Episode 53: Starting your journey in Forest Land Management

Episode 53: Starting your journey in Forest Land Management

Ai Generated transcripts edited for spelling, accuracy, and syntax by Carrie Cantrell.

Introduction to In the Woods Podcast

Lauren Grand: From the Oregon State University's Extension Service, you are listening to In the Woods with the Forestry and Natural Resources Program. This podcast brings the forest to listeners by sharing the stories and voices of forest scientists, land managers, and enthusiastic members of the public. Each episode, we will bring you research and science based information that aims to offer some insight into what we know and are still learning about forest science and management.

Stick around to discover a new topic related to forests on each episode.

Thank you for joining us on another episode of In the Woods.

Meet Your Host and Today's Topic

Lauren Grand: I'm Lauren Grand, Oregon State University Extension Forester and Associate Professor of Practice, and I'll be your host for today's episode. Today's episode is all about being a new forest landowner. What are the things that you should know or think about when you first purchase land, inherit land, or are thinking about it?

So in this episode, we hope to accomplish getting all the information that you need to think about when you're starting your journey in forest stewardship.

Introducing Dr. Mark Swanson

Lauren Grand: And to help me do that today is a professor at Oregon State University, Dr. Mark Swanson. Welcome to the podcast, Mark.

Mark Swanson: Thank you, Lauren. It's great to be here.

Lauren Grand: So I'm really excited to hear all about what you think new landowners should know when they're getting started, but before we do that can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and what got you interested in working in the field of forestry?

Mark Swanson: Absolutely, yeah. Like you mentioned, I'm Mark Swanson, and I'm the Starker Chair in Private and Family Forestry in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, and I'm pretty new in that role. I spent 16 years up through last December at Washington State University over on the other side of the Cascades and the other side of the river, the Columbia River that is.

And I came here in December and I've really been enjoying it. College of Forestry is a wonderful organization. And yeah, in terms of my background, I'm an ecologist, but I'm also a practicing forester. Part of my professional life has been working as a consultant, working primarily with private family Starker Chair.

And I've done some other things in the consulting world, like worked with industrial forest inventory, check cruising, things like that. So that helped sharpen up my skill set in terms of forest measurements, which is one of the things that you will want to delve into as a new forest landowner. But beyond that, I'm an ecologist interested in all things to do with the forest and how the forest changes over time and the values that society gains from the forest landscape.

And of course, this is particularly important in the state of Oregon, where we have not just family forests but also substantial amounts of state land, federal land, tribal land. Forestry is a very encompassing discipline in the state of Oregon. And so it's exciting to be in the center of that here at Oregon State.

Lauren Grand: Well, we're excited to have you on the team. I can speak for myself when I say it's been fun having the ecologist you out on walks and pointing out all the little green things that even people who work in forestry sort of just say, that's green and you know what that tiny little thing is and all about it.

And it's fun to learn something new from you every time I've walked in the woods with you so far. So that's been fun. And I will say, I didn't know that I should have paid closer attention, I guess, but I didn't know that you had consulting in your background. So you really, it will be really great to have you be able to not only speak from your expertise, but also your experience and working one on one with small force landowners.

So this will really be a important You'll have a lot of really important things to share to, for forest landowners, firsthand information. I'm excited to get started. Okay.

Advice for New Forest Landowners

Lauren Grand: So what's sort of like the main message that you think you have for small landowners if they were to come up to you and say what's the main message you have for me?

Do you, what do you think you would say?

Mark Swanson: I think my initial reaction would be to congratulate them. Because it takes somebody who really wants to care for the land, to go and purchase land, and be involved with that land, I think what I'd tell them right off is that you're going to learn a lot. Be prepared to learn a lot. This is really a journey of learning.

And don't worry about learning it all at once. This is a journey that's going to be measured in years, not weeks or months.

Lauren Grand: Yeah, that's really important. And I, think about, oh, I have lots to learn myself and I continue to learn from my landowners that I work with regularly and as they continue their journey too. Speaking of learning it sounds like maybe there might be some homework involved.

So what homework assignments do you think that you would potentially assign some new landowners who were wondering what they should start to learn about?

