Logging in tropical forests?

[ecomadera]

Hi There,

My name is Blair Rynearson and I work for an organization called Ecomadera. We are in the process of starting a community forest in Ecuador that provides conservation through limited use. Roads are not an option, as they promote land conversion by allowing access to heavy equipment. So our system of extraction is going to involve a gravity cable system, a portable sawmill and at some phase, draft animals. Our forest is located in some of the nastiest country I’ve been exposed to. It’s super steep, always raining and full of deep greasy mud.

I had the opportunity to visit with Carl Russell for a day and got an idea of the limitations, and some of the equipment we might need. He suggested we ask the crowd if anybody is dealing with similar conditions.

Blair

Ecomadera

[Carl Russell]

Welcome to the site Blair. It was great to meet you and Peter yesterday. I hope you find some useful info and hopefully some contacts here.

Carl

[Gabe Ayers]

Hello Sir,

Here is a site someone sent me just yesterday that has information about all sorts of steep ground logging equipment. It doesn’t speak well about animal powered logging, but I don’t think they had skill practitioners to work with.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/x0622e/x0622e15.htm

I had a couple of professors from Austria come to one of our steep logging sites
a few years ago. We were just making log trains and connecting them with trail grabs and skidding off the steep faces with one horse.

Let us know what you think.

Welcome to the Draft Animal Power forum.

[ecomadera]

That article has some interesting info. What size logs were you dealing with on that slope? Another problem I failed to mention is we’re taking large diameter hardwoods. We were thinking of using smaller mules and would be somewhat limited on what a single animal could pull.

Carl suggested a simple gravity skyline with a come-along for bunching the logs at a landing. Sounds like a reasonable option.

I’ll keep you posted.

Blair

[Gabe Ayers]

We were skidding some big logs behind the arch, (meaning around 16″ small end diameter oak and larger) when the Austrian Prof’s were there – as well as smaller hardwoods with a log train. Smaller meaning up to about 16 ” SED.

I would think some bigger mules would handle the larger logs in the hands of skilled practitioners. It is amazing what an animal can move downhill.

[ecomadera]

Well therein lies one of the problems. Were short on skilled practicioners. If you know of experienced horse loggers in South America, we’d love to hire them.

The minimum diameter limit on our species will vary, but all trees will have a Dbh greater than 20″ and many significantly greater.

Thanks Jason

[Gabe Ayers]

Maybe you could offer some training for native folks to do this work? We have one practitioner that is a steep ground expert that has trained several folks to work on land they call “as steep as a cow’s face”.

[ecomadera]

Sounds like a useful fellow. Do you have his contact info? Where is he based out of?

We’re trying to learn as much as we can in our stint here in the states. I’ll be heading up to work a few days with Carl on Tuesday. Would visiting one of your jobs next week be a possibility? Are you logging right now, or is it breakup? Do you have a break up down there?

We’re considering the possibility of hiring someone to help get this project off the ground. Do you know of anyone willing to head South for awhile?

This is a loaded reply. Let me know what You think.

[Gabe Ayers]

Blair,

Most of the modern western world is short on skilled animal power practitioners.

I can give you this fellows contact information through a private email message. He and his family live in the Appalachian Mountains of Southwestern Virginia. My address is below.

DAP is no different than any other site on the internet – in that some folks just don’t trust or like the internet…or computers. So I will respect his position and give the contact information directly.

Break up, that’s a terminal condition of a relationship down here…no just kidding. I understand the frost is coming out of the ground in the far north and the land looses all sense of texture, and we have been through that about a month ago here. We will be working next week, we have to get our trailer repaired and some temporary fence on our new site, but we are moving wood on some gentle land now.

You are welcome to visit anytime – but I have to make a disclaimer here. We (my family operation) won’t work on ground as steep as a cow’s face, if there is anyway we can avoid it. Lots of reasons:

Not enough money in it
to hard
to dangerous
usually highly sensitive to erosion
Often thin soil and resulting low quality material present

and THE BIGGEST REASON is – we are determined to access the very best sites…because that is where the most public good can be done quickly….for all the stakeholders in the biological planet family. Only the best forested sites have enough value, to have a chance of paying for the services for a restorative type harvesting. This means having a chance to make a living wage from what the forest has to give, instead of the best of what it’s got.

Those sites are not usually a mountain side in Appalachia… although some of this old mountain range has benches that are deep and flat and long deep coves that grow big heavy hardwoods capable of being over a meter DBH – healthily to a certain point of maturation.

So when there are big ones up there – that have peaked and maybe are going backward in health and vigor, possibly even rotting faster than growing, there are folks here that know how to go up there and get them with animal power.

But that is here in Appalachia, I am not sure of and can only imagine the vast difference between here and near the equator.

None of these reasons preclude you from having a very sensitive and if done right – sustainable alternative for logging in the rain forest.

If this practice provides or could provide proven viable alternatives to clear cutting, oil drilling, mining and/or turning into marginal pasture, coffee, coca, palm oil or anything other than the natural creator produced ecological system…? – it may be a good thing.

I suspect there is great value ($) in the rain forest wood… it is off the scale of anything temperate is worth for certain species.

Preserving the ecosystem is what it has to be about for our 501c3 non-profit public charity. Our approach is that when the ground level worker in restorative and therefore sustainable forestry can make a living wage, then actual bottom up change may occur.

I would suspect Cattle would be the best draft animal in the tropics.

We will help you if we can. Stop through on your way south.

[Rod44]

When I was in Belize, I visited an Amish community in the western part of the country. They used oxen and were bringing out some large logs. Maybe they would be a source to help train people.

[Carl Russell]

They need all the contacts they can get, because the “settlers” there are encouraged to cut down the forest completely, or sell the timber to a logging company with the result of total deforestation, and they do not even use their mules for draft, don’t even know what a harness looks like, so there are huge cultural hurdles to even getting enough of them interested, and then skilled enough to apply animal power to the complex set of situations required in the forestry operation.

That is why, in my mind, there needs to be a hybridization of some type of skyline type mechanization, preferably low tech, so that they can enact successful selective harvesting, so that it will be quickly seen as advantageous, so that there will be incentive to learn to intergate draft animal power. Some farmers in the region use water buffalo for plowing, but there are very few, or no, examples of people in this developing area who are using draft animals successfully, so the hurdles are not only numerous, but high.

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow Blair. We’ll get started with big horses pulling small logs, an see where that leads us.

Carl

[ecomadera]

Hurdles is right. And an uphill battle. Many forces conspiring to make our company wonder if we’re looking at a genuine, sustainable business, or a pipe dream. We’ve identified a market for engineered flooring that utilizes mixed species. A balsa plant has been constructed to produce blocks that are used in construction of airplanes, windmills, etc. The balsa will be planted in land that was previously cleared as pasture with the eventual goal of reforestation of native species. Now we just need some capital to buy land from owners living in cities that aren’t interested in their farms, and tenants that seem tempted to sell concession to a major plywood company. The extraction crews and plant will be staffed by locals and some of the land we buy will incorporate a community shared agroforestry system. The basic idea is to conserve an extremely biodiverse area by stopping high-grading/conversion – without displacing the populace.

Now we need to figure out an efficient way to get the timber out. Thanks for all the advice. Jason, I’ll mail you my address for contacting your neighbor. I’ll talk with my boss and see when or if we can head down that way. Really appreciate the feedback. It’s been useful.

Rod, I’ll check into the amish communities. We’ve been thinking a bit more about using oxen, so it might be useful.

Can’t wait to head that way Carl. Starting with the basics is just what I need. I’ll see you sometime tommorow night. What a great thing this website is.

Blair

[Author]

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