Damage assessments help forest managers bounce back

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- It is far too soon to put a dollar figure on the total damage to Mississippi’s forestland from the Jan. 23-27 winter storm, but agricultural damage assessment teams with state agencies are helping affected landowners estimate their financial losses and identify their next steps.

The Mississippi State University Extension Service has provided several of those teams, sending agents to make on-the-ground site visits to evaluate ice damage to non-industrial private forests in seven counties. 

“We are there to help determine what damage took place and to catalog it,” said Lincoln County-based MSU Extension agent Tristan Peavey, who led a team conducting assessments in Pontotoc County. “We also want to strengthen our relationships with tree farmers in the region and let them know that we are here to help not just when a crisis happens, but any time.”

Extension forest specialists James Shannon and Brady Self have done the same in several other counties, working with more than 140 landowners so far -- over about 40,000 acres between them.

These consultations are intended to help landowners decide if they can still manage their timber stands and how they can salvage damaged timber. Shannon said damage severity generally varies depending on stand age, density, geography and location.

“The damage ranges from slight to complete devastation,” he said. “Recently thinned intermediate-aged stands often suffered the most. What I’ve documented includes trees that are bent, uprooted, have broken tops and completely broken stems. Damage can be unpredictable in some stands. It will be very bad in one area and less so if you look in another direction.”

Shannon said some landowners with slightly damaged stands were relieved when he pointed to undamaged trees and noted the probability that they have a manageable stand. Less fortunate landowners have their management plans, strategies and future revenue hopes completely disrupted. 

“It is awful to tell someone that their families have lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of future income,” he said.

Self added that damage is much more widespread than the counties where official assessments have been performed.

“A lot of landowners are still shell-shocked and don’t really know what the next step is,” Self said. “Many of them believe that they will receive some kind of financial aid for cleanup and reestablishment of forest stands, but it isn’t a reimbursement for value of damaged timber like a lot of people think. I personally have been in the field with people who are going to have to delay retirement and change future plans for their families due to the loss of damaged timber. It’s life-changing for some people.”

One of those people is Dean Burchfield, owner of nearly 400 acres of farmland in Pontotoc and Union counties that have been in his family for almost a century. Loblolly pine trees comprise more than half of that acreage. He estimates at least half of that took on some degree of damage from the ice to add to nearly 2 acres that had been destroyed by a tornado last year.

“My dad used to tell me how much he liked walking through here because when he looked up, he saw money waving in the breeze,” Burchfield said. “I don’t see the dollars at this time.”

He still plans to pass the land down to his son, but he was hopeful several years ago that he could thin his stands and create space to increase the growth rate of the remaining trees. Low market prices at the time kept loggers away, and as years passed, he had become more open to a reasonable offer to clear-cut the property.

“The future of this area is clear-cutting if I can get a company to take a look at it. I had a few that were interested before the ice storm, but I don’t know what this is going to do (to those offers),” Burchfield said.

“When James and I walked down there and he told me my damage was some of the worst he’d seen so far, I told him I didn’t know if I’d be able to sleep that night. It looks like artillery bursts have taken the tops of the trees out,” he said.

While there is slight forest stand damage in many of the Delta counties, Self said, much of North Mississippi forestland took the worst hit.

“The vast majority of the damage is in pine, with the preponderance of damage in mid-rotation pine plantations that have been thinned in the past few years. Damage in these stands can range anywhere from slight to complete devastation depending on where you are,” Self said. “Hardwoods haven’t seen as much loss -- mainly just a few stems of more brittle species like river birch, sweetgum and yellow poplar.”

Another unfortunate domino effect of the storm damage to forests, he said, will be how much more vulnerable it makes pine trees to pine bark beetle infestations this summer. 

“There really isn’t much that can be done about it, but the vast majority of pine stands across the north third of the state are going to be highly susceptible to infestation this year,” Self said.

“The other stand condition that we need to be cognizant of is the greater potential for fire in damaged stands,” he said. “Fuel loading is going to be very high, and wildfires will be more difficult to extinguish as we go into fire season.”