State Forest Logging Called Good For Forests, Taxpayers

HAMPTON — The roar of Nate Wells’ grapple skidder echoes through the summer woodlands of Goodwin State Forest as the machine latches onto massive logs and hauls them up a muddy trail for transport to local sawmills.

Wells, a burly, bearded lumberjack, is one of 23 for-profit timber contractors taking down trees on state land that many Connecticut residents probably consider immune from commercial logging.

But state officials and environmentalists say the state’s long-standing practice of allowing timber companies to harvest designated trees is a way to both improve the health of forests and make taxpayers some money. Thinning out diseased or less desirable trees can improve those that are left behind and provide better habitat for forest animals, experts say.

Analysts say the state could be doing much more logging in state forests — and making a lot more money.

Timber sales have dropped by nearly 67 percent in less than a decade, representing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue at a time when taxes are soaring.

The primary reason for the dramatic decline, according to several experts, was a major reduction foresters at the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Repeated deficits forced budget cuts that have chopped in half the number of DEEP foresters available to check the health of forests, identify trees for harvest and monitor logging operations.

In 2004, the state earned about $696,000 in revenue from timber operations on state lands, records show. This year, timber sales are expected to be less than $231,000.

“It’s one of the few profit centers in state government,” said Karl Wagener, executive director of the state Council on Environmental Quality, “but you have to spend a little money to make money … It’s very, very frustrating.”

Chris Martin, head of DEEP’s forestry unit, said the number of state foresters available to work on timber sale projects has declined from 14 at the end of the 1990s to between six and eight full-time foresters today.

The plunge in timber sales was also partially due to a drop in prices for timber following the Great Recession in 2008, Martin said. The prices for lumber have generally recovered, but workers at state forests haven’t.

Bill Hyatt, head of DEEP’s natural resources bureau since 2009, said another reason for the dramatic drop in timber sales is that more than half of Connecticut’s state forests lack long-term management plans. The plans are needed to make sensible decisions about which sections need to be cut down or thinned.

Hyatt said those plans must be revised every 10 years, but that DEEP failed to do updates for several state forests.

“The plans were allowed to lapse,” Hyatt said.

That happened before he became bureau chief, he said, but he believes the retirement of key supervisors, bureaucratic shuffling and a lack of staff were most likely the causes. State records show there are active management plans for less than 50,000 acres of state forest. Plans have expired for more than 65,000 acres, and the rest of state woodlands have plans that are in various degrees of preparation.

There are a total of 167,572 acres of state forests, and DEEP manages about 30,000 acres of state-owned woodland in parks and wildlife management areas.

“There is no denying that you can get more work done with more people,” Hyatt said. He said forestry workers have been reassigned in recent years to get the forest management plans up to date.

Hyatt said his agency is “very much aware” of the dramatic drop in state timber sales, and that “one of our objectives is to turn that around … in a significant way” once the management plans are completed.

Martin said there is “no question” that hiring more foresters would bring the state far more revenue than the cost of salaries and benefits for new foresters. Hyatt said it might take two or three years to hire foresters that might result in enough new timber sales to cover the cost of their positions.

Part of the problem for the forestry unit is that any increased revenue from timber sales wouldn’t go back to DEEP. That extra money would go to the general fund, even though the department would have to cover the cost of hiring the new foresters.

Despite the opinions of their own environmental experts, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s budget staff isn’t convinced that more foresters would produce more timber sales.

“It is not clear that hiring more in this area means more revenue or more overall benefit to the state,” said GianCarl Casa, a spokesman for the Office of Policy and Management.

More timber sales from state forests would almost certainly mean more logging jobs.

“When we put out requests for bids, we usually get six to 10 respondents,” Martin said. “We’re often asked by the industry why we don’t put more sales out.”

“Loggers need timber to cut,” said Gerald Bellows, owner of Gibson Hill Forest Products in Sterling. Bellows, who has been logging in Connecticut for 35 years and is secretary of the Connecticut Professional Timber Producers Association, said loggers rely primarily on private landowners for timber.

