I might need an army…of horse loggers

I might need an army…of horse loggers.

I had a meeting a couple of days ago with Chris Dahl, the new forester for Rocky Mountain National Park.

Another agency forester and myself were exploring options for him for utilization and disposal of material that is going to be generated in the Park this coming season as a result of the mountain pine beetle epidemic and fuels reduction efforts.

We gave him places/ways to deal with the wood & slash and he has acquired some equipment to help with forwarding and transport.

What they don’t have are viable skidding options to get the material out of the woods. Machinery is not a desirable option for the Park.

I told him I could mobilize an army of horse loggers if he was interested…he was interested.

What I need is an informal survey of well-experienced horse loggers that might be interested in spending a couple of months in the Colorado Rockies this summer. For those of you that are curious, the area it is between Estes Park and the Allenspark/Meeker Park.

I could be very involved to facilitate the contracting aspect. I have worked federal contracts in the past when I had my mechanical operation and work with these folks on a weekly basis, as well as writing forestry contracts now for the County. In other words, I know how to dot the i ‘s & cross the t ‘s.

This could be a very large project with a limited time frame and would need multiple horse loggers. If we could pull it off it would be huge for us and undoubtedly lead to more of this kind of work in the future.

Let me know if you are seriously interested so I can present him with realistic options. Nothing is set yet; this is strictly in the feasibility stage.

I would configure this contract so it was strictly service work, paid for based on time, volume, or acreage.

Boarding for both man & beast would be either base camps or private/govt corrals & bunkhouses/cabins

Think about it and get back to me…