Welcome to the Big Outdoors News Radio seven hundred WLW sinc an hip parked with you this morning. Last one, Tom Cross, he's probably hanging from his tree stand by now you know, went to grab something and fell out and now he's hanging by his harness. But you know, hopefully somebody finds him. If not, you know, well good
luck to him. That's all I gotta say. Hey, we're gonna talk to the Ohio Division of Forestry this morning because I know all you people out there listening, or at least ninety five percent, are getting ready to head to the woods, whether it's your property, public land, a least property wherever it might be, to do a little deer hunting, maybe squirrel hunting. Uh, and you know all things woodsy out there. So let me bring in Aaron Cash. He is in a district of the Ohio Division of
Forestry in south west Ohio. Aaron, good morning, and how you doing buddy?
Hey, good morning, Chip. I'm doing well today and appreciate you having me on the program.
Absolutely, so you're you are? Are you a regional manager? Tell tell folks out there you know who you are and what your responsibilities are with Division of forestry.
Yeah, I mean regional managers of a fair assessment. Technically, my title is the Southwest Service Forestry Coordinator, so I am one of four coordinators throughout the state. My day to day largely revolves around managing the Southwest District, which is an area of about twenty three counties that includes currently for full time service foresters, one ecological analyst. We have one vacancy at this time, so hopefully we'll be fully staffed in the coming weeks or months. Then beyond that.
I also personally offer service forestry services to residents of Hamilton County, so I have our Hamilton County myself along with managing the staff or the other counties associated with the Southwestern Ohio.
So you have a service forester for is there one for just about every county in in your district or the eighty eight statewide?
Yeah, that's a great question. So the entire state, all eighty eight counties, has a service forester assigned to it. We don't have enough foresters for every county to have its own forest or similar to what you might expect with game wargs, but we currently have I think there's twenty five positions between four of those being coordinators, the
other twenty one being service foresters. So any given forest or service forester, their project area that we refer to, it could range anywhere from two acres potentially up to eleven and that's largely determined by what part of the state they're in, how dense the forests cover is. Get into northwest Ohio, those projects get larger because the forest become a little more disperse.
Okay, but then then you go over into southeast Ohio and you've got fifteen counties that are totally forested.
That's correct. Yeah, that's that's where a lot of our more heavily forested acreages are found. And so you get down that way, most of the service foresters over in that part of the state are going to have two to three county projects just due to the demands on their time and the capacity that they have. For Southwest with my district, I think our smallest is four and then the largest project could be seven counties as you get into Champagne, Delaware or Hardin County up that way.
Yeah. Yeah, so everybody's winning. What does the service forester do.
That's a great question, and we do a lot to ask you a lot.
Of great questions.
Okay, well, so what a lot of people don't realize with the state of Ohio, there's eight million acres of forested acreage statewide. Of that, six million is privately owned, and more specifically, it's like five and a half is what we call non industrial private forest owners. So these are guys or families that own a back forty that they go out and hunt. They might tap maple syrup,
they produce timber. That's our focus. Service. Forestry is entirely devoted forwards private land management assistance throughout the state of Ohio. So we offer a lot of different things, but really what it boils down to is information education, technical services for people that want to learn more about what they own and how to sustainably and properly manage it. And
that's through several different kind of key programs. But that's the over Yeah, I mean we are We're a staff of twenty five people trying to influence over six million, or just about six million acres of privately held ground across the entire state.
That's a lot to bite off, but you hold that thought. Aaron Cash with the Ohio Division of Forestry, we got to hit a short break come back. We'll talk about programs that those of you out there owning property can use with that hitting a brake chip Park The Big Outdoors News Radio seven hundred WLW, Cincinnati, one of the best Bengals coverage. Back in a moment, Bloat, you're telling me they don't you pay, We're back The Big Outdoors
News Radio, seven hundred WLW, Cincinnati, Chippark. My guess is Aaron Cash. He's a service forester with the Ohio Division of Forestry. And what we're going to cover, I mean, essentially, what we're covering, even though he is in a certain district, really has application to all of Ohio. And and I have a personal interest in this aeron because uh as a as a landowner and uh having timbered property. Uh, let's see three times in fifty years. You know there,
there's really a lot that goes into it. If that happens to be your you know, your interests. But nonetheless, are you know your forest private or public? Really it really needs to be really it needs to be managed with that, you know, without question. So what are the you know, the kinds of programs that that would be available out there regardless of the property size.
Yeah, state, statewide service Forestry. We there are several different things we helped facilitate and and we wear a lot of different hasks, but the core, the core pieces and what I feel is probably are our largest UH value
to landowners in the States. What we call our call before you Cut program, and this is a service that is free to to landowners if they are thinking about conducting a timber sale, if they've been approached by a logging entity and they want to just slow down a little bit more.