Homework for New Landowners

Mark Swanson: Well, if they're contemplating timber harvest, then they should get in whatever state you're in, you're going to have a private forest forestry act that governs what you can do on the forest land. So you need to become familiar with those rules. And often, you'll have a nicely illustrated guide for the logger or landowner that has to put these rules into practice.

I'd counsel anyone out there to work with an extension forester or with a private consulting forester at first until they get the hang of navigating those rules. But yeah, that would be one homework item would be learning the State Forest Practices Act in the state in which they own land.

That's essential. You could find yourself on the wrong side of legal consequences if you don't do that. Just like with a lot of our activities in society, we have laws that govern them. And forestry is absolutely no exception. Now the laws of course are designed to protect the environment and environmental values.

And so they're good laws in a lot of ways. It's just learning the intricacies of those regulations that can be a bit daunting at first. Other homework, I'd say get out there and read extension bulletins. Most states that have substantial forest have pretty well developed forestry extension services.

And these can come in a couple of different forms. One is. through the university. You're typically your land grant university and Oregon State University is a classic example there. You're going to have an extension service like you work for where you where there's a lot of help that is provided to landowners, almost like a consulting service to help people understand their land and manage it better.

And many states also through the state forester or the state forestry agency in the case of Oregon, you've got the Oregon Department of Forestry, and they'll have landowner assistance programs that do much the same thing as an extension service. They'll have a for a stewardship forester who comes out and helps you understand your land, your options for your land, and managing it for the objectives that you have.

And that brings me to kind of the last of the immediate homework assignments would be sit down with you with your family Or just sit down if you're a sole landowner and write down your goals, which are overarching values that you have from your land. I want my forest to be healthy.

That is a goal, but subtending those goals. You have what we call objectives and you want to start writing those down as well, especially as you work with people helping you. And objectives are much more specific and measurable. So instead of I want my forest to be healthy, that's. That's a good overarching goal.

You want specific, more measurable objectives. Like I want to reduce the rate of mortality from Western pine beetle, for example, in my Ponderosa pines to less than 5 percent of the trees per year. That would be an example of a measurable objective. Right? So you want to start writing down goals and then objectives that are going to serve those goals.

Lauren Grand: Yeah, so we talk about goals and objectives all the time and that landowners should should come up with them. Do you have any tips on how landowners, sometimes I get questions like, Oh, that seems so, so hard to do. How do I come up with what my goals are? Do you have any tips on how someone might be able to think about that?

Mark Swanson: Absolutely. I think if you can find other local landowners who preferably own forest land close to you, so that there's a lot of similarity in terms of forest composition, the species that are there in terms of structure and maybe land use history, talk to them and see what their values are and how they've translated their values Into those goals and objectives.

So that would be one way to start you could, you'd find a lot of good folks on YouTube who are talking about their forest land and how they manage it. And that's not just folks in private forestry, but also in agencies that often are managing for a lot of the same values that a family forest landowner might might really want to manage for like wildlife habitat.

Forest health, watershed protection, aesthetics and recreation, things like that. So you can get on YouTube or other streaming services and find people talking about these sorts of issues. That's another way you could do it.

Lauren Grand: Yeah, those are some really good ideas. And I really appreciate how you describe objectives as being something measurable. Somebody like myself, I really enjoy making lists and checking off lists. And the fact that, these objectives are measurable, you can tell when you finish them.

So I personally love, in thinking about management and property and accomplishing things. You get to check off your objectives. Landowners, how are they using these goals and objectives in their land management, you know, like why would somebody want to check off an objective?

Mark Swanson: Well, often you'll generate what we call a stewardship plan or forest management plan for your property, and I highly recommend that step to any new forest landowner. Work with an extension professional, work with a state stewardship forester, Maybe work with a consultant to help you develop a forest management plan, and that'll set the tone for at least five to 10 years.

So a good stewardship plan is written at least for a five to 10 year period, but it shouldn't be much more than a 10 year period. And why is that? Because a lot can change in 10 years that's outside of your control. You could have fire, you could have an uptick in insect or pathogen activity, root rot, et cetera, that could kind of change what you do in the subsequent 10 year period.

