Foresters

> What law or rule enables a forester to survey boundaries?

That answer will depend on your state laws. Few mentions of foresters in Ohio law and no mention of surveying authorization that I could find. If you are encountering what you believe to be the unlicensed practice of surveying refer it to your state licensing board and professional association.

No law gives anyone other than a licensed professional the authorization to survey property lines.

Paul,

Here in NH, Foresters can determine boundaries only for the purpose of forest management.

I am sure a lot of them push those limits but that is the way the laws are written for them.

Jim in NH

Echoing what Jim said an excerpt from the NH statute governing land surveyors

310-A:74 Exemptions. – This subdivision shall not be construed to prevent or to affect:

IV. The practice of surveying principles necessary in carrying out forest management practices, including the remarking of established boundaries and the establishment of new interior boundaries of a forest property, but not to include the establishment of boundaries common to another owner where the corners or boundary is unknown.

Paul,

I do not have my info here at the office, it's at home.

I was researching statutes about the "authority" that the BLM operates under on Federal Lands and there was a couple of paragraphs in there about the U.S. Forest Service.

Not being particularly interested I blew by it...I'll look it up.

> Echoing what Jim said an excerpt from the NH statute governing land surveyors
>
> 310-A:74 Exemptions. – This subdivision shall not be construed to prevent or to affect:
>
> IV. The practice of surveying principles necessary in carrying out forest management practices, including the remarking of established boundaries and the establishment of new interior boundaries of a forest property, but not to include the establishment of boundaries common to another owner where the corners or boundary is unknown.

[sarcasm]Yes, Only realtors and surveyors can mark new lines.[/sarcasm]

Nebraska statute 81-8,126 in reference to who needs to be licensed states in part: "... shall not apply to any land surveyor working for the United States Government while performing his or her duties as an employee of the government". This covers a large amount of agencies from the BLM, USGS, USC&GS, US Forest Service, BOR, etc.

Thankfully, most of the surveying and surveyors who do the limited amount of government work here is done by licensed land surveyors within those agencies and they are a top notch group of surveyors.

There were, however, some very divisive issues in the 1950's and 1970's with the Bureau of Reclamation in particular who ran roughshod across the state for proposed dams and canal work. Apparently the work was not supervised well and hundreds, if not thousands, of section corners were established with very little concern about doing any research, honoring existing section corners or searching for original monumentation. In Nebraska, only the county surveyor can establish a missing section corner, but the government surveyors apparently trumped them and did not consult them, or work with them in sort of a thumbing their nose at them. The basis for this county by county scenario is that the individual county surveyor knows best what to look for from his own experience in retracing the records in his area. It also tries to avoid double or triple monumentation.

The large capped iron posts got set by the BOR and local surveyors have both accepted them and rejected them. There has been mass confusion. Some say the BOR monuments are the ones to use since the "Government" set them. Others correctly state that nothing trumps an original GLO monument no matter how pretty that brass cap looks. It happened a long time ago, but the extent of the problem will never go away here. When many licensed surveyors hear "government surveyor" they still relate back to the earlier messes that were created. The local surveyors worked hard to get their licenses and then someone comes in without one and gets away with whatever they want.

The early framers of the Nebraska statutes should have required everyone to be licensed, but there was a mentality back then that if you worked for the government you knew what you were doing and the government surveyors sort of had that halo surrounding them as if they were the best of the best.

For some reason, the fact that they take a class in surveying and learn how to use a compass and/or transit as part of their college training, the engineers and foresters and some realtors come back with the opinion they are qualified to survey title boundaries.

Having spent many years following their failures and mistaken and poorly considered clients, I am inclined to be in the opinion that they all should be lined up and stripped of their present licenses of occupation and herded onto a bus and admitted into a clinic and treated for addiction of being pompous idiots.

At most, they are qualified to return to a properly marked boundary and maintain the paint on the trees and clear the underbrush and to count the trees within those boundaries for an 80% appraisal of timber value so they can keep the other 20% for themselves.

"rant off"

Thank you to everyone that replied to my question. I will be writing to the Board in Massachusetts about foresters surveying boundaries. The idea that foresters do survey boundaries is pervasive among landowners around here.

Federal Gobbledyguck...

Here's some typical "Feddy" verbage about Forest Service Authority. The way I read it, it says no they don't...yes they do ??!!! (wtf ?)

7150.6 - National Information Requirements

State authority applies to any boundary between private land and National Forest System land. Jurisdiction of any boundary dispute on Federally owned lands are heard in the Federal court system.

To the best of my knowledge, at this moment at home without all the information at the office, federal employees (usually the Army Corps of Engineers) is the only exemption from having a license in Virginia. Employees of the Commonwealth of Virginia were exempt until 2010. Until that time the Virginia Department of Transportation surveyed without a licensed surveyor also.
If foresters are exempt in your state, there should be exemption sections in the state code.

The following is copied from the Code of Virginia:

§ 54.1-401. Exemptions.

The following shall be exempted from the provisions of this chapter:

5. Practice of professional engineering, architecture, landscape architecture, or land surveying solely as an employee of the United States. However, the employee shall not be exempt from other provisions of this chapter if he furnishes advisory service for compensation to the public in connection with engineering, architectural, landscape architecture, or land surveying matters.

Thank you. Massachusetts General Law Chapter 112, Section 81R is similar to what you post for Virginia. Government employees have an exemption. There is no such exemption for foresters.

In CA, foresters are charged with determining which trees are on their client's property but they are not authorized to locate boundaries. So how do they do one without doing the other? Hire a surveyor?

... Nah, they survey the boundaries. As I said, the law does not permit them to do so, but some have become pretty good at it, and nearly all do it - flagging lines for harvest but not setting monuments or anything that most might interpret as a monument. Part of the reason is that, unlike many surveyors, they are not slaves to the math but instead take more time to find the evidence of the original corners, often finding line trees, bearing trees, and original GLO monuments that "real" surveyors (or their unlicensed field crews) give up looking for after a 15 minute search. If they can find an existing line, most are skillfull enough to be able to run straight lines between the marks in order to place intervisible flagging.

In fact, one of the most knowledgable experts in the state on searching for and identifying evidence of original GLO surveys on the West Coast is not a surveyor but a forester. Larry Hyder has been used as an expert for the purposes of identifying original GLO evidence by some of the best land/boundary attorneys in the State, including working several cases with John Briscoe (author of Surveying the Courtroom).

In the places foresters normally work, rural timberlands, many are more than sufficiently competent to locate lines sufficient for timber harvest. It's when their are no monuments or other evidence of the original boundaries remaining, or they are in areas that have been subdivided but do not have clearly marked boundaries that foresters are out of their depth. The good ones understand when that is and advise their clients to hire a licensed surveyor.

You are welcome. I wasn't sure Virginia law would help answer your question, but thought it might be an example of a place to look. I enjoy reading threads on here that give examples of law in other states. It is interesting to see the differences even though I have no plans on ever working anywhere other than Virginia.

It occurred to me that I should have explained this: In Virginia the board regulating surveyors is the Board for Architects, Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, Certified Interior Designers and Landscape Architects. That is the reason the section of code I posted is numbered 5. The other exemptions applied to professions other than surveying.

If it was me reading someone else's post, I would've wondered why it was number 5 and what the poster left out.
I apologize for not explaining in my original post.

A very reasonable approach is to say licensed surveyors must set any new monuments, but anyone else can run a straight line between reliable monuments.

> A very reasonable approach is to say licensed surveyors must set any new monuments, but anyone else with the expertise to determine reliability can run a straight line between reliable monuments.