[Talk-us] Tagging National Forests

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

> On May 10, 2016, at 12:13 PM, Mike Thompson <miketho16 at gmail.com <mailto:miketho16 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Ok, you are talking about gathering of fallen branches, not just cutting of standing trees.

I could be wrong about this, so I will say what I strongly believe to be true, but am not 100% certain:  in a US National Forest, I can gather downed wood and build a fire with it.  (If there IS any downed wood, and it is safe to build a fire).  I cannot tear off or cut off low branches and do the same.  I could if I had a USFS timber permit, but that is (usually) beyond the scope of what I’m talking about:  a citizen-owner who might be camping for a night or three and wants to stay warm and boil water for tea.  The cutting of standing trees, if/when/as allowed, does make a “treed” area a forest, I believe we would all agree.  However, while the casual gathering of downed wood does, too (perhaps less agreement here, but I do assert this), the cutting of standing trees is a more intense sort of forestry.  So, both the individual (human) of gathering of downed wood makes a land a forest, as does the (usually permitted and/or notified to the general public that this activity is occurring) more intensive felling of entire trees (up to and including clear-cutting the whole lot of them on the entirety of the polygon denoted as landuse=forest).

> In which case, why is my backyard, from which I gather fallen branches for firewood, any different from a landuse perspective, than a National Forest? What about a private campground, open to the paying public, where they allow the gathering of fallen branches for firewood? I don't understand how ownership should change how landuse is classified. 

My answer falls roughly into the realm of “your backyard is part of your property, with a residential house upon it, so it is therefore (primarily) residential.”  I do not disagree with you (meaning I agree with you) that collecting fallen branches in your backyard to build a fire in your fireplace isn’t TOO different than what might be done at a campsite upon USFS land.  But YOUR land is a residence, with an incidental use of you collecting wood to burn.  It’s a “primary vs. ancillary” argument:  residential is primary.

As for a private (open to the public who pays) campground where I can collect firewood?  Again, as tourism=camp_site seems like the overwhelmingly primary landuse here, that how I would tag the enclosing polygon.  As landuse and tourism do not conflict as tags, I see no terrible conflict in additionally tagging landuse=forest if it really is the case that you can collect downed wood and build a campfire.  As that seems unusual (but possible) I personally also would add a note tag of “This isn’t a true timberland in the usual sense of landuse=forest but this campground does allow the collection of downed wood for campfires.”

Multiple tagging like this is quite acceptable in OSM.  An example is railway=abandoned which is also tagged with highway=cycleway (or highway=bridleway) for a “Rails To Trails” abandoned railway which has been converted into a bike path (or horse trail).  It is both, so it is OK to tag it with both.

It isn’t necessarily ownership that makes the determination, it is the primary use of the land which should guide our choice for the value of the landuse tag.

SteveA
California
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