Selling Timber
Selling timber is a once in a lifetime activity for most landowners. No single activity has such power to significantly improve- or degrade- your forest. Proper harvesting can provide income, improve wildlife habitat, and results in trails, better access, views, and healthy and vigorous forests. Uncontrolled exploitive cutting can reduce these values leading to environmental degradation, public resentment and legal entanglements.
Follow sound principles to insure a successful timber sale, including practice forestry, do your homework, use a written contract, hire a licensed forester.
Learn about the timber harvest at Pisgah State Park in Winchester. Narrated by Division of Forests and Lands forester Inge Seaboyer, this video describes a commercial timber harvest designed to enhance wildlife habitat diversity while protecting the park’s natural and cultural resources. By watching, you can learn how to have a carefully considered harvest on your own land that follows sound principles and meets your goals.
The following fact sheets should help:
An Overview
Timber Sale Guidelines
Use Professionals
Lists of licensed foresters
About Licensed Foresters
Selecting a Forester
Foresters can help insure positive results. They use a special "sign language" to mark trees to direct the logger to cut and leave certain trees. Click here to view pictures and descriptions of marked trees and here to see five indicators of a good harvest.
Hints on selecting a logger
The Directory of New Hampshire Certified Loggers and Forest Products Truckers is a listing of loggers who received specialized training. Email the Forestry Information Center for the complete directory.
Use a written contract
The Timber Sale Contract describes the key elements of a contract and also includes sample clauses and explanations of their meanings. This version contains sample contract language only.
Follow the Laws
Forest Laws
Best Management Practices for Erosion Control on Harvesting Operations in NH
Best Management Practices for Forestry: Protecting NH's Water Quality (downloadable document and order form)
Comprehensive Shoreland Protection Act
Know about Taxes
Timber Income Taxes
Federal Income Tax on Timber: A Key to Your Most Frequently Asked Questions
Tax Tips for Forest Landowners
Timber Yield Taxes
Income Tax Deduction for Timber Casualty Loss
Setting Up the Books: A Forest Owner's Guide to Capital Accounts & Record-keeping for Federal Income Tax Purposes
Practice Forestry
Good Forestry in the Granite State: Recommended Voluntary Forest Management Practices for New Hampshire
Timber Harvesting and Silviculture
To Cut or Not to Cut: Tree Value and Deciding When to Harvest Timber
Other Information
Forestry Best Management Practices in Watersheds is part of the EPA Watershed Academy website. After completing this module, you should be familiar with the ways to reduce impacts of timber harvests to water resources. Self-test questions appear at the end of the module's eight sections.
Workshop presentations:
Federal Timber Income Tax- November 17, 2009
Estate Planning- November 18, 2009
