Saints and Sinners

SAINT or SINNER? - the SMALL LANDOWNER

Victim or perp?

Answer: either, and everything in between. Less homogeneous than industrial owners, both in ideology and in action, the small owners comprise a number of different types, with some recent additions to the catalog. Some of the common profiles.

1.The Mom-and-Pop small owner, long-time owners, thinking about the future generations, harvest pretty sensibly. Timber income is probably NOT a main income source; or, owns nearly 2500 acres but owner does not consider timber income important. 5,000 acres is often considered the acreage dividing line between small and large owners. 2500 the cut-off for NTMPs.

2. The owner who bought rural land for recreation years ago, now suddenly finds (maybe because of solicitations by consultants) he has something of value he can cash in, but does not want to destroy it. Such parcels am usually way under 2500 acres, perhaps as small as 20.

3. As above, but sold the timber to someone, often a logger, hence has no further control unless rescrving same under private contract, The logger then hires an RPF to do the THP.

Note: ln California forest practice law and regs, its the TIMBER owner who counts, though the LANDOWNER is stuck with maintaining erosion controls and producing the required stocking.

4. A logger, with a mill fronting the money. has bought both land and timber; typically will log, sell, subdivide.

5. A mill owner, who may own only a small parcel at any one time. Like some of the others, his interest is a one-time interest, to get every possible stick before unloading the remains.

6. The professional timber scout, who typically scours county rolls in many counties and

real estate offices, etc., to ferret out small owners he can persuade to sell to him -- then passes the land along, at a profit of course, to larger owners to log and resell. Also at times he does the logging/selling himself.

7. Real estate person / buyer-then-seller, or developers.

8. Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), maybe from out-of-state. who may be aiming to buy, log, sell.

9. The plan submitter -- per the Forest Practice rules, the plan submitter OWNS the THP, whether or not he owns the land or the timber.

10.. The absolutely biggest farce--the owner who does not even know that a THP has been submitted on his land, until he gets a notice in the mail; has thus had no voice in WHAT it contains. Whoever DID submit the THP will in favy receive the proceeds of the logging unless the owner wakes up and gets aggressive.

I sincerely trust that any 'relief' from the State for the 'small landowner' will not apply to most of those types listed above, some of which comprise the more destructive forces at work on the north coast. But I do not sce how discrimination could be practiced; I don't see CDF having a form which asks the owner what his occupation and assets are. I do not know the proportion of the black hats in the whole range of small owners, but based on some years' experience in two counties, I believe they are a LARGE portion of those most involved in actual harvesting.

To compound the problems: All these varied 'small owners' share one thing in common: they have to use consulting RPFs to file a THP. And consulting RPFs in general include some of the very best ( and they are few out of the total) -- but many of the very worst -- RPFs in the trade. Since most of the owner types have no knowledge of forestry, let alone the regs, they are generally unable to realize, let alone cope knowledgeably with, planned operations which may not be good for either their own land, or for the industry and the resources, in the aggregate.

Sonoma County is the 'lair' of the small owner -- we have the highest percentage of our acreage in small ownership of any California county ( 70%). Yesterday I picked up the two Sonoma THPs from First Review. They are good examples of the problems I see:

1. Owner fits # 2 type above, probably is intending something benign ( you have to GUESS at the contents of the THP) -- but was done in by the RPF. He submitted, a Modified THP, but doesn't seem to know what that requires -- even though he wasted space quoting the rules verbatim. The map is near totally useless -- and the maps are the most important single part. of a THP, one of the most incompetent THPs in months.

The problem here is NOT the cost of the THP, or the 'burdensome' rules, it is the poorly prepared THP.

I call the Small Owner Rescuers the SORES. They want to make it EASIER for RPFs/owners by removing review/controls. In this particular case, there might be no harm done on the ground -- but the true basic problem I see in general is the use of RPFs who do not adequately understand the system or the rules, or who, knowing the system. intend to use it to get around the good intent in the regs.

2. Owner fits # 7 above. A partnership of the sons of one of the best-known local developers, very well-to-do, active in politics in earlier years. The western limit of Santa Rosa was extended several hundred feet along Guerneville to accommodate this partnership, which had land to develop there.

This THP is much more professionally prepared than the fi M. exainple, but it has the potential for so much more damage. On 223 acres, cut under mostly Seed Tree Removal, with some rehabilitation and clearcutting, there are SIXTEEN unstable slide areas listed. If typical of most THPs in this area, the PHI will find more. Presumably only those slides were listed which are being operated upon.

Not only is this THP using the more drastic silviculture methods, but also the numerous other THPs in the assessment areas in the last seven years used these methods: 15 approved, two withdrawn or not approved (these must have really been gems). And they have averaged 382 acres. Only one UNDER 100 acres. and only ONE included any acreage of selection. Regardless of whether the owners used other methods because a) although they HAD a good enough stand to use selection, they didn't want to limit themselves, or b) they didn't have it to begin with, the result is that they almost surely do not NOW have 75 BA or 8 -18 inch trees standing.

The problem with this THP is " the cost of the THP or the 'burdensome' rules, which the owner/RPF seem to know very well how to work around; it Is that the rules do not allow controlling what is potentially a very destructive but legal THP.

The SORES want to make such THPs CHEAPER and EASIER ?

This THP is in on a trib of Buckeye Creek, near the Mendocino line. Dick Moore, who was the DFG rep here for many, many years, told me Buckeye Creek was the worst savaged he had seen.

Conclusion. taking the lid off small owners is the wrong way to try to fix the problems of those owners' THPs, which may be a burden not only to themselves but to the state as well.

Another example :

How 'Small' Acreage is Irrelevant to Good Management

(A Tragedy In two Acts.)

Consider land once owned by Dr. Paul Hanna, which was a classic verslon of good management under the selection method. This land became THE showplace south of the Bay area; when someone wanted to show that good forestry can pay off, or that good forestry CAN even look good -- Dr. Hanna would trot up and downhill to show it off. Jim Greig, the RPF manager, is of course one of the icons of the trade, one of the good guy RPFs. He was influential with Senator John Nejedly in the drafting of the Forest Practice Act.

Then, Dr. Hanna made a bad mistake: he evidently did not consult a good tax adviser, and thought that if he died owning timberland, his children would suffer in some way in inheritance or other taxes. Nothing could be further from the truth: family-operated timberland is a very large advantage for inheritance tax purposes, can save heirs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So Dr. Hanna sold the showplace, and the new owners trashed it.

Moral: the acreage size stayed the same, it was still 'small timberland.' And the rules stayed the same. It was the owners who made the difference -- and their forester.

Helen Libeu
Spring, 1999