I might need an army…of horse loggers

[Scott G]

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…

[Robernson]

Granted I can’t help but that sure would be cool!
~~R

[lancek]

You can come camp with us if its alright with your parents

[Robernson]

Thanks for the offer lancek;)
~~R

[Scott G]

Thanks everyone,
Judging by the e-mails & phone calls I’ve received, we have resources. I will be talking to Chris after the Holidays and probably take a walk about with him to tour the site. At that time I’ll find out just how serious he is and more importantly, see if Rocky’s supervisor is commited as well. I’ll follow up with an update in January.

[Scott G]

Hey everyone,

I tracked down and cornered the forester from RMNP at an agency meeting today to see what direction he wanted to go. At this point he was non-committal so I am calling it a no-go.

There are, however, many other possibilities coming down the pike. The USFS Region-2 has received a significant amount of funding for mitigating issues related to mountain pine beetle; specifically hazard trees and fuels reduction. Much of this project work will occur in sensitive sites such as campgrounds and stands with a mixed species component where residual damage is a real concern.

Since I meet with most of these folks from the Front Range Districts on a regular basis at inter-agency meetings, I am constantly working on them to consider draft animals for extraction with some of this work. I have most of the folks attention & respect from both a personal and agency perspective.

We’ll see how it goes, stay tuned.

[Author]

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