I would say that the plan comes first and that you accomplish those objectives in the plan because they align with your values. And for a lot of family landowners, again, it's things like recreation, it's forest health, it's protection of the forest resource in its own right. It's maybe driving a modest income from timber harvest, and some landowners do prioritize that, and that's fine, but you really want to be clear about what your values are for that property and encode it in a stewardship plan, and that's going to clearly express the goals, the objectives, and then you're going to do something very important, which is create a schedule of actions that you're going to undertake In the short term, like one to three years, and then for the remainder of the duration of that 10 year period.

So the next four, five, six years, and then some things that you might leave towards the end of that 10 year period. And then at that time, it'll be time to take stock, reassess, and adaptively alter that plan for the subsequent 10 year period. This is something that almost all good landowners do.

Lauren Grand: People who listen to this podcast are probably sick of me saying this, I'm a huge proponent of management plans. And so, yes, great, great suggestion. So when a landowner , has their management plan, they're thinking about sort of, their values and how to reach those actions. What other things, do they need to learn about or what other things should they do to help them accomplish these things that are in their plan? And just generally get started on other work on the forest.

Understanding Forest Ecology

Mark Swanson: Well, this is where we get into some of the ecology. And this is very important for a landowner. If you're managing an ecosystem, which is what you're doing, even if you're only focused on the trees, you're still managing the whole ecosystem when you manage forest lands. You need to learn who the players are, and by the players I mean the trees, the shrubs, sometimes some of the grasses, forbs, and other vegetation out there.

Even mosses and lichens can be very important in the function of an ecosystem, and it's good to learn some of the more important examples of those different life forms of plant. in your ecosystem. And then you also want to learn as much as you can about the wildlife, the fungi, especially fungi that might cause damage or are important for other reasons, like edible fungi.

You want to learn the players in the ecosystem, what makes up the ecosystem. And we call that composition. So you're gonna have to be a little bit of a botanist, you're gonna have to become a little bit of a wildlife ecologist, and you're gonna need to learn about some of the other living things that are out there that are meaningful on your property.

And if I look at the understory vegetation, it tells me an awful lot about what's going on in the forest overstory. It's not just the trees. You might only have four a given number of tree species, five or six might be a reasonable number to expect say in Western Oregon. But you could have hundreds of different species of understory plant that are giving you far more information about how dry versus wet it is, about nutrient loading in the soil, about potential pests and pathogens and the wildlife like deer and elk that are eating it as forage. I mean, you've got an awful lot of information in the understory vegetation. That's just one example of why it's important to learn more than just the trees. You want to become a bit of a botanist as well.

Lauren Grand: Yeah, and I think that's a really good point and I think it's really cool that, you're recommending that people don't just focus on the trees especially because one of those main values I often hear with landowners is forest health, so in thinking about getting to know all the players, what are some things that landowners can look for to maybe help ease their concerns about making sure their forests stay healthy?

Mark Swanson: Yeah. And that's a really nuanced topic, but it's an incredibly important one. For example, if you have of your classic root rots, malaria or felinus, which is also known as laminated root rot. These are actually pretty important ecologically. They kill small compartments of trees, usually a tenth of an acre to about a third of an acre could die in a maturing Douglas fir stand, for example.

And this can happen both eastern Oregon, western Oregon, and elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest. And that gap is actually ecologically very important, as well as the snags and downed wood that are created when You have a root rot killing trees, and so that's good for woodpeckers, for example, or all the other organisms like cavity nesting birds that rely upon snags.

But when does it become a problem? Right? So there I would say that if more than 5 or 10 percent of your trees property wide are experiencing declines in vigor or mortality. then you need to get somebody in to take a look at it. So that's kind of a rule of thumb there. Between five and ten percent of your trees, if you're really seeing strong declines and bigger, get somebody in there.

And what they may say is, hey, you just have some restricted pockets of mortality from your classic root rots. That's just part of natural forest development. And there are ways to deal with that in a management sense. Or they may say, wow, you've got, say, a Ponderosa pine stand. That is really declining because you have way too many trees per acre and we need to engage in some thinning in order to restore some vigor to the stand.

So, again, that's going to take somebody with some real experience in terms of forest health. But you're always going to have a tree dying and falling to the forest floor. That's simply a natural process. But it's a matter of degree whether it's a real forest health problem or not.

Lauren Grand: Yeah that's really important to think about the subjectivity of, where you are on the spectrum.

