Article by DK Knight
Executive Editor/Co-Publisher
From my perspective, the annual meeting of the American Loggers Council (ALC) in late September was a grand slam event. The setting of the 301-year-old city of Natchez, Miss. had lots of appeal, given its history, architecture, measured pace, dining choices, brew pubs, and more. The weather was also very pleasant and the program was timely and informative, but it was the people involved who made the meeting one I’ll long remember.
It was heartwarming to reconnect with established friends and to initiate new friendships. Included in the former category were Joe and Marion Allen, Folkston, Ga.; Dillon and Lillian Stratton, St. Johns, Fla., and David and Cheryl Russell, New Market, Ala. Joe formerly led the Southeastern Wood Producers Assn. and most recently retired from Caterpillar; Dillon has pulled back from his logging business, giving more responsibility to his son, Dillon III; and Cheryl formerly served as executive vice president of the ALC. She and David recently moved to Alabama from Maine to be close to their daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law.
Hosted by the Mississippi Loggers Assn. (MLA), the meeting was planned and orchestrated by ALC executive vice president Danny Dructor; outgoing ALC president Ken Martin and his wife, Sandy; and Cecil Johnson, MLA executive director, and his wife, Peggy. Others doing their part were MLA staffers Stacy Benefield and Celia Holloman; Brad, Brent and Shelby Martin; and John Auel of Mississippi State University. Sandy and Ken secured about $15,000 in donations—a record for an ALC “presidential team”— from local and state sources to help offset meeting costs.
Some 200 loggers/spouses/children, association leaders and service or equipment suppliers registered for the event. Suppliers staffed more than a dozen tabletop booths and displayed roughly $3 million in equipment and trucks. ALC’s customary auction generated almost $30,000 in support funds, and this year the group’s board decided to donate half the proceeds to ongoing storm/flood relief efforts along the Texas and Louisiana coasts.
For more details, see David Abbott’s story beginning on page 22.
Timber Harvesting LBOY
At the concluding banquet, Gerry Ikola officially accepted the Timber Harvesting 2017 Logging Business of the Year Award. Gerry and wife, Capella, own G. Ikola Inc. of McCall, Id. and operate the company with their children, Erica, Gerry Jr., and Gabe, and more than 20 other employees. They were very excited about the honor and were taken with the outpouring of Southern hospitality they experienced during their first trip to the South. Jerry also seemed to be impressed with the work of the ALC.
Little did the TH editorial staff know that months ago, when it decided to honor the Ikolas, that its action would contribute to a clean sweep for Idaho in awards presented during the ALC event. Tim Christopherson, owner of DABCO, Inc., Kamiah, Id., was honored as ALC’s Logger Activist of the Year, and Shawn Keough, executive director of Associated Logging Contractors-Idaho, received one of two President’s Awards, which took the form of attractive jackets. I was privileged to take the other one home.
ALC: A Great Year
The meeting was the culmination of significant accomplishments the ALC realized in the previous 12 months, according to Danny Dructor. Among other things, its Spring Fly-In for Capitol Hill visits drew record participation to push four primary issues covered in the Future Logging Careers Act, Resilient Federal Forests Act, Right to Haul Act, and Wildfire Funding Act. For the first time, it received support for the Right to Haul Act from the Forest Resources Assn. Moreover, it has established excellent working relationships with many federal offices and agencies and collaborated with the Biomass Power Assn. in promoting markets for wood biomass.
The organization is an integral part of the TEAM Safe Trucking (TST) initiative that seeks to drive down traffic accidents through systematic driver training and lower CSA scores. Founded in 2015, TST rolled out its first driver training module during the ALC meeting.
ALC’s board earlier this year voted to fund the revitalization of its Master Logger Certification program, believing that it has the ‘branding’ potential to help take timber harvesting to a higher level of professionalism and to help gain public understanding of the role loggers play in sustainable forest management.
Further, the group has effectively expanded its communications network through social media, an electronic newsletter, and its web site, and by greater participation in numerous trade shows.
If you are not that familiar with the ALC and its structure and its work, I encourage you to visit amloggers.com or call Dructor at 409-625-0206. Additional members and sponsors are always welcome. If you have never been to an ALC annual meeting, consider doing so next year. It will be held October 11-13 at Seaside, Oregon.
Davis Island Tour
The logging tour option blended with the ALC meeting this year was much more than a logging tour, thanks to Ken Martin. Ken wanted to put together something different, and he did just that.
Ken approached Conner House, a principal in Natchez-based Good Hope Land and Timber Management, about arranging a visit to Davis Island, a mostly timbered Mississippi River island consisting of roughly 30,000 acres, the actual size depending on the level of the river. Good Hope is a big player in the timber business in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. It buys, markets and manages timber and deals with numerous logging contractors in getting it harvested and delivered to various markets.
Having one or more logging crews on the island is routine for the company. The contractor who greeted scores of ALC visitors this day was Chip Sullivan, owner of BLC Logging, Tallulah, La.
Located some 20 miles southwest of Vicksburg, the largest part of the island is situated in Warren County, Miss., and west of the river’s main course, but a smaller part belongs to Madison Parish, La. This part is separated from the parish by the part that belongs to Warren County. This oddity was caused by a shift in the river course in the 1860s that changed what was formally known as Davis Bend, a peninsula that consisted of 11,000 acres of rich bottomland, to a larger island accessible only by water. The main part of the river is located to the east and south of the island; a relatively narrow artery flows around the island to the west, south and east.
After arriving by bus, visitors hopped on pickup-pulled trailers provided by Good Hope and crossed the artery by barge. The procession traveled slowly through both open and heavily forested areas, stirring up thick clouds of dust at times. Many of the native pecan trees visible were big and tall and some vines were almost large enough to be classified as pulpwood. The caravan stopped a few times to take in building ruins and lakes before arriving at the BLC landing. There, Caterpillar and John Deere machines were handling various hardwood species, and most of the trees were yielding logs at least 18 inches in diameter on the little end.
Davis Island has a history much more interesting than the hunting, fishing and timber activities that distinguish it today. According to reports found on the Internet, a small portion of the then peninsula was purchased in 1818 by Joseph Davis, who developed Hurricane Plantation and reportedly worked to create a different type of slave community. One difference was that he allowed slaves to retain some of any money they may have earned. In the 1830s he gave some adjoining property, called Brierfield Plantation, to his younger brother, Jefferson Davis, who grew cotton on the land and later went on to become president of the Confederacy.
After the Civil War ended and while Jeff Davis was in prison, Joseph Davis turned both plantations over to former slave Benjamin Montgomery, who had managed them for many years. Joe Davis held a $300,000 mortgage on the property, which Montgomery and other freedmen successfully worked for several years. They went another $100,000 in debt to buy an adjoining plantation from its bankrupt owner.
But years of fighting threatening flood waters, along with hard economic times and a depressed cotton market, took their toll, and the younger former slaves and their descendants moved away after Montgomery died in 1877.
A year later Jeff Davis regained possession of Brierfield Plantation from his brother’s heirs but he never lived there again. He and other family members leased the land to tenant farmers with marginal success, but this practice all but ended with the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which inundated almost 30,000 square miles. As a result of this flood, river levees were raised to a height of 60 ft., leaving Davis Island susceptible to even more frequent and severe flooding. The Davis family sold the land in 1953.
There are no crop or cattle activities on the island today and it has basically become a hunting retreat for the well-to-do. Only one person lives there year ‘round and most all structures are built some 10 ft. above the fertile soil.