Many landowners are absentee owners and live far away from their timberland and infrequently visit their property. In these cases, there are a few ways landowners can reduce risk of trespass and natural disasters like fire, wind, ice, and insect damage.
The most common question we get is if landowners can purchase Standing Timber Insurance. Unfortunately, this is not an option for most private landowners because it is cost prohibitive. Fortunately, there are several practical ways to protect your timberland such as using a consulting forester, leasing the property for hunting, and proper timberland management.
Hiring a full-service professional forester to manage your timberland will garner more than just timber management advice. Your forester will also provide guidance on how to protect your property. Protecting your property is accomplished by maintaining your boundary lines and preventing trespass by installing gates.
Your forester should also do periodic inspections of the property. This is very important after, for example, a tornado causes timber damage. If this happens, having a forester guide you through the process is critical to limit any loss. Forestry consultants have technology to identify storm damage from various websites and also have personal and professional networks to identify areas with potential storm damage. An absentee landowner can always call on their forester if they have any questions or concerns following a storm.
Leasing your timberland for hunting is an excellent way to incorporate frequent inspections on the property to keep you protected. Hunters will be on the property throughout the year and are typically the first to find and report anything of interest. Hunters also help protect the property from trespassers through posting signs and using game cameras. It is not uncommon for hunters (with the landowner’s permission) to install gates. Gates are a great way to keep people out and protect your property from dumping and joy riding that can often make roads and trails impassable.
Proper timberland management, which goes hand-in-hand with hiring a consulting forester, is preventative maintenance for fire, wind, ice, and insect damage. Healthy trees are strong trees that ward off insects and stand up to ice and wind better. Management recommendations your forester might make include installing fire breaks, maintaining roads as natural fire breaks, or to do understory burning. This is primarily a tool to promote wildlife habitat, but it has the secondary benefit of protecting your property from wildfires.
The best thing about the recommendations above to help protect your property is that the cost of those is typically very cheap, are performed infrequently and have a long-lasting effect, and often result in generating income (as is the case with hunting leases). We suggest a multipronged approach as outlined above.
Contact us if you’d like to visit with a forester about what you can do to protect your property.