Identifying Tree Health and Vigor

Lauren Grand: But you've, you use this word vigor a lot, and I just want to make sure that we're all thinking about the definition the same. And so when you're talking about a vigorous tree versus a tree that's losing vigor what are the symptoms or signs of that, that you're looking for when a tree starts to lose vigor?

Mark Swanson: Yeah, I think the first thing I look at is the crown. Do you have a good crown ratio? In other words, out of the total vertical height of the tree, what percent is occupied by a really deep green crown? If it's about 20 percent or more, you're probably dealing with a more vigorous tree.

If you're dealing with less than 20 percent live crown ratio, then you're looking at a tree that through competition or through some damage agent, is really losing vigor. You want to look at the color of the foliage as well. If there's yellowing or even reddening going on, then you're looking at a tree that is losing vigor and might even be on the way to mortality.

I would also look for signs on the stem and the roots. If you're seeing a lot of. Of swelling or pitch being exuded from the bark. That's what we call an exudative response. So the tree is trying to defend itself from some damage agent. And that is a real sign that something is attacking that tree.

And a lot of our pests and pathogens in forest ecosystems worldwide like to attack a weakened tree. They're not going to go for a real healthy tree. They want one that's already lost some resilience. And so you could be looking at part of what we call a decline spiral, which is where a tree is losing vigor due to some stressor, then the pests and pathogens get interested, then a secondary pest and pathogen gets interested, and all of a sudden you're looking at a green tree.

So it's part of the challenge that you have as a new forest landowner is learning what your local pests and pathogens are and looking for signs that a tree is starting to lose its health. So look at the crown, look at the stem, look at the roots. look at the crown ratio. These are all things that you want to look for.

Lauren Grand: Yeah, those are really good suggestions. And just thinking back to, as a new landowner I'm trying to think of myself as like a new student in something and vocabulary in general, we were just talking about what vigor is, vocabulary in general can be really new and maybe overwhelming to a new landowner having to learn all the forestry terms. Do you have a good resource for where people can go to sort of be introduced to some of these terms so they're feeling confident in their forestry literacy?

Resources for New Landowners

Mark Swanson: Yeah, I'd say most of the extension services that I've ever seen or seen material from will have some introductory bulletins for the beginning forestry type landowner, and they will really clearly define some of the jargon that is day to day vocabulary for Practicing foresters. I would also say books by Dr. Thomas McEvoy, M. C. E. V. O. Y. He did a lot of writing for the non industrial or family private landowner, and those books are gold. They're written more for a northeastern United States audience, but they have value nationwide, and the books like that are going to be invaluable. As you dive into your adventure of being a forest landowner.

So, Tom McAvoy, classic writer for family landowners.

Lauren Grand: Great. That's a really good suggestion. I'll have to look into those myself and we'll make sure to put A couple links on the our podcast website so people can find that more easily.

Mark Swanson: Yeah, and Dr. McEvoy introduces a lot of these concepts in very clear layperson's English.

Lauren Grand: well, that's always nice. Yeah. okay. So is there anything else? I feel like we sort of touched the service a lot on things that landowners can do and learn. Anything else you can think about that is important that we haven't touched on yet?

Engaging with the Forestry Community

Mark Swanson: I would say talk to people, talk to loggers, talk to foresters of all kinds. Go to Society of American Foresters or Oregon Small Woodland Owners Association meetings. Just find people, meet them, talk to them. People are typically pretty happy to share their knowledge and their expertise, and you know, there are logging shows where you can go talk to loggers and look at different kinds of logging equipment, and if you plan to harvest timber, then it's well worth learning about the business of logging.

That'll pay dividends when it comes time to do a thinning or do a regeneration cut, which is where you're harvesting so that you start a whole generation of trees on your property or within a stand on your property. So as much as you can learn about that end of the business is going to really help you.

Lauren Grand: Yeah, that's really important to remember talking to people. I feel like we deal with that conundrum a lot in forestry. People always say, Oh, I got into forestry or I bought this giant piece of land because I didn't want to talk to people anymore. But always suggesting that we talk to people and learn more and build those conversations is really an important way to engage with other people and learn a lot.

And, a lot of those organizations that you mentioned do field tours and opportunities for peer to peer learning and visits. And I've had so many landowners come to me and say that they learned so much or found a new idea that they would have never thought of because they visited someone else's property and saw something that was a unique solution to a problem that they'd been having, too, and couldn't find an answer.

