[Talk-us] Tagging National Forests

[stevea]

Tod Fitch writes:
>We are using British English here and timber appears to mean 
>production of wood for building. See, for example, 
>http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/timber
>
>You may define casual wood gathering of firewood a timber operation 
>but I am pretty sure the forest service and others do not even in 
>the US with a slightly different concept of the word.

Nope.  I collect wood in Los Padres National Forest (LPNF) and build 
campfires with it.  Ergo, this is a forest.  It is my forest, and I 
am using it as a forest by collecting wood.  I WANT to see this on 
OSM with the tag landuse=forest because it is correct.

>I wouldn't be too surprised if you could call someone at the Region 
>5 offices and get a list of the forests in California and Hawaii 
>that currently have timber operations permitted. It would greatly 
>surprise me if any forest in Region 5 is being totally or even 
>largely managed for timber production.

OK, be surprised.  But _I_ myself, personally, recently, collect 
firewood at LPNF.  Visit Bottcher's Gap Recreation Site off of Palo 
Colorado Road (Monterey County, California, Region 5 USFS, LPNF) and 
see if Larry (he also goes by Lorenzo, as he and I are bilingual in 
Spanish together) tells you otherwise.  He will not:  he will tell 
you that you are welcome to collect downed wood.  Why?  BECAUSE THE 
LANDUSE HERE IS A FOREST.

>In your back yard, at least some districts in the Los Padres 
>National Forest allows wood cutting (dead and down, with permits, 
>usually in the fall) and Christmas tree cutting (with permit, marked 
>trees only). And they will thin small trees out areas for fire 
>safety. But at least in the Mt. Pinos Ranger District there is no 
>timber production now nor since, I believe, the early 1950s. The 
>only large stands of commercial grade trees in the Los Padres are in 
>the Mt. Pinos District and most of the high country where such trees 
>are likely to grow are designated wilderness areas. So I am very 
>sure that there is no "trees grown for use in building or carpentry" 
>(i.e. timber operations, which in OSMese is landuse=forestry) in the 
>Los Padres.

Then tag it so EXACTLY where you know this to be true.  Where LPNF is 
designated Wilderness (I have carefully tagged Ventana Wilderness and 
Silver Peak Wilderness and all of the other half-dozen or so 
Wildernesses in LPNF exactly as such) then I don't collect firewood.

Me collecting firewood makes this a forest producing timber.  Full stop.

>Disclosure: I have performed volunteer work for the Mt. Pinos Ranger 
>District in the Los Padres for quite some time and while I most of 
>my contacts are with recreation and fire staff I have had a number 
>of discussions with people in resource management.

This doesn't seem to be of the nature of "disclosure," but thank you 
for sharing these experiences of yours.

SteveA
California
Owner, National Forests of the USDA (along with hundreds of millions 
of other People)