 Urban logging is a short term for the harvest and utilization of trees from an urban setting. There are trees everywhere in town, whether you live on Oak St., Elm Dr., or Washington Av., you are surrounded by trees. The harvest is ongoing, by tree services, municipalities and homeowners. Trees are also removed by developers for urban expansion. It is very important to use these trees instead of letting them go to waste. They are being burned or hauled to the already overburdened landfills.
In the case of public lands removal without utilization is not only a waste of a natural resource , but a waste of tax money. I will give an illustrative example. 2 city workers spend a day removing a dying oak tree from the park and hauling it to the waste treatment plant and setting it ablaze. Later the same week, one of the workers is instructed to make some repairs to the park pavilion and build 3 new park benches. The worker drives 10 miles to the lumber yard for wood to do the job, driving past the still smoking pile of wasted wood on his way.
Homeowners can benefit from “treecycling” also, either with a usable/sellable raw material or a finished product from my woodshop. I can lessen the labor involved in tree removal by getting the log out of the way once it is down, I have also paid for delivered logs that had value to me. Some people just like knowing that their tree is going to good use instead of going to the landfill.
Products and by-products:
I can simply say utilization is important, but listing some of the ways I use them is better. There are the obvious wood products like lumber and carving/turning stock. The list is as large as the imagination, I try to always think of new ways to get the most from every log. I go so far as to save shaving from my planer. The fruitwood (apple, cherry, mulberry…) shavings are good for BBQ/smoker cooking. I collect the shavings from cedar for potpourri, and to stuff a stocking with for the camper, boat and to put in with the totes we store seasonal clothes in. Cedar shaving also make good dog bed stuffing and bedding for gerbils and such. I save cottonwood bark for carvers. I produce enough by-product in the woodshop to have enough to retail “waste” from “waste logs”.
There is by-product in sawmilling, defective wood and the slabs that are taken off the outside of the logs. I heat my woodshop with this. I also give away free firewood. The slabs are small enough they are manageable to load in a truck or on a trailer. I know there is a retail market for firewood, I am not interested. I would much rather give firewood away than have that person cut down a tree just to burn it.
Everything pictured on this site is made from the trees I am talking about. I started making small turning projects (ink pens, fishing lures, yoyos...) as a way to further utilize even the smallest pieces of wood that are "scraps" from other work. I have never sawed down a tree just for the lumber products it would yield, or bought a forest cut tree for my own use. Waste not, want not.
Here are some statistics from The University of Illinois Forestry Dept. on timber acreage.
- Forestland prior to European settlement - 13.8 million acres (40 percent)
- Forestland today - 4.4 million acres (12 percent)
- Illinois ranks 49th among states in percent of land remaining in original vegetation
This is a quote from “Utilizing municipal trees from around the country” Stephen M. Bratkovich
“In the United States over 200 million cubic yards of urban tree and landscape residue are generated every year. Of this amount, 15 percent is classified as “unchipped logs.” To put this figure in perspective, consider that if these logs were sawn into boards, they theoretically would produce 3.8 billion board feet of lumber, or nearly 30 percent of the hardwood lumber produced annually in the United States. (we are wasting it instead)
The staggering number of tree removals in cities and towns across the country becomes necessary for a host of reasons. Storm blowdowns, natural mortality, severe insect and disease damage, construction activities, and many other circumstances can change an urban tree from an asset into a liability. Municipalities are faced not only with the volume of tree removals but with the associated financial costs as well. Rising labor and transportation costs, increased landfill or tipping fees, and lost opportunity costs (money that cannot be spent elsewhere in the community) create a financial burden for managers of municipal tree programs. Even if disposal costs were not an issue, landfill space is dwindling, and tree disposal in landfills has been either outlawed or reduced by regulations in many States.
Meanwhile, the American appetite for wood continues to grow. Although net growth on commercial U.S. forestlands exceeds harvest by about one-third, our nation is still a net importer of forest products. (we are importing wood to replace the wood we wasted) The utilization of municipal trees can contribute to the conservation of forestland resources by generating wood products from trees that need to be removed anyway.”
The whole thing is an interesting read in my opinion. http://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/misc/utilizingmunitrees/index.htm
One last thing about the importance of this utilization, our weakening ecomony and namely our international trade deficit. Here is a quote from a wood industry publication.
"International Trade:
Unquestionably the most sweeping and significant development affecting the forest products industry since our last report has been the growth of international trade. Imports and exports now amount to nearly one-third of world forest products production. Demand growth and new capacity in developing countries have created a boom in international shipments of everything from sawlogs to recovered fiber, market pulp, printing-writing paper, lumber, composite panels and containerboard.
The industry’s globalization has had a major impact on U.S. producers. Since 1998, imports’ share of U.S. paper and paperboard consumption has risen steadily from 16% to 21%. Imports of pulp, paper and paperboard have gone up 23% while exports have fallen 12%. Imports of wood products have gone up 60% in the last decade and 23% in the past five years alone. Overall, the U.S. is now running a $15 billion trade deficit in pulp, paper, paperboard and wood products, a 60% change for the worse in just five years.
Unfortunately, this surge in imports and decline in exports came at a time of weak domestic demand. The combination resulted in a wrenching contraction of the U.S. industry. Widespread mill closures
have led to a 24% reduction in pulp and paper industry employment and a 15% reduction in lumber and wood products employment.
Traditionally, our industry’s international trade policy objective has been the expansion of overseas market access for our products through the elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers. But in today’s global marketplace, bringing down tariffs is not enough. The U.S. is losing the fight for world markets, in many cases because the opponents are not playing by the same rules. We often find ourselves competing in our own markets with subsidized products, products from countries where exchange rates are not market-based, and products from countries whose governments do not enforce reasonable protection of the environment."
I made that last sentence bold font. I hear much hand wringing in the eco-freindly community about global deforestation, people worried about the rain forests for an example. Fair enough, that is a concern...but look a little closer to home our urban forests are being misused to the tune of millions of trees and BILLIONS of U.S dollars annually.
There is a little more information in the newspaper article on the top of this page from October 2006, click on it to enlarge the scan. Thank you for taking the time to read this, if you would like more information feel free to contact me, Daren.
Update: Illinois Department of Natural Resources is looking closer at our urban forests and how to better utilize the trees that have to be removed. Maybe one day an urban logger will be in your area.
http://dnr.state.il.us/conservation/forestry/urban/Urban_Forest_Sawmills.htm
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