I lover trees. I love timber. I grew up in the piney woods of Northeast Texas, not far from the Big Thicket. Although I now live near Houston, I stay firmly planted in the tall pines of EastTex, outside of the coastal plains of the big city in a place called The Woodlands. Growing up, there was not a day in my life that I dot see a truck pulling a pole trailer full of regulation length softwood with that red flag nailed to the back. If not a trailer of trunks, I was fascinated by skidders and skidding. I hated clear cutting, but I loved to see someone fell a tree.
When Chapter 12 bankruptcy was first (and temporarily) adopted, I was one of the initial attorneys to argue that timber harvesters fit he "family farmer" status Congress should have considered. We won that argument because Texas registered rigs as agricultural vehicles. It proved to be a powerful device for those in the trade when the paper mills quit buying timber from time to time to force down the price, so those in the trade would have to sell what they harvested to vulture investors, who could afford to hold the timber underwater until the prices increased. Unfortunately, then Congress continued to allow Chapter 12 to lapse. This has now been corrected.
There is a joke in East Texas that asks what is the difference between a developer and an environmentalist? The answer is that a developer is one that wants to build a house in the woods. An environmentalist is one that already has a house in the woods.
Regardless of where you stand, my larger point is that the laws and regulations dealing with timber or forestry are deep and complicated. At least in East Texas, the criminal penalties, as a result, for taking the timber of someone else are stiff. Where you have laws and regulations, you have a legal niche on which a practice can be built.
This blog has covered the Tree Law Niche before, but we concerned ourselves primarily with disputes between neighbors or damages caused by fallen trees. This is certainly important, but the Timber, Forestry, or Logging Law Niche concerns itself with business law, real estate, OSHA, contracts, and injuries. It involves timber leases, clear cutting issues, and financing issues that reach up to over a million dollars even for simple harvesters. This practice area is purely commercial.
All of those timber contracts and timber deeds have to be negotiated by someone. There are a ton of timber disputes that have to be resolved. There are forestry and logging regulations with which everyone must comply. There are untold financing agreements for land, timber, natural resources and equipment with which some lawyer must deal. As stated there are defaults that have consequences. People are indicted every day for disputes over timber. And, do not forget all of the personal injury lawsuits and workers' comp matters that result from injures on the job or in collisions with timber trucks.
As always, if you want to investigate whether Timber, logging or forestry law is right for you, you should surf the Net first. Look at the lawyers that are doing what you want to do. You can, with careful study, take so much away from their sites.
Some examples on all sides of the divide you can start with the Reese Law Firm, WatsonBennett, Washington Forest Law Center, KeanMiller, and Segal Law Firm. It is a defused area, but there is a ton of information on the laws and the conflicts.
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