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It’s always been necessary for a property owner to defend his boundary. Sometimes when they disagreed with the survey of a licensed surveyor. Hell, I’ve disagreed with a few myself. I don’t see that changing until surveyor’s guarantee their work. Lol
I don’t disagree. But Murphy’s take that the abutter has tacitly agreed to the line flagged by a forester and somehow gives up his rights to disputing the location afterward is a bit backwards
Here in Oregon, trees are big money. When they log a unit, it’s usually a quarter mile on one side(property line) and the forester will ribbon the cut boundary along a creek or road. When you are in big timber, 10′ for a quarter mile could be $70,000. Now put triple stumpage on an encroachment and the price of having me run the line is pennies.
A few decades ago guys got the idea to cut 20 or 30 feet off the line in hopes that the neighbor would cut up the the timber age change. Now your trees are worth triple if the neighbor doesn’t have it surveyed????????
Most of the Timber companies I work for don’t mess around with property lines. Shoot we don’t even bid anymore, they just say they need it and by when???
- Posted by: @not-my-real-name
…I told them it is the responsibility of the forester to have the boundary determined by a land surveyor and that if they are relying on devices such as a compass or a hand held computer they were most likely making an incorrect determination and they are breaking the law. Only a licensed land surveyor is legally permitted to perform land surveys.
I have spoken with the forester on other occasions and inquired if he knew this law. He said they determine boundaries all the time without a surveyor, but they tell the client that is not the legal boundary. So I asked him, “Do you tell them it is the illegal boundary?”
This ??? ???
- Posted by: @mathteacher
It is not illegal for a property owner to survey his own property, even though he might be in error on a couple of measurements.
I beg to differ. While land owners can survey on their own property, they can not survey their exterior boundary lines, at least in any state I’m license in.
What is the penalty for surveying your own property?
Don’t Panik, but this seems a bit like the opening of ‘ A Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe’. Without the public notice bit.
Same as anyone found surveying without a license. It is a civil offense, and there is case law in Oregon. I would guess it also tees the culprit up for opposing council in any ensuing property litigation.
The point is you survey your boundary you are in fact also surveying the adjoiner’s.
As a casual observer I see a big difference between a one man logging operation in rural Maine where local customs would typically prevail and large scale timber harvests in the PNW with an outfit like Weyerhaueser, with have large holdings and deep pockets. Not sure that would be a fair comparison. Sort of like comparing a small ten acre family farm with with a corporate industrial farming operation covering thousands of acres.
WillyI went round and round with a logger the other day on a Facebook thread in a Surveyor’s group. He was scoffing about the need to hire a Surveyor to locate property lines saying that he could do it himself with a handheld compas, a copy of the deed pulled online, an online search of magnetic declination and a cheap handheld GPS unit. He went on to say that he does it all the time for people wanting their lines marked.
The joker couldn’t answer any questions about anything important like measuring along meandering lines, magnetic attractions, GPS coordinates and more but he kept coming back for more. When I pointed out to him that he was illegally practicing without a license by offering his services, he avoided making any response to that statement, time and time again. Sometimes it’s fun to play with these clowns but it’s disturbing that they get away with what they do.
- Posted by: @chris-bouffard
When I pointed out to him that he was illegally practicing without a license by offering his services, he avoided making any response to that statement, time and time again. Sometimes it’s fun to play with these clowns but it’s disturbing that they get away with what they do.
Facebook boasting may not be enough, but if there is hard evidence of surveying without a license, there’s nothing wrong with notifying the Board. Get them slapped with a C&D and possibly a fine too.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman I certainly wouldn’t argue the point, but read this description from an NC surveyor. Go down to this heading: Do you have to be licensed to survey land in North Carolina? http://www.witherspoonsurveying.com/faqs.html
Were it I defending my blue flags, I would maintain that the work is for my own personal use, that I firmly believe that the flags are on my own property and cite the web site as my authority.
While I might be violating a law, the forester almost certainly is surveying without a license, unless he’s claiming that his orange flags are within the boundary of his timber claim. Even then, he might be wrong.
We have so many basis-of-bearings issues arise here that any compass survey should be automatically challenged. And a quick and effective way to challenge is to present an alternative theory.
- Posted by: @jph
I don’t disagree. But Murphy’s take that the abutter has tacitly agreed to the line flagged by a forester and somehow gives up his rights to disputing the location afterward is a bit backwards
I in no way said this. I said that ownership of any form of property requires a certain amount of defense. The forester put the landowner on notice via flagging the cutting limits and hopefully a letter of intent to harvest timber. Now the landowner has the opportunity to contact the forester or timber company.
Surveyed for two decades in Idaho, Washington and Oregon for the USFS pre-GPS and timber cruiser surveys were laughably inaccurate. Their technique was a belt mounted string line distance reel and a compass, only adjusted for slope with an Abney level if it was steep country. The “boundary” of a sale was secondary to an accurate estimate of total standing tree volume in board-feet so harvesters could make accurate bids and pay the USFS board-feet assessment. “Boundary” errors of dozens or even a few hundred feet were unimportant if the sale was internal but when abutting private or State lands we’d survey the boundary line in a cursory manner and left it up to the cruisers to flag the cut/no cut trees near the boundary.
That being said “poaching” especially productive trees over the hazy line was rampant but good cruisers were conservative and shied from marking trees as take if the sale abutted a USFS boundary, because triple damages accrue if the harvester gets caught poaching private trees which makes it worth a proper survey by the landowner if it’s more than a few.
Actually our work was mostly punching P-Line & L-Line roads into marginally profitable salable areas to entice sales. The cruiser’s job was to assess sale parcels, not establish boundaries and I respect them for that. Nothing to look at here, folks.
- Posted by: @john-putnam
Same as anyone found surveying without a license. It is a civil offense, and there is case law in Oregon.
I’d be interested in reading the case(s). Do you have any references?
- Posted by: @lurker
@murphy The idea that it is the person being transgressed against responsibility to prevent the transgression is laughable. The onus is on the transgressor. As you can tell I’m not a big advocate for the concept of adverse possession.
You can laugh at thousands of years of accumulated knowledge, but I’m not sure why you would. Casual dismissal of common laws dating back to the founding of Rome in the 700s BC, seems a bit vain.
Where would you draw the line for a reasonable requirement of defense of one’s property? How would you balance this against other actions or inactions such as estoppel? If a property owner has no requirement to defend it against a transgressor, why should he be required to take action to prevent a transgressor for making an uniformed purchase? AP existed before America and was developed through jurisprudence involving both urban and rural areas.
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