Page 13 - Georgia Forestry - Issue2 - Spring 2019

take by leaving the [trees] beyond their economic maturity. It can become a liability at some point if you can’t salvage it, and you have to pay somebody to clean it up. It’s just one of the deals that we, as foresters, will try to communicate to landowners.”
Approximately 500,000 acres of for- estland are likely to be affected by the state measures, and many landowners were ready to invest in a clear-cut and replanting. But as Worsham pointed out, rushing in to sell salvage wood from a moderately-damaged stand could be a frustrating ordeal. And sometimes it might be prohibitively expensive.
“It’s not like we can do a systematic, conventional way of thinning timber. It’s hard to do without a row or pattern,” he said, describing the conversations he’d had with clients in the weeks following the hurricane. “So my advice is to do nothing. You don’t need to have a fire sale. Just sit tight. And we’ll get what your timber stand is worth in six months. If you lost your stand of timber, it’s dev- astating, but region-wide, I think we’re going to be ok.”
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