Moving Firewood?

[Wiskyt]

Hey all,

This is my first post. I'm a non-professional. I cut and split wood for my backyard firepit and camping and because I enjoy it. I have a question about "moving firewood". How big of a deal is this from a forestry point of view? I want to do the right thing, but I don't want to waste time fretting over something that might be a non-issue.

For instance, you are not supposed to transport firewood more than 50 miles. Normally, for me, this is not an issue. There is enough wood within 5 miles of my house that I can scavenge all I want and never "move" it for home use. It becomes an issue with camping. I can gather wood where we camp, but that has it's own issues. If I bring it with me, now I am "moving it".

Here's the thing, wood is trucked hundreds of miles in this area every day. I drive a dump trailer and I have personally been behind logging trucks for over 100 miles. That wood get's processed and "moved" again ending up in a lumber yard who-knows-where? The bark is mulched and could end up hundreds of miles away and most certainly does.

All of this wood, millions of tons of it, "moved" constantly, and somehow I am going to destroy the entire echo-system by bringing a bundle of wood on a camping trip? When I drove roll-off dumpsters, we would haul dumpsters 100 miles out of state to a firewood guy for a tree service and nobody though anything of it.

So, I want to do what is right, but I don't want to go through a lot of trouble when this seems like it might be just another campaign by some agency to make themselves look important.

Any thoughts on this?

Thank you.

 

[sledneck22]

I know it's stressed, but i've never seen the firewood rule enforced anywhere (expect once, see below).
I just use common sense. I almost always take my own camp wood but with that being said, we usually always camp within 50-75 miles of home.
Some of my practices:
-do not transport ash even thought the EAB has inevitably killed every tree by now.
-I do not carry and stack the fire wood from the truck. It goes from the truck bed to the campfire/pit.
-I do not take any with me over that ~ 75 mile mark (longer distance camping/fishing trips, I buy off the road near camp).

I have ran across one campground that wouldn't let you bring any firewood in even if you lived across the street and no chit, when checking in, they came and checked the vehicle. Then they proceeded to tell me they offered "bundles" of wood for $7 a piece. fancy onion bags of kindling. Needless to say we haven't and will never go back to that cash grab.

 

[Wiskyt]

Yeah, I'm not worried about getting arrested by the firewood police lol. Also, the EAB is not quarantined inside North Carolina because it is throughout the state. Supposedly 50 miles is the limit and my house is 36 miles as the crow flies to where we usually camp. But, once a year we like to hit a campground that is twice that far away but still in state. This moving wood business isn't a law issue, but it is one of those things "they" say you are supposed to do. I try to do what is right when it comes to outdoor activities. Leave gates the way you find them, have your license visible when hunting and fishing, take only pictures and leave only footprints. Those are good rules and easy to follow and DO make things better for everybody. But this firewood moving business has me thinking it's just some kind of goofy thing that some tree huggers came up with that nobody follows and makes no difference.

When we hit that campground last year for the 1st time, we didn't bring wood and were too tired to hunt it after hiking all day. The Ranger station sold decent size bundles of wood and the money went to some charitable cause so I bought some. This was the first campfire I ever had trouble with. I never needed more than 2 sheets of newspaper and a match so I never thought to even learn the right way to make a fire. Rule #1, use dry wood! this stuff would not burn even when I got a blaze going with sticks from the ground. This wood was like a fire extinguisher. Fortunately we had charcoal to cook on which wouldn't light the wood either lol.

That campfire fail is what got me building fires in the backyard and a chainsaw and a few axes and a few hatchets and a few bow saws and a few folding saws...

The good news is, I have a big 'ol pile of wood and I can get a fire going with 2 sheets a newspaper and 1 match every time now. The bad news is I keep seeing timber on the side of the road on the way home from work and my wife thinks I have a problem. I don't know if I am splitting it to burn it, or burning it to split it as this point.

I like your point about leaving it in the truck until you burn it. I was thinking about using those plastic tubs with the snap on lids to keep it closed in. It also makes it easier to load the truck for the trip because I can fill the tubs ahead of time and just toss them in the truck, and , the tubs would give me an idea of how much wood I am bringing.

 

[Stump Shot]

I would suspect if one were to bring just the center pieces of the log(no bark) it would lessen the chances of taking some bugs with you on your trip.

 

[Wiskyt]

Yes, this seems to be one of things that helps and it is not hard to do. I'm not a wood expert, but the pine and tulip poplar I have been piling up has the bark fall off of it anyway. Plus, the poplar grain is so straight that I can slab off the outsides very easily with my splitting axe and I'm not even that good at it.

Not leaving any wood behind like Sledneck said is another easy to follow, common sense rule. Burn it all or bring it back.

 

[chiselbit]

https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/subject/firewood
A little information here.

 

[Wiskyt]

https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/subject/firewood
A little information here.

Yes, but they make no mention of the bark mulch, mulch, and untreated lumber moved all over the place. Go to a big box store and look at the pallets of mulch and see if those college professors know where it came from and where it's going to end up spread all over the ground.

That is not meant to be directed at you, but at these endless agencies and ngo's that come up with "best practices" for how to chew tour food for crying out loud.

