Tractors and wood! Show your pics

[BrokenTrack]

Your lucky youæ±*e not here in Oregon running through the creeks etc can land you in jail worst case best a slap on the wrist. Do you guys have set back or buffers on creeks or wet lands?

We do, but the laws are pretty vague here, and counterintuitive.

The stream would have to be really sizable for laws to really come into play. They have to have defined channels and be mapped to be considered a stream. I live on a hill so none of my streams are not big enough to count. It even says so on my forestry plan.

Even then there is a huge difference between logging and farming. If I am logging, I can put in a road through wetland with no repercussions, including bulldozing stumps. BUT if I say I am going to clear land for farming, then I cannot touch a stump without it being destruction of wetlands. I can clear the land for agriculture granted, even wetlands, but I can only pasture animals on the new clearcut, and NOT bulldoze stumps. However, I can put a road anywhere I want, as long as it is for logging. I can literally have a road every 50 feet through a wetland, as long as it is for logging.

It should be the other way around, but that is the way it works. It makes no sense...

 

[Skeans1]

You cant drive through your own creek in Oregon????

Nope even a small non fish has a buffer of 20 feet from the high water mark that we can’t touch.

 

[Jstpssng]

Nope even a small non fish has a buffer of 20 feet from the high water mark that we can’t touch.

We are getting to that point here. We buffer anything which has a defined channel, whether there's water in it or not. We can take out up to 40% of the basal area on mapped streams, on the smaller, intermittent brooks we leave enough to provide shade to keep them from warming.
As BT says above, forestry isn't subject to some of the rules that other industries are required to follow; but that's largely because we self regulate, trying to avoid more laws. The Maine Forest Service monitors water quality from timber harvesting, and every summer they go out and check stream crossings, crown cover remaining after the harvest, and a few other things. We are invited to go when it's one of our cuts, and it's a pretty educational experience seeing what they are checking. I learned the value of laying out my harvests before there's snow on the ground, as there are a lot of streams which get hidden with snow and the channel isn't always where it appears to be.

 

[Gordon Gould]

Nope even a small non fish has a buffer of 20 feet from the high water mark that we can’t touch.

Same here - any water is protected. There is no such thing as your own brook and all water is controlled by state rules. Which are not vague at all. I do stuff like this on my tractor roads to meet approvals for crossing small running water. Bigger water needs a bridge or culvert.





gg

 

[Jstpssng]

Another thing about water... I look at old fields which were cleared 150 years ago and try to envision what they looked like back then. The 14 acre field on my family homestead had 2 streams which probably ran year round; one of them is in an area where my father planted trees 40 years ago and the stream-which was in the middle of a hay field- is now running again. You can see where the source was, across the rock wall on somebody else's property. 150 years of running horse drawn, then mechanical equipment sent the streams underground but Mother Nature is a tenacious old beast. That's one reason that I'm using Roundup instead of something else to control the invasives on the property. Glyphosate binds with the soil whereas another chemical would end up in the water... it eventually feeds into the river, and there are trout not very far down stream. That's also a reason why agriculture is regulated more than forestry; farmers have a long history of leaking effluent, fertilizer, and chemicals into the water.

 

[Molalla1]

Same here - any water is protected. There is no such thing as your own brook and all water is controlled by state rules. Which are not vague at all. I do stuff like this on my tractor roads to meet approvals for crossing small running water. Bigger water needs a bridge or culvert.

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gg

Nice James :thumbsup:

 

[BrokenTrack]

That's also a reason why agriculture is regulated more than forestry; farmers have a long history of leaking effluent, fertilizer, and chemicals into the water.

That is not necessarily true, although us farmers do get blamed for a lot.

Where I live it is just not true, because the land base does not support such a statement. We have 90% forest here, and only 10% field, so when the Federal Government said us farmers were polluting the local water bodies, we banded together and put up a fight.

The local Farmer's paid divers to go into the "most polluted lake in Maine", and what did they find...septic systems draining right into the lake. What used to be cabins on the lake, ended up being converted into year around homes, and not wanting to pay for expensive septic systems...that the houses did not have land for anyway, they just kept on using the pipes they used back when the cabins were built in the 1950's. Now instead of some suds from last nights dishes though, they were sending raw humane manure into the lake. That is where the pollution was coming from!

But as the Federal Government people told us, "Keep your mouth shut, there is a lot of money available for farmers if you tell them it is for the right reasons."

It is not rocket science. There is NO WAY farmers could dump so much manure and fertilizer on 10% of the land base, to cause that much damage. It is all a game, and it is "follow the money"...

 

[hunt4570]

Same here - any water is protected. There is no such thing as your own brook and all water is controlled by state rules. Which are not vague at all. I do stuff like this on my tractor roads to meet approvals for crossing small running water. Bigger water needs a bridge or culvert.

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gg

Well colorado believes they even own the rain, its illegal to have a water catchment system!! But I'm sure if they could figure out how to regulate air, they would charge you to breath!! Nasty place!

 

[BrokenTrack]

We had a guy that got sent here by the MeDEP, and the kid was straight out of school, and thought he would change the world.

He did not last long. There was a lot of complaints, and in Maine (keeping in mind 95% of the land here is privately owned), they "punish" state workers like Game Wardens, Forest Rangers and others, by sending them up North where there are a lot of trees, and not many people.

Well this guy, he ends up causing a fuss up in Millinockette, and those boys had just lost (2) paper mills and some pretty lucrative jobs for several thousand workers, and this guy goes up and thinks he is going to save the planet. I can honestly say, all we did down here was launch enough complaints to float a boat, but up there, they were shooting at him, and they were not trying to miss. If they could have hit him, I think they would have.

So the State figured they had better save the kid, so they sent him down to the Portland area, and I guess he is doing better down there.

He might have a degree in Environmental Science, but he is one slow learner...

 

[Jstpssng]

That is not necessarily true, although us farmers do get blamed for a lot.

Where I live it is just not true, because the land base does not support such a statement. We have 90% forest here, and only 10% field, so when the Federal Government said us farmers were polluting the local water bodies, we banded together and put up a fight.

The local Farmer's paid divers to go into the "most polluted lake in Maine", and what did they find...septic systems draining right into the lake. What used to be cabins on the lake, ended up being converted into year around homes, and not wanting to pay for expensive septic systems...that the houses did not have land for anyway, they just kept on using the pipes they used back when the cabins were built in the 1950's. Now instead of some suds from last nights dishes though, they were sending raw humane manure into the lake. That is where the pollution was coming from!

But as the Federal Government people told us, "Keep your mouth shut, there is a lot of money available for farmers if you tell them it is for the right reasons."

It is not rocket science. There is NO WAY farmers could dump so much manure and fertilizer on 10% of the land base, to cause that much damage. It is all a game, and it is "follow the money"...

That too. I didn't intend to start a ****ing contest; nor did I say that farmers are the main source of pollution. I was merely pointing out why forestry isn't subject to some of the regulations other industries are. Agriculture does contribute a fair amount of point and non-point pollution; as I pointed out earlier, many of our fields were once timberland, with wetland areas and minor streams which stich flow into the lakes and rivers. Those are the same streams and wetlands which we avoid skidding through. There are fields which are farmed in summer, using pesticides and fertilizer; and in spring when the river rises, those same fields are under water.

Most major timberland landowners belong to some or all three of the major "certification" programs, with auditors visiting a percentage of the harvests every year; one big thing they are looking for are water quality issues.

Today I returned to the spot where I had gotten stuck last winter; if I hadn't known where it was it looks like nothing happened.