THIS ARTICLE FROM “FOREST STEWARDSHIP” QUARTERLY (Volume 7 Number A Spring 1998)

Pay a Consultant?

Most of us employ lawyers to draw our wills and conduct our legal business. Many of us recently hired an accountant to prepare our tax returns. In the face of an impending timber harvest and sale, isn’t it logical, then, to hire a forester to represent us if we lack the technical expertise to represent ourselves? Too often the answer I hear to that question is “No.” when people ask me why they should share part of the income from a timber sale with a consultant, I like to tell them this story from the days when DEC service foresters were marking a lot of timber.

Why Share the Wealth?

After a man had purchased 34 acres of woodland, he was contacted by logger and offered $7,600 for all the timber. A few months later the landowner contacted me and said he would like my opinion before signing a contract. The logger responded that I would spoil the sale, and he guaranteed he would pay less if I were involved. The owner got me involved anyway.

As we walked the property, the new owner expressed an interest in receiving some income to help offset the parcel purchase. The woodlot was the most impressive stand of timber I had ever seen. The discussion that ensued covered short and long range goals, various management options, and projections of future opportunities. To meet the college costs of an 11 year-old son and to compromise between short-term needs and long-term desires, we set upon a course of management involving a selection harvest on 17 acres.

I began to mark 377,000 board feet of primarily white pine and hemlock to favor hard maple and hemlock growing stock. It is not every day a forester can mark 20,000 board feet per acre and still call the sale a selection cut, but this sale represented about 40 percent of the growing stock on the site.

The cut was planned to be a little heavy in the white pine because many of those trees were overly mature, and the owner needed to recoup some of his land purchase investment. To make a long story shorter, the logger returned to point out that I had missed more than half the timber. He reduced his bid to $7,000.00. The landowner mused over the fact that the offer had dropped only $600.00 and decided to solicit bids to see what competitors might offer.

A dozen bids came in , ranging from $11,200 to $11,400 and one bid arrived at $17,635. Needless to say, this landowner would have been happy to pay consultant fees. He entered a contract where he was in control of which trees would be cut. He had money in hand before the cutting started and he had a performance bond to ensure contract compliance and to protect his interests. After two decades, the other half of the stand was successfully harvested with the assistance of a forester.

The Point of the Story

This story does not state that loggers are crooks. I want to make that point clear. We all know some are dishonest, but any business transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller can present the sort of issues seen here without concluding that deception is occurring. Loggers have different costs and different marketing opportunities. Some can simply afford to pay more than others. Some are more efficient. Perhaps the logger had plenty of timber bought ahead and was only interested in cheap wood or didn’t want any!