Timber Marketing & Sales
For most forest landowners, timber harvesting is a low priority goal listed behind wildlife, recreation, aesthetics, water quality, and soil conservation. However, many forest owners have learned the hard way that unplanned or indiscriminate timber harvesting can have long-lasting consequences, which can significantly affect future forest growth, genetic variability, species composition, and wildlife habitat potential. “Logger-take-all” methods of selling timber often yield only one timber sale for the forest owner during their ownership tenure. However, well-planned and professionally implemented timber sales not only yield greater financial returns for the forest owner, but owners typically achieve multiple timber harvests over their lifetime while creating a residual stand of diverse, high-quality, timber trees for future harvest.
To learn more about timber marketing and timber sales, please contact a professional consulting forester or your local DNR forester.
Fact: In Illinois, average annual volume growth exceeds forest removals by more than 160 percent. Moreover, annual mortality alone exceeds the amount of wood manually removed from Illinois forests (Bretthauer and Edgington 2002).
Sources of Technical Assistance
State Agencies
Professional Consulting Foresters
- Illinois Professional Consulting Foresters
- Illinois Consulting Foresters, Inc.
- The Association of Consulting Foresters of America, Inc.
Helpful Links
Timber Tax and Basis
- National Timber Tax Web site
- Timber Basis for Federal Income Tax
- University of Wisconsin Extension, Determine Your Basis – And Keep More Timber Income
Timber Marketing & Sales
- University of Wisconsin Extension, Conducting a Successful Timber Sale, A Primer for Landowners
- North Carolina State University Extension, Timber Sales: A Planning Guide for Forest Landowners
Additional Links
- Wisconsin DNR, Forest Management Guidelines
- Wisconsin DNR, Forest Silviculture and Forest Aesthetics Handbook
- The Kentucky Forest Landowner’s Handbook
- USDA Forest Service, Approaches to Ecologically Based Forest Management on Private Lands
- Ohio State University Extension, Harvesting and Reproduction Methods for Ohio Forests
- Maryland Cooperative Extension, How To Determine Your Property Boundaries
- University of Wisconsin Extension, Timber Harvest Effects on Non-Game Birds – What Does the Evidence Show?
- USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Lab Publications
