Sustainable Logging with Draft Animals

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Even if your primary intent is to log your own tract, you'll likely find yourself pressed into service logging for others. By the same token, if you're thinking of logging your place, but don't have the time or inclination to train a team, these days you'll find it easier to locate local operations offering an alternative to mechanized logging.

Expect to pay up to 15% more for draft power than the prevailing rate for mechanical power. If your woodlot is very small or is tucked away in some corner, the cost of logging with draft animals may be considerably less than for mechanical logging, since you won't incur an additional equipment setup fee.

"Horse loggers offer an inspired alternative to a beleaguered timber industry;" says Caudell, who with his wife Deb owns and operates Tree Ring Horse Logging service in Keller, Washington. "A citizen in a rural community can do quite well logging with draft animals and, with a little ambition and imagination, can even thrive."

Five years ago, Dan Marquardt of Muncy Valley, Pennsylvania, converted from mechanical logging to horse logging. Now, says Dan, "we have two year's work under contract. Ask most skidder operators and they have six month's work if they're lucky. The public is speaking."

Nevertheless, there's still some resistance in the logging industry to the use of draft animals, mainly because commercial loggers are unfamiliar with the concept. But things are gradually turning around. For one thing, buying a good team doesn't require pledging your soul to a banker, as does the purchase of mechanized equipment. You can therefore work at your own pace, not at the breakneck speed needed to meet the banker's demands. Total capital outlay for a draft-animal operation tops out at $6,000, some 12 to 15 times less than the cost of a mechanized setup. Without the heavy debt load, a horse logger can handily make ends meet and still take a day off when it's hot or rainy.

But the main reason industry is starting to take draft animals more seriously is due to environmental concerns. Even the timber giant Weyerhauser uses horses to log environmentally sensitive areas, according to company spokesman Frank Mendizabal. Although horse logging constitutes only a small percentage of Weyerhauser's total volume, horses are indispensable for the selective removal of individual high-value trees insensitive areas such as watersheds, where clearcutting is forbidden by law.

Environmental groups caused problems for Harry Morgan and his son Ray of Orbisonia, Pennsylvania, in 1991 while the pair were logging with mechanized equipment. "The county inspectors would visit the job site and say everything was okay," says Ray. "Then the next day I'd get a court order to stop work:" Harry and Ray have since converted to horse logging, an enterprise that drew the attention of the trade magazine Timber Harvest. Not only has the slower pace allowed 74-year-old Harry to remain on the job, but the duo are able to continue in their chosen line of work while keeping the environmentalists happy. Says Ray, pointing to a two-feet-wide trail winding down the hill, "That's the only logging trail in the woods. Small trees and brush that could be damaged by mechanical logging equipment are left untouched, which is good for the wildlife that need these places for food and nesting:"

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