abandoned well location. Extensive experience in lease development and management. Experience in both shallow and deep well development and restoration.
  • Right of Way Management – Pipeline location and access, temporary work space management, lease agreement evaluation. Electrical transmission and distribution line corridor management. Was involved with interstate, mid stream, and gathering pipelines and electrical transmission and distribution line projects.

PRESCRIBED FIRE

Prescribed fire has the potential to dramatically change the species composition of flora and fauna found on a property. It also has the potential to literally blow up in your face and create a huge liability issue for the person lighting and managing the fire. Prescribed fire is a tool in the forest manager’s kit that when used appropriately can be a boon to a property’s landscape. I have thousands of hours of wildfire suppression experience with much of it on large western and Pennsylvania wildfires and have been involved in a number of prescribed fires dating back to the early 1980s. I have seen prescribed fires work as intended and in two notable exceptions seen the fire escape control and turn into a major wildfire. I understand the risks involved and how a fire interacts with the fuels, topography and weather on a property.
  • Prescribed Burning/Fire Protection – Prescribed fire burn plans, prescribed fire feasibility, control line location, extensive wildfire control experience.

WATER RESOURCES

Water is the ultimate driving force on the planet. No life as we know it can exist without it. It is capable of incredible beauty and punishing brute force. Water resources on your property are necessary for the wildlife to have a place to quench their thirst, a place for fish and amphibians to live, and for plant life to grow. You may use water from the property as your primary drinking and home use water source. Water is also capable of making your road system impassable, flooding other property resources and eroding your soil. Once it leaves your property it affects every other property downstream including the ocean it empties into. Managing water, its use and its impacts are an essential part of forest management.
  • Erosion and sedimentation Control Plans – Plans for timber sales and general property access, repairing existing infrastructure maintenance issues.
  • Riparian Forest Buffer Restoration – Buffer establishment and management for both woody and herbaceous vegetation.
  • Watershed Management – Water quality evaluations, stream and waterway evaluations

WILDLIFE

The forests of Pennsylvania are home to hundreds of species of animals, birds, fish and insects. Most of these species relay on a forest for all or part of their life cycle. Hunting and watching wildlife is always listed at or near the top of list on survey after survey of private landowners reasons for owning property in Pennsylvania. That fact coupled with Pennsylvania’s rich hunting tradition that dates back over a hundred years makes wildlife manage a major goal for a large number of landowners. Over the course of my career I have worked on dozens of wildlife management projects from creating rattlesnake gestation sites to ruffed grouse management projects to converting pipeline rights of ways to food plots for deer, elk and turkeys. I have been involved fish habitat improvement projects and enhancing and creating wetlands.
  • Pennsylvania Natural History Program – Pennsylvania Natural Diversity Inventory (PNDI) evaluations and management recommendations.
  • Wildlife Management – Food plot location, management and makeup, mast tree management. DMAP management plans. Management for a wide variety of song bird species.