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Hey, we're back the Big Outdoors News Radio, seven hundred WLW. Since night Hippark. My guest is Aaron Cash. He's a service forester with the Ohio Division of Forestry. And what we're going to cover. I mean essentially, what we're covering, even though he is in a certain day district, really has applications to all of Ohio. And and I have a personal interest in this eron because UH as a as a landowner and uh having timbered property. Uh let's
see three times in fifty years. You know there there's really a lot that goes into it. If that happens to be your you know, your interests. But nonetheless, are you know your forest private or public? Really it really needs to be it really it needs to be managed with it, you know, without question. So what are the you know, the kinds of programs that that would be available out there regardless of the property size.
Yeah, State state Wide Service Forestry. We there's several different things we helped facilitate and and we wear a lot of different hasks. But the core, the core pieces, and what I feel is probably are our largest uh value to landowners in the state is what we call our
call before You Cut program. And this is a serve us that is free to landowners if they are thinking about conducting a timber sale, if they've been approached by a logging entity and they want to just slow down a little bit before they agree to anything, or if they're just in the initial stages and they're going to
go out and solicit interest. We love to be that first resource where we go out, we can walk the property, get eyes on the on the forest and the current condition, resource concerns, and pair that with what the landowner objectives are then determine does the timber harvesting really make sense? And so we view harvesting as a management tool and when used properly, it can have tremendous impact, positive impacts on your forest habitat. But you got to do it
the right way. And I think oftentimes throughout the state, a lot of people undervalue what they own. They may not understand what they're agreeing to when they engage in a timber sale. What a lot of people don't realize. Ohio ranks number one in hardwood furniture production in the entire country. We're all, it's a it's a it's a big deal. And then also top in just in hardwood number production. So if you look at the entire forest products industry for Ohio, it has an annual economic impact
of over thirty eight billion dollars per year. So it's it's not an insignificant industry. This is a this is a It's a powerful piece of the economic pie of Ohio, and most of it is held again with private landowners. So we we go out. There's no cost, it's it's unbiased advice to try to educate on what you have and depend on what you do what the outcomes of
those decisions would be. Beyond that, we also offer a tax reduction property tax reduction program called Ohio Forest Tax Law Program that there are some parameters that if you're eligible, that essentially incentivizes good sustainable management by reducing one's property taxes applicable to their forest at acreage. There is a minimum of ten acres of woods to qualify, along some other things that they're interested in that they could certainly
learn more from their service force. Or then we move into more just general guidance and assistance. So let's say you inherited a property from your grandpa and you've never been out there before and you don't know sugar maple from wide oak. You know, we could be that guidance to come out and teach about what you have things to be aware of what your options might be moving forward. And then the other piece that we spend a lot of time on sort of seasonally is assisting with federal costs.
Are programs that are offered mostly through the USDA and specifically the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and those programs potentially can provide financial assistance to landowners to implement forest re improvement practices on their property. They're not our's not our contract, it's not our money, but we sort of serve as
a subcontractor to implement and technical guidance for that. And if you're interested in that, you really have to start with the n r CS as the beginning steps to learn more.
Well, you might you might want to wait till the government reopen since it's probably yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay.
You're gonna be a lot of you know, you're got a lot of out of office messages right now. So so beyond that, we also do just technical implementation. So if you're interested in let's say you have a maturity stand we could do things like crop to release or timber marketing. It's a wide variety of services, it.
Is, and I mean there's a lot there that benefit to you know, the landowners in Ohio, and you know there's things similar to this in every other state, and we're heard in thirty two states, so you know we're not speaking out of turn here, but it's pretty much something every state probably does. Aaron Cash, Ohio Divisional Foresterry. You sit tight. We got to hit a short break and everybody stick around to Gary Jeff and has cast the characters come after the news at the bottom of
the hour. With that Chip Haart, the Big Outdoors News Radio seven hundred WLW, Cincinnati, home of the best Bengals coverage. You were tuned the Big Outdoors. There's radio seven hundred WLW, Cincinnati. Chip Hart, my guess is Aaron Cash with the Ohio
Divisional Forestry. And quite frankly, I should have done this a long time ago and not sat on my hands for thirty years, but it was always a you know, we probably touched on it here and there, but anyway, we're here now we're gonna do something regular out there. Just a case in point, Aaron. You know, when I had timbered harvest done the second time I did it, I hired a timber manager, which actually was he was retired from the Ohio Divisional Forestry and he managed my
entire timber harvest. And what a god Send and you know he crawled those hills and everything and did a had did a fantastic job. And I got to throw this out there too. You know, you don't just want to hire a logger to come in, Okay, especially not, you know, not just don't do it. That's my suggestion. You really got to do the things that that Aaron is talking about if you want to speak to that point, because you know that's I mean, that's a step you can't turn back in.