So I think that's so important and really great that you emphasize that.

Mark Swanson: Well, absolutely. And, I hope we can do more of these and explore in greater depth what it is to be a private forest landowner. It's an awesome adventure, I really doubt that the majority of people are going to regret getting into it. It's a wonderful thing to own and work with forest land and to engage in that trajectory of learning. People really get hooked and they become lifelong forest landowners and try to pass it on to the next generation that's another important topic that we should get into at some point.

Lauren Grand: Dive a little bit deeper into that, if you could, as a new landowner, you're probably not thinking about that at the beginning.

Is there something that people should do early on in thinking about planning for the next generation or the future of the land?

Succession Planning for Forest Landowners

Mark Swanson: Absolutely. The first thing you want to do is sit down and talk to your family, especially that next generation that might be inheriting that property. Talk about the values that you all share about that. Try to find consensus on goals and objectives, and all that should then go into that forest management plan or some updated version of it.

And then you want to get together potentially with an attorney who deals with succession planning and inheritance issues and decide whether you want to take steps like: form an LLC, a limited liability corporation, to reduce, say, estate taxes. So these are kinds of things that you want to start thinking about sooner rather than later.

A lot of people wait until pretty late in the game to think about succession planning and often they pay both literal and figurative prices for doing so. So you want to avoid that. So tackle that one early on.

Lauren Grand: Yeah, especially if you want to give it to family or include family and future generations, you want to make sure that they have as much connection to the land as you do. So starting early with that always makes it easier.

Mark Swanson: Absolutely. And trees forestries can live hundreds, if not thousands of years in some cases. So you're working with an ecosystem that will outlive you potentially, hopefully, and you want the next generation who's receiving the stewardship onus to understand that and to understand where the land is, where it's headed and steps that need to be taken along the way.

And that will go a long ways towards ensuring that those values are going to be well cared for.

Lauren Grand: Yeah, that was great. And thanks. Perfect. Full circle to that, creating those values and making sure that they're sustained over time into the future. Thank you so much, Mark. I really appreciate it. so as you were listening today, if any questions came up that were related to new landowner ownership that we didn't cover, leave us a comment or send us a question on our website at inthewoodspodcast.Com, but don't leave us just yet.

Getting to Know Dr. Mark Swanson

Lauren Grand: We have to ask Mark a few questions to learn a little bit more about him.

Lauren Grand: Okay, Mark, so I'm not gonna let you off the hook yet. I've asked you a lot of tough questions already, but we're gonna ask the toughest of them all next. What is your favorite treat?

Mark Swanson: That really is a tough question, kind of like asking a motorcycle aficionado what their favorite motorcycle is, but yeah, I would say that my favorite tree is actually Noble Fir Abes procera. This is a beautiful conifer that is distributed from Northern California all the way up to about Stevens Pass, Washington in the Cascades range and in scattered locations in the coast ranges.

And so in its old growth stage, it's a very beautiful, tall tree, incredibly bluish foliage, and also the needles hang very tight to the very regularly dividing branches. And so it, it forms just a beautiful geometric crown way up there in the late, So, if anybody wants to see the best expression of that species, go to the Goat Marsh old growth stand on the southwest slope of Mount St. Helens and you'll see why I think so fondly of that tree species. It's an amazing tree. And it's also a very valuable timber tree.

Lauren Grand: Yeah, it's a beautiful tree, and I have to say that Your description of, the very regular separation and branching is so beautiful to look at, that I've often been driving through the mountains and, you can tell you're looking at noble fir because it's just this, I don't know, it's just this geometric, Sort of anomaly.

That's so it's so beautiful on the

Mark Swanson: Yeah, it looks like a computer drew it

Lauren Grand: It does. Yeah, it's kind of strange It's that's a good point. Yeah.

Mark Swanson: some folks call it turkey tracks the way that a turkey claw is regularly divided into digits, some people think a turkey feet when they look up at those twigs.

Lauren Grand: Ah now I will never now that's what I'm gonna think of I haven't thought of that before I hadn't heard it.

Mark Swanson: Yep. Turkey tracks.

There you go.

