" ??It was always well known? the tree rested on his land, he said, according to the police report ?? though he added he had never seen a boundary survey. "
The Joshua Tree one is a big deal in my area.?ÿ The couple here purposely did it not caring about the fine.?ÿ They should have served jail time imo.?ÿ It's once thing to accidently do it.?ÿ It's another to purposely do it.
I have been on a few good walks in the Mill Stream Run reservation, Cleveland has great parks and I miss walking in them with the Cleveland Hiking Club.
I know nothing of these trees.?ÿ Can they be re-planted somewhere else??ÿ Obviously, before they're cut down.
I guess I have more of an issue with people cutting the tree that wasn't on their land, than someone cutting trees on their own property.?ÿ If they can't be re-planted, then maybe the state needs to buy the land wherever they are, instead of restricting the use of a private owner's land.
To me the interesting part of that article was the logging company paying $2000 for the tree and then selling it for $10,000. Not bad for two days work and not being held responsible.
Just did a job where the adjoiner was having their property logged.?ÿ I was running a preliminary traverse at that time. The feller-buncher operator reached across the stonewall and harvested a 30" Hemlock. When I asked him about it a few days later he told me he has GPS in the machine and it shows him the property line.
So belief in GPS and lack of common sense has now been replaced with greed. Using the above article information, can the logger now say he made "reasonable" attempts to determine which side of the line the tree was on based on his onboard GPS?
Forget trying to recover the value of that tree x3, thats for another thread I should write.
Reminds me of an incident that happened here back in 2007. In a case of serendipity I found out later that it was the high school age son of a good friend of mine who had a summer job flagging these parcels for NPI to clear cut, get this, using a hand held recreational grade GPS that was loaded with tax map line work NPI gave him. The kid had no idea what he was doing, obviously.
About ten years ago I was retained by a utility company to precisely locate a transmission line easement in conjunction with pending litigation.?ÿ It all centered around a maintenance contractor that kept the R/W clear on an annual contract.?ÿ Every five years or so instead of just grubbing the brush the contractor was instructed to "clear" the R/W.?ÿ This involved mature tree removal.?ÿ The available maps showed a 100' R/W centered on the transmission towers.?ÿ The nature of the easement allowed the dominant estate to remove trees within the limits of the R/W.?ÿ The contractor "went to town" and cleared 50' both sides of the line right down to the dandelions.?ÿ
Some of the trees that were removed were in excess of 16" diameter.?ÿ One of the adjoining property owners sued claiming damages of the removed trees.?ÿ My survey indeed indicated the 100' R/W was not centered on the lines, but followed a 35' - 65' split apparently due to a future parallel line that never materialized.
The courts determined the value of a tree proportional to its diameter.?ÿ Some of the larger diameter trees we valued at almost $10K.?ÿ Over a quarter mile of property there were several hundred trees removed.?ÿ Someone (not me) had blown a paint spot on the flush stumps of trees I located along with a measured diameter recorded with a photo.?ÿ The final bill was near a half million but probably included legal fees.
Most of the time spent in court was between the power company and their clearing contractor trying to maximize the contractor's insurance liability.?ÿ Trees can get important.
Like the post says...Should've had it surveyed..
They wanted/needed money, so they obviously didn??t have money for a boundary survey.?ÿ
You would think a prudent logger would make sure before taking out a valuable 5-1/2 foot tree. I don??t see how he gets off here. It??s not like he was clearing small worthless trees.
You would think a prudent logger would make sure before taking out a valuable 5-1/2 foot tree. I don??t see how he gets off here. It??s not like he was clearing small worthless trees.
My guess is the tree company makes their customer sign off that work is performed on their property. It shouldn??t be the tree company??s responsibility to verify things. Think of it from their end. ????
This involved mature tree removal....Some of the trees that were removed were in excess of 16" diameter.
Different world from the PNW. 16" is barely a tree up here.
My part of the world was identified by the early explorers as being an ocean of grass.?ÿ A man standing atop a horse might see nothing but the waving grass for as far as his eyes could see.?ÿ Prairie fires caused by lightning had little to slow them down other than the occasional river or large creek.?ÿ There, some trees might survive long enough to become somewhat fireproof.
My Sixth Grade teacher was a wee girl when her parents homesteaded land near Gate, Oklahoma.?ÿ Her father constructed a dug out sort of soddy to call home.?ÿ After some time of getting established, he took a team of horses and a large wagon seventy miles to somewhere in Kansas (end of the railroad at the time), purchased enough lumber to build a very small house, then drove the seventy miles back.
Trees were sparse here on the prairie indeed.
Back in the late '70s and early '80s I worked a lot around the little town of Edmond that is north of the OKC metro.?ÿ At that time the only real place to sit down for lunch was the soda fountain at the Rexall Drug store.?ÿ There was a regular there we called "Pappy".?ÿ Pappy was almost 100 years old and walked up to the diner everyday.?ÿ He was full of stories.
We were up there building residential subdivisions like crazy.?ÿ They all bore names that included words that implied forests and trees...like "Timberwood Estates" or "Tall Oaks" or "Oak Tree Estates" because most of the area was covered with scrub oaks.?ÿ ?ÿPappy related to us he had come to Edmond in 1880 as a small boy and remembered there wasn't a tree to be seen.?ÿ He said all of the brush came after all the 'slash and burn' farming early in the century.?ÿ Someone would farm an area for a few years until the soil washed away due to poor practice and then the scrub brush took over the almost unusable land.
This seemed incredible to me.?ÿ But as we cleared line and cut trees I began counting rings on the older trees.?ÿ In 1978 I never found a tree that was over 50 years old.?ÿ Around there that equated to about a 10" tree.?ÿ Pappy was right.?ÿ A 100 year old tree would have been almost impossible to come by.?ÿ?ÿ