Time, correct, I would that's a great point hip where timber harvesting, while it can be very beneficial, it's also a very easy way to uh you ruin your woods for generations, and so you could have the best of intentions and without the right guidance and knowledge, be making some really long lasting impacts that are going to adversely
affect your ability to properly manage going forward. So loggings and loggers are important, and so we need, yeah, we need laggers to to come in, sell the trees, extract them using the best best management practices, haul those to the mill, and produce products with it. But I view foresters as a different skill set where it's almost like, uh, the analogy of an architect and a builder. You need both of those pieces to have a successful project. In my mind, you need both. You need both a forester
and a logger with a timber sale. So while we the Service Forestry cannot appraise timber, we can't actively sell timber for you, but we can't teach you and help to seal, delitate and ultimately try to get you paired with a private consulting forester that can come in and assess the value of the timber and select the trees to come out and solicit bids and you want competition from buyers. That helps the marketability of the timber and
hopefully you make more money that process. I used to do that before my current role now in celpus to Ohio and did a number of sales and what my experience was, even with my cost involved, landowners would always make more money through a lump sum bid process and then the quality to cut is generally better than what they would find otherwise with working with a logger directly, not to say you can't do that successfully, you can, but but you really have to know what you're doing and who
you're working with, and understand the parameters and really stress the importance of what's on that contract that you're signing, because you can't you can't assume anything. It's got to be written down and agreed upon, and so details matter. If you get nothing else out of this, details matter. And that's why with our Department of Service Forestry, we love being that first wave, the first boots on the ground,
so to speak, because there's no cost. We have no incentive whether you decide to sell or not, because our paycheck doesn't depend upon it. We just want to inform and give good advice and then ultimately the landowner gets to decide what makes sense for them, and I'm completely fine with that. They own the property, that they have taxes,
they should have the final say. And so if we can support that in a sustainable way and try to steer the woods to becoming healthier, more productive, have good species composition, be conducive to goals, be wildlife, habitat aesthetics, a place that you want to be and recreate in. All those things can be done as long as you take your time and get educated and try to utilize the resources that are available to you through the Division of Forestry.
Well, I don't think you could have put it any better. You know, we had to get a lot into this short half hour, which amounts to about twenty minutes the fastest half hour and radio here at the big one as I've been told. But how best for people to make contact with the division?
Great, that's very important. We are available. We are accessible to find your service forester hop online, google how a division of forestry service forester and you'll find a map and that map will have a project assigned to it and naming a phone number and call that individual and get on their calendar.
Well, that's fantastic. Garon Cash. I know we're gonna circle back probably a few times between now and spring, and I know I want to get back with you in about a month. We're going to talk about the health of our forests and things like that, and it's all great stuff for the outdoorsmen out there, you know, whether you hunt, fish or hike or whatever the case may be.
So Aaron, thank you very much, Thank you Chi all right, fantastic with that, got to hit another break and uh, some little tidbits for for you to think about in your in your tree stand this morning. Chip Harden seven hundred WLW through at w L w sin s Night chip Art with you for the next two minutes until Gary Jeff drags his cast of characters in and and you know he is a legend, and so is Michael k Allen with you know, he takes off his hat. He hain't got no hair. But that's that's okay. It's
a you know, just uh, just miserable when it rains. Okay, that's all. Hey, interest big big news, Dan, he shut up. Big news. The reciprocal fishing agreements with Kentucky and its neighboring states for fishing and waterfowl hunting are back in place. So those affect the Ohio River, Dale Hollow, the Big South Fork of Cumberland, the Big Sandy tug Forth River,
tug tug Fork River, Kentucky Lake, the Mississippi River. And likewise, if you have an Ohio fishing license, you can fit you know, fish on the Kentucky border includes all the dams and everything. So it's all back in place, people, So just uh. And likewise, for those of Kentucky to fish, you up, you know, the neighboring states you know that were there previously. So that's the big news on that on that front. Otherwise, Uh, the three counties and Athens
Meagues of Washington. Here in Ohio, I've reduced their harvest of from three deer to two deer effective December one, twenty twenty five. Because of the just humongous EHD outbreak, A lot of people wanted to just close the season, but uh, there was I guess uh DNR didn't want to do that. But anyway, the responses there were over thirteen hundred responses on that, which is the biggest that the Wildlife Counsel's ever had. So that's your news this morning.
Gary Jeff will have everything else that you need to know. I think with that, I'm out of here. Chip Hart, the Big Outdoors News Radio seven hundred WLW, Cincinnati'd be safe in the woods, safe in the water, and safe in that tree stand.
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