Pearl River Valley Water Supply District (PRV) officials recently approved the sale for 104 acres of timber which will equal approximately $146,000 once harvested and thinned.
The timber is on two parcels of PRV land located in Madison County.
“From what we can tell, the timber market’s still a bit stagnant, but we have a situation where either we cut it very quickly, or it’s going to continue losing value as it gets older,” PRV general manager John Sigman said.
Fifty-four acres of the land is managed by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.“That acreage is on wildlife management area,” Sigman said. “It’s mature timber. Harvesting it will greatly improve wildlife in the area, because it will increase available food to them.”
Harvesting the 54 acres of timber will bring approximately $140,000.
The other 50 acres will undergo the first of multiple thinnings, which will give the PRV an additional $6,000. “It has to be thinned twice before it’s harvested. You cut about a third of the trees, which allows the other trees to gain mass, get bigger and gain diameter. If we don’t thin them out, all we’ll get will be short, thin trees.”
Both the harvest and thinning likely won’t occur until next spring.
“You can’t do any harvesting during deer season, and that’s in our agreement with wildlife management property. It also takes loggers a long time to get mobilized, so it may be after next deer season before there’s actually any harvest.”
In total, the PRV has approximately 8,000 acres of timber managed for habitat and income.
“But we haven’t had a timber sale of any significance in five to seven years,” Sigman said last year. “It’s periodic at best and usually not that much money.”
Timber sales in the last seven years have been less than $20,000, but Sigman said he’s seen sales as high as $500,000 in past years.
