On a picturesque Oct. 22 afternoon in woodlands near Lavelle, Frank P. Snyder trod through the golden brown scenery, then added a splash of yellow.
"We were marking trees for a timber sale," Snyder, service forester for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Bureau of Forestry, Cressona, said Thursday while using a Panama brand tree marking gun to mark trees on state forest land, which the state will harvest in 2013.
"We use a water-base paint. This was an area that had been designated as an area to be cut. It contained poor quality trees, ones which were either crooked or small in diameter because they didn't get enough light. So they didn't grow. And we want to take them down to allow the healthy trees here to get more sunlight," Snyder said.
But while the state removes trees in an effort to maintain its forests, its foresters are also concerned to some extent about private timbering operations. And Snyder said he believes more landowners are doing it.
"I've been receiving a lot of phone calls from people who are interested in harvesting. Somewhere in the county someone's cutting, I'm sure," Snyder said.
A private timber operation was harvesting 60 acres of forest in the Pine Grove area this week, according to Snyder, but the owner could not be reached for comment.
There are no hard and fast statistics that indicate how much timbering overall takes place in Schuylkill County.
"We have no way of telling because there are no requirements for people to report that they're harvesting trees," Snyder said. "If people have their own land they can do what they want as long as they don't break the clean streams laws and erosion sedimentation laws. If they abide by those, they can do just about anything they want."
Of the state's 28 million acres, nearly 60 percent is made up of forest. And a half million private forest landowners in the state own about 12 million acres, according to Penn State Schuylkill Extension website at http://extension.psu.edu/schuylkill.
In Schuylkill County, there are 498,191 acres and forests cover 318,555 acres. Also in the county, there are 8,876 private forest owners, and 29 forestry and wood products establishments that have a total of 1,917 employees, according to the site.
In the county, the estimated value of standing timber is $183.88 million, according to the site.
"There's roughly 918 million board feet of standing timber in Schuylkill County. To measure board feet, imagine a piece of wood that's one inch thick and 12 inches by 12 inches. That's one board foot. So, 918 million board feet of timber, that's a heck of a lot," Snyder said Thursday.
"There's 2.2 million acres of state-owned forest land in the state, and the state harvests roughly one percent of that forest land every year. We harvest to care for the forests. We select and take down trees which reach maturity and we try to encourage young forests to grow," Snyder said.
The state Bureau of Forestry office in North Manheim Township, near Cressona, manages 30,000 acres of the Weiser State Forest in five counties: Schuylkill, Carbon, Columbia, Dauphin and Northumberland.
"And every year, the department selects 200 acres from that area for timbering," Mark W. Deibler, district forester, said Oct. 22.
"Everything is planned out with the state forest. And 50 percent of it is commercial land base, what the public knows as timber sales. So every year, we find about 200 acres which can be cut down," Deibler said.
While preparing the project in Lavelle, the state Bureau of Forestry is planning to put another timbering project out to bid later this year.
"It's about 350 acres in Port Clinton. By the end of the year, we'll send the prospectus out to logging companies and they'll submit a bid and it will be awarded based on that bid," Deibler said.
Snyder said private landowners who want to make sure their forests are properly cared for should hire a forestry consultant before hiring a logging firm.
"Very few people seek professional help in harvesting trees. They go out and hire a logger to do the work and loggers are interested in harvesting the best trees. That's where the money is. But as foresters, we're looking at trees worth keeping," Snyder said.
In the past two months, Snyder said he's received phone calls from three property owners who weren't happy with the private contractors who they hired to harvest the trees on their land.
"If private landowners want to do a timber sale I recommend that they hire a private consulting forester who is trained in forestry. And that forester would go out and mark the trees, offer an evaluation, and help the landowner achieve their goals," Snyder said.