Consulting foresters provide a variety of services for landowners, such as reforestation, complete management plans, timber cruising, timber marketing, and appraising all types of timber losses. Our services are of such a nature as to help these timberlands to become as productive as possible in the area of pine and hardwood timber, thereby giving you the greatest return on your investment, as well as helping keep your timberland tax exemption valid and in force.
Most management operations involve either improvement thinning or total harvesting of timber, then reforestation. Thinning involve removing the poorer-quality, suppressed, as well as oversized and overage trees, leaving the better-looking, growing and future marketable timber, pine or hardwood. Total harvesting consists of removing all merchantable timber and completely converting to pine reforestation by clearing and replanting with pine seedlings. An alternative to clear cutting, under proper conditions, is a seed tree cut, in which case almost all merchantable pine and hardwood timber is removed with the exception of eight to twelve superior pine seed trees which remain in order to produce seed for natural regeneration, thus eliminating costly reforestation expense. Which operation to use, depends on the current timber stocking condition of the tract.
With timber quality sawlog production, a priority for non-industrial private landowners, growth rates play a big factor in silviculture. Monitoring of annual growth and determination of growth potential are essential in producing fiber as soon and as inexpensively as possible, while retaining aesthetics and wildlife habitat.