Lauren Grand: It'll be stuck in my brain Okay, What's the most interesting thing you bring with you when you're in the field? Whether it's in a vest or a field kit or just something you always throw in your pack.

Mark Swanson: Yeah, well, first thing I would say, and this is the safety conscious person in me, I've been through a lot of wilderness medical training and I would say a first aid kit, you really want to have at least a level two first aid kit, so this would be something that's about 10 inches by eight inches by four inches, that level of first aid kit, you really want to have a first aid kit and know how to use it.

But that's probably not what you're asking about. So what I often carry is going to be a botanist's loop or a little hand lens for looking at small things. And in general, I use it to look at plants. But you could look at insects. You could look at if you're coring trees and looking at annual rings, it can help you parse out the annual rings if you're trying to age a tree.

But yeah, I would say that getting a little hand lens, is a really important thing. They're pretty cheap, you can get them online. Some of them come with a little light that will illuminate whatever you're holding in your other hand while you look at it. So that's a pretty important thing to have. And then I never like to go in the woods if I'm doing anything seriously work related without a classic loggers tape, or Spencer tape as they're also known.

And you can measure out distances between plots. You can take diameters of trees with it. You can do an, you can do a fixed area plot with it. You can do an amazing amount with just a simple logger's tape. And those can be found at forestry supply companies online, but I, I would encourage any serious forest landowner to invest in, in one of those. The last thing I would say is a camera, get a camera with a good zoom on it. So you can take photos of wildlife, birds and mammals and things. And to also take good landscape shots. Those photos will pay dividends down the line when you're writing management plans or When you're trying to catalog the biodiversity on your property.

Lauren Grand: Yeah, and I can already tell from the short time I've gotten to know you that you are definitely an avid photographer and love to have your camera out all the time. And hopefully I can steal your answer and use it as a plug because I like to recommend to landowners to create photo points on their property too.

it's really fun to see how the forest changes over time and through the various seasons. And so, I'm hoping one day I'll have some landowners take me up on it and show me the pictures that they've taken, but no one seems to seems to have done it yet.

Mark Swanson: I'm sure it'll come. I'm sure it'll come.

Lauren Grand: Okay. And then lastly do you have any resources for any of our listeners that might be interested in diving a little bit deeper into our topic or who are new landowners and just are looking for a good resource on where to begin.

Mark Swanson: I don't think you could start at a better place than your state's land grant university extension service. So, in the state of Oregon, it's going to be Oregon State University and the forestry and natural resources extension service. And you and I both work at least in part for that great team. So I would definitely start there and contact your extension Forester. Download bulletins and start reading about different tree species, different pests and pathogens, different ways of managing your timber. There's a wealth of knowledge. that has gone into extension downloadables.

So, get to reading, as you're sitting there on a winter night by the fire, open up that laptop and start reading some extension publications. There's a lot of good forestry knowledge in those publications, sometimes going back to the early 20th century.

Lauren Grand: All right. Well, those are great resources and really great suggestions. Thanks again, Mark, for all your time and sharing these really great tidbits of knowledge with us. And I think that I'm going to take your advice and continue learning forever about new things, especially about the other parts of the forest that aren't the trees. And I definitely will take you up on your offer to come join us on the podcast again to get more in depth about some of these topics.

Mark Swanson: Awesome. I'm looking forward to it. Thank you, Laura.

Lauren Grand: Okay. Thank you.

Conclusion and Credits

Lauren Grand: And that concludes another episode of In the Woods. Join us again in a couple of weeks to explore another topic on Oregon's amazing forests. But until then, what's in your woods?

The In the Woods podcast is produced by Lauren Grand, Jacob Putney, and Scott Levengood, who are all members of the Oregon State University Forestry and Natural Resources Extension team. Other members of the team who've been involved in the podcast include Carrie Berger, Jason O'Brien, and Stephen Fitzgerald.

Episodes are edited and produced by Carrie Cantrell. Music for In the Woods was composed by Jeffrey Hino, and graphic design was created by Christina Friedhauf. Funding for In the Woods. is provided by Oregon State University Forestry and Natural Resources Extension, the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, and the USDA Renewable Resources Extension Act funding.

We hope you enjoyed the episode and we can't wait to talk to you again next month. Until then, what's in your woods?