Dr. Finleys' Speech

On April 10, 2008 Dr. Finley spoke at Penn State Mont Alto Pennsylvania, about high grading, parcelization and oak regeneration.
High grading is a logger’s candy land and landowners’ worst nightmare. In Pennsylvania 69% of the land is private and 31% is public. There are approximately 744,500 forest landowners averaging 16 acres of forest. 48% landowners’ harvested firewood from there land. High grading their land at 49.9% said that they cut most of the larger trees. Only 20% of landowners’ used a forester to manage their land. High grading will destroy the forest because it takes away all the main trees for regeneration. Most people use their land for recreation, hunting, and watching wildlife. This article talks about how it is like stealing from the landowner when high grading. http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/comment/story.html?id=ed984027-7e94-491e-984c-26897ac479e2
Dr. Finley stated “Most people say that they want to give their land to more than one child.” Doing this will create parcelization by dividing the forest up and some of the children will develop the land. Also with parcelization brings in invasive plants to the area. Invasive plants create problems in areas where certain trees are not wanted. This article states the effects on parcelization. http://www.forestry.auburn.edu/zhang/RefereedPub/JoF2001.pdf

Lastly, Dr. Finley presented information about oak regeneration. There are two main problems with oak regeneration, deer browsing and ferns over growing the oaks. Dr. Finley talked about stump sprouts being the key to the natural regeneration process. Also showed pictures of an area fenced and the area not fenced discussing the amount of regeneration inside the fence. Outside the fence where the deer are there is no regeneration present. Dr. Finley talked about how ferns take away the light that is needed for oaks to regenerate. The website below is Dr. Finley’s site on his study of regeneration.
http://aginfo.psu.edu/News/06May/Oak.htm