High Grade Timber Harvesting Bad News for Forest Landowners

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- Hi, Sanford Smith here with Penn State Extension.

Today I'm joined by Mike Eckley.

Mike works for Penn State Dubois in the Wildlife Technology program where he teaches forestry, and we're gonna talk about the topic of high-grading today.

High-grading is a term that's thrown around a lot and it's confused by people, but it's an important concept to understand.

Not everyone will call it high-grading, but what is high-grading like?

- Well, Sandy, unfortunately it's a very common practice and it's simply the removal of the financially most valuable trees in your woodlot.

- But doesn't that sound good?

I mean, you go in and take all the best and just, you know, the other trees will grow right up.

- It generates revenue, but unfortunately it often results in negative consequences for the forest that's left behind.

- What are those consequences?

- Well, in many cases, you're removing selectively just certain species of high value, and so you're changing the character of your woods, leaving behind, in many cases, poorer quality, lower value, less healthy trees that continue to occupy the forest and they don't respond to continue to produce the values that you come to expect.

- Yeah, I understand.

It's a very unprofessional thing.

Now we're gonna show you a video here, a stand that was high-graded What are we looking at here, Mike?

- [Mike] So what you see here are the stumps of what were once predominantly oak species and left behind are poorer quality, smaller, spindly, and in many cases, damaged trees of other non-oak species that will have less economic value and lower wildlife habitat potential into the future.

- [Sanford] Well, it's a quite a sight here.

There's many other things we could talk about, but one of them is the fact that it was done very quickly.

They've rushed in, they've done this high-grade.

They've rutted up the roads and such.

So sometimes the landowner gets stuck with these sort of quick harvests where they wanna get in and out and remove the best and leave.

I've heard of two different things.

Diameter limit cutting, which is cutting trees down to a certain size of diameter tree, something like 12 or 13 inches or something called select cutting, even selective cutting.

Are those the same as high-grading?

- [Mike] They both fall under the high-grading system.

Both typically yield negative outcomes for the health of the forest.

- What about if you have any kinds of issues like invasive plants on your property?

How does high-grading impact that?

- Well, selective removal of your biggest, highest value trees can often change the lighting that may actually favor the growth and establishment of some of these highly explosive invasive plants, and setting yourself up for more problems than what you anticipate.

- [Sanford] Yeah.

- I think it's important for landowners to realize that managing your forest is a process and you need help in that process.

I highly encourage you to work with professionals that are reputable and can produce desired outcomes for you and your woodlot, not only in the short-term, but also for the long-term.

- [Sanford] Yeah, those are good points.

- Executing a timber harvest is one phase of management, and you should always ask, what is the outcome for the forest that is left after a harvest?

- Yeah, what will be left in the woods?

We call that the residual forest or the residual trees that the future forest is gonna come from that.

Alright, well, thank you very much, Mike.

Thank you for joining me today and thank you folks for listening.

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