Export officials move ahead with timbering plan for borough property in Murrysville

Export officials gave their forestry consultant the go-ahead Tuesday night to have herbicide applied to the understory of borough property off Borland Farm Road as they begin a timber management program.

“We got good feedback from lumber companies, and we’re ready to move forward,” forestry consultant Dave O’Barto told council. “Unfortunately, because of covid, we missed the window to spray that herbicide, so we’ll be aiming to do it next year.”

O’Barto has marked the trees he would like harvested initially from roughly 29 acres of the 70-acre property.

“What we’re trying to do with the herbicide is give the forest floor a chance to respond, for the saplings to get above the weeds and establish some secondary forest,” O’Barto said. “It will benefit the sustainability and the longevity of the timber.”

O’Barto said the current market for hardwood lumber is six to eight months behind the market for softwood lumber.

“Everyone is building now, and in a few months they’ll come back through with the hardwood and cover it up,” he said.

Once timbering is ready to begin, O’Barto said work crews will utilize existing logging paths on the property, leaving behind stumps as well as tree tops, which he said serve dual purposes.

“You don’t want to move the tree tops around because there’s a lot of residual growth in there, and if you drag the tree tops around, a lot of that will get damaged,” he said. “Leaving tree tops also keeps deer from browsing new growth.”

Nyjah Cephas, who runs the Young Naturalists program for the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, said her staff uses a similar tactic in Frick Park, creating what she called deer “exclosures.”

“We get a bunch of logs and sticks and create what looks like a big bird’s nest around new growth or trees we’ve planted, to keep deer from browsing the leaves.”

Once the herbicide is applied sometime between May and September 2021, the harvesting of trees for timber can begin.

“It’s really going to look nice once it’s harvested,” O’Barto said.