Agenda - 10-05-1981 - Laserfiche WebLink

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716 Na, Anne Barnes, Chair Page Three Orange County Commissioners September 18, 1981 enforcement problems. We have Burning Permit agents placed throughout the County to make it convenient for residents to obtain Burning Permits. These permits have the rules and regulations of safe burning practices printed on them and also makes it easier for us to cancel burning should forest fire weather present a problem. There is no charge for these permits. We answered fifty-two forest fire calls this year. The figure runs from forty to eighty fires each year depending on the weather. Ray Nichols, Orange County Assistant Ranger, and I were also dispatched to several large forest fires in the eastern part of the state. We like to think our Fire Prevention work has in part contributed to the low amount of fire loss in Orange County. FOREST MANAGEMENT Our Forest Management load has increased dramatically in the last seven years. In 1974 fifty acres of reforestation and seventy-five acres of improvement thinnings with twenty-five or thirty farm Forest Management Plans being written was considered a good year. Things have progressed each year to the point where this year seven hundred and three acres of new forest has been established, five hundred seventy-two acres of pulpwood thinnings have been done, and eighty-six Forest Management Plans have been prepared. In 1975 there were six certified Tree Farms in Orange County. The figure is now close to one hundred certified Tree Farms with more being added each year. Mr. G. P. Sykes of Orange County had the Outstanding Tree Farm Of The Year in 1978 for the State of North Carolina. I was particularly proud of this as I was the nominating forester with my assistant and I doing much of the technical work on his farm. Orange County's tax revalution with the subsequent increase in land value has caused our landowners to bombard our office with Forest Management Plan requests (150 requests in two months). By law, a landowner with twenty acres of forestland under a plan written or approved by the Forest Service qualifies such landowner for the Forest Land Use Tax Break provided he or she implements the recom- mendations in their plan, The problem here has been that there are only two people to write and prepare these plans after the timber examination has been made. James T. Ellis, the Service Forester assigned to Orange County one day per week and me, the County Ranger, There are two people, the County Ranger and Assistant County Ranger, to implement the services that are required in the plan for landowners to qualify for the break. These include timber marking, locating and supervising forestry contractors for thinning and site-preparation work, acreage determination, tree planting, seedling survival counts, and prescribed burning which can be very dangerous.