This is like our EPA. They'll have us all using carbon neutral chainsaws while the other 8 billion people on the planet burn tires to keep warm and dump their plastic in the Pacific so it can wash up on Santa Barbara where they ban grocery bags.

 

[Firewood Hoarder]

I am guilty of bringing good, dry, seasoned firewood with me on camping trips. I have never been questioned by park rangers or campground staff, but I buy a single bundle of wood from them and leave it in a visible spot when I have a fire going. I fill two Rubbermaid tubs with wood and leave it in the truck bed under the tonneau cover. I too have had to struggle with poor quality wood purchased at the campground/Park; For $7 I better be able to cook with it.

My thoughts are the EAB has wings and will go where it wants to. The damage has been done and we can't stop it now. May as well burn the wood with larvae in it to slow it down.

 

[Wiskyt]

I am guilty of bringing good, dry, seasoned firewood with me on camping trips. I have never been questioned by park rangers or campground staff, but I buy a single bundle of wood from them and leave it in a visible spot when I have a fire going. I fill two Rubbermaid tubs with wood and leave it in the truck bed under the tonneau cover. I too have had to struggle with poor quality wood purchased at the campground/Park; For $7 I better be able to cook with it.

My thoughts are the EAB has wings and will go where it wants to. The damage has been done and we can't stop it now. May as well burn the wood with larvae in it to slow it down.

Yes, the EAB specifically is not quarantined within the state boundries of NC because it is in every county. I ASSume other states are the same. That toothpaste is out of the tube.

So here's my problem with getting wood near the sight. I camp primarily in a National Forest. While bringing wood there is like bringing sand to the beach, using the wood I am surrounded by has it's issues. There is a lifetime supply of wood all over the place on land near the sight. Area's that have been logged have tons of seasoned 3" diameter hardwood laying all over the ground. I've gathered it up, bucked it, and had more than I needed to have a fire all night long and it only takes minutes to do so. Here is the problem, it's private land near the forest. In fact, it's impossible to tell the private land from the public land half the time. Some of it is posted, some not.

Now, I am not talking about going deep onto private property, I'm talking about parking on the shoulder of the road and walking 50 feet into an empty lot, spend 10 minutes grabbing what I need and leaving. So, who cares right? Well, I had some old coot come out and threaten me and my son for "trespassing". I mean I'm holding a bow saw in my hand and he is literally MF'ing me, coming at me etc. So, here I am gathering sticks on the side of the road and I am faced with a choice of backing down or hurting this guy! We left, found another spot half a mile away, and got wood. It turns out the guy doesn't even own the land, he was just some kook who lived next to it. I called the land owner who apologized but still told me i didn't have permission to go on the land. I told him he should post it and also that if I had a flat tire I would have been on his land longer.

So, you know what? Why should I put myself out to protect this guy's financial investment when he doesn't want me spending 5 minutes removing forest fire fuel from his property? The time I spend gathering and processing wood on a camping trip is time I could have been hiking, fishing, or just sitting around the fire. I can leave my saws, hatchets etc. home and just pull into my campsight with the plastic totes of wood and have a fire going in 5 minutes and be done with it.

As far as wood from the public land, you have to hike to it. So, yeah, I have permission and it's completely legal to gather firewood as per the Ag Department website, but now I have to hike it back to the truck.

The obvious answer is for these landowners and weirdos to make their edges of their property accessible for us to clean up fuel off the ground. It does them a favor, and generates good will. They get all kinds of tax breaks with their land listed as farmland, and the USDA will spend my money putting out fire on their land, but when you want to pick up what is garbage off the side of the road, they want you to go screw.

 

[ElevatorGuy]

When I was a kid my pops always brought wood on camping trips. He also always put it in the front of the bed and had it hidden lol. I guess that’s why but they always charge too much at campgrounds. Most of what we took was old split rail fence rails. Back then they were all locust, now it’s all pine crap that only last a few years. We had original posts that were never changed and some pine posts that were replaced 3-5 times when I was growing up.

 

[Maintenance Chief]

All of the firewood sold in SC state parks is kiln dried to kill any invasive species. Bark mulch is processed in a way that usually kills anything bigger than your thumb nail but the reason its piled high in the facility yards is to create an oven of decomposition to kill insects and fungus ,covering it with tarps increases the efficiency of this process but it has been known to spontaneously combust.
Trust me the people who work in the actual field of wood know what their doing, despite the internet's opinion.

 

[vtrombly1]

I'm pretty sure I looked that up last week they have finally given up and said the EAB will be everywhere it's inevitable and the firewood rule will no longer be enforced. It's up to someone personally to treat their ash trees if they want to save them. Have no idea how your going to do that you'd go broke. The way to fight it would have been to stop the Chinese from sending tainted wood, ship ballest, cough cough you name it before it got here. Nothing they can do now but have a ton of firewood. I grew up north of Detroit where this all started my parents had acres of ash. It was fine one minute and dead the next.

 

[Seachaser]

I know Florida is real particular about bringing firewood across state lines. In many places you have to buy your wood locally.