Bellows said the state forestry unit simply doesn’t have the staff to handle more timber sales. “They need to manage their timberland better than they have in the past,” he said.

Connecticut’s forests have undergone dramatic changes since humans arrived.

Native Americans used to set fires to burn off undergrowth, making it easier to hunt and plant crops. Colonists cleared the forests for firewood, lumber, charcoal and for agriculture and industrial purposes. By the early 1800s, more than three-quarters of Connecticut was covered by fields and pastures.

But the end of the 19th century marked the beginning of the regrowth of the state’s forests, and today federal experts say there are about 1.8 million acres of forest covering almost 60 percent of the state.

Ed McGuire is one of two state foresters assigned to the eastern region of the state. Until one of McGuire’s colleagues was recently promoted, the district had three, the same number assigned in western Connecticut.

“We do [timber] harvests for a lot of reasons,” McGuire said during a recent trip to Goodwin State Forest in Hampton.

The state sometimes authorizes clear-cutting, or taking out all the trees in a section of forest to create more open habitat and new growth. More often, foresters like McGuire use spray paint to mark individual trees in an area for cutting.

“We do thinning to basically promote the growth of your best trees by removing poorer trees … ones that are in bad health or in poor form,” McGuire said. “Ideally, we leave the best trees… as a seed source” to replenish the forest.

Foresters are also trying to encourage some species, such as oak and hickory, to replace others, such as black birch, that have seen “a tremendous increase” in recent decades, McGuire said.

The task of managing state forests isn’t made any easier by deer overpopulation. Deer love to browse on young oaks and other new-growth trees, and too many deer can wreak havoc on a forest, making regeneration projects more difficult. Connecticut’s forests are also under attack by a host of invasive species, including the emerald ash borer and the Hemlock woolly adelgid.

Goodwin State Forest occupies more than 2,000 acres in eastern Connecticut. It’s one of 13 state forests covering more than 100,000 acres that McGuire and his colleague are responsible for overseeing.

The tree-cutting project Wells is working on covers 34 acres, about three miles from Goodwin’s conservation center. The contract calls for Wells to take down about half the trees to promote the growth of more oaks.

Wells, of Mansfield, said he won the Goodwin contract with a bid of $13,601, his first state project, and is selling the timber to sawmills.

Most of the trees being harvested are oak, but also include white pine and maple and where they go depends “on what the timber is and what the demand is,” Wells said. Many of the small trees will end up as firewood.

The oldest trees being cut probably started growing 120 years ago, McGuire said. The largest Wells has taken down was 40 inches in diameter.

McGuire said he or one of his workers checks on a logging operation once or twice a week to make sure the contractor is only taking the trees marked by foresters. He said there have been times when a logger will “select the best and leave the rest — and that’s what we don’t want to do.”

In 2011, lawmakers created a timber harvest revolving account that would use a portion of timber sales for a fund that could be used to help manage state forests. According to a 2011 legislative analysis, “Staffing cuts over recent years have reduced the [state’s] ability to actively manage harvesting in all state forests.”

The new legislation set a $100,000 cap on the revolving account, with all other timber sale revenues going into the state’s general fund.

According to state records, the money in the account has been used for salaries, benefits, surveying and mapping, repair and maintenance services, office equipment and other expenses of the forestry division. But it has not resulted in the hiring of more foresters, nor has it increased timber sales.

In 2008, experts at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies produced a study for the state forestry division that looked at what the prospects were for a sustainable timber harvest from state forests. The idea of a sustainable harvest is based on timber operations that would not harm a woodland’s ability to regenerate itself.

The study estimated that more than 100,000 acres of state forest would be “capable and open to timber harvesting,” and that the state could triple the timber being taken without damaging the forests. In 2008, that would have brought close to $1.5 million in timber revenue.

Martin said the reason for doing any logging at all is to improve woodlands for recreation and natural habitat for wildlife, not to make more revenue.

Yet advocates like Wagener point out that hiring more foresters would improve the woodlands, and “the revenue is sort of a byproduct of good forest management.”

Eric Hammerling, executive director of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association, agrees. “It would be a win for the state in so many ways,” he said.