What to Cut: Careful Harvest Planning Is Crucial to Long-Term Health and Value of Forest

By Peter Kuitenbrouwer

Woodlot owners cut trees to expand trails, to make firewood, to produce lumber or fenceposts, and to improve the health of their forest. Autumn is a good time to plan a forest harvest, since the best time to cut trees is winter, when frost protects the ground from damage and the trees from harm, and before spring, when woodland birds and mammals bear their young. But how do you decide whether to cut any trees, and if so, which trees to cut?

One good first step is to hire a Managed Forest Plan Approver to write a forest plan for your woods, under the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program (MFTIP). As a bonus, such a plan reduces property taxes by 75 per cent on eligible portions of your property.

Your forest plan will include an inventory, which may suggest you have enough trees to sustain a forest harvest. To ensure you select the appropriate trees for removal, contact a local forestry professional through the website of the Ontario Professional Foresters Association (OPFA), where you can search by name, location or service required.

“A professional forester, like a medical doctor, has the scope to understand the tradeoffs of any human activity on the landscape,” said Fred Pinto, executive director of the OPFA. “It’s not just a mechanistic thing of making tables. It’s understanding the plants, the trees, and the animals.”

A carefully planned forest harvest can leave your forest healthier than before. It can also protect tall trees to produce seed for the next generation of trees. “If I do some harvesting,” Pinto adds, “I will try to learn from nature, and remove those trees that would be most likely to die.”

As you plan a harvest, here are things to keep in mind.

Streams, ponds, and other waterways
Protect the banks of streams, ponds, or lakes with a buffer zone, where you let trees live. These areas support diverse and abundant wildlife. Tree roots prevent erosion of soil into streams; tree shade cools water, which benefits fish. Dead trees that fall in the water provide cover for fish; leaves and logs that rot in the water are important to waterway health. Eagles, ospreys and wood ducks hunt and forage along forested shorelines; wildlife use the forest by the water’s edge as a travel corridor.

Tree Marking
Forests Ontario and the Canadian Institute of Forestry train tree markers. You can hire a certified tree marker (one who is not a logging company representative) to mark your trees with paint to indicate which trees to cut and which to retain. The tree marker follows the consultant’s prescription for the harvest. Tree markers will also protect trees with nests for birds, and dead trees that provide habitat for small mammals and birds, as well as mast trees (such as oaks, whose acorns are a source of food), and younger trees that will become more valuable when left to grow. “It is important to retain healthy live trees for ecological services,” Pinto said.

Ash and Beech
In Ontario, foresters expect the Emerald Ash Borer to wipe out almost all ash trees. Beech Bark Disease threatens beech trees. “It is preferential to remove some trees that are dying and would die,” adds Pinto.

Sign a Contract
A forest consultant will help you solicit bids from several loggers and select one. Then, sign a contract that outlines all the details of the job. The consultant will visit during the harvest to make sure loggers follows the plan.

Time the Harvest
A landowner’s contract with a logger should specify when to cut. For example, avoid harvest in spring or a particularly rainy fall when wet ground means more rutting and damage from machinery to the roots and bark of trees that you want to protect for the future. Harvests do least damage in winter when the ground is frozen, minimizing compaction by heavy equipment. “The contract will indicate that under these conditions, such as if it is really wet, the logger will stop operations,” Pinto notes.

Take Your Time
Your forest has grown for centuries; make careful decisions and it will thrive for centuries more.