Healing Harvest Forest Foundation

Animal Powered Forestry Down Under

Friday, May 28th, 2010

This is the actual email transcript between Jason Rutledge, Rien Visser and Jason Cruse.  Both of the latter are natives of New Zealand.

Re: [Fwd: Re: Animal Powered Practitioners in NZ]
Monday, April 13, 2009 2:00 AM
From:
“jason cruse”
To:
“Jason Rutledge”
Hello Jason – hope you are enjoying your Easter probably getting warmer over there here we just had first frosts that finished off the summer veges in our garden. Anyway. Have got a meeting with D.O.C department of conservation and Olsen’s later this month. Olsen’s are a large forest company over here and if they along with D.O.C accept this contract it will be a mile stone to say the least. If it goes well it would be about 7 years work for us. Also i have received a call from a CEO of timberlands and he wants to have a field day to my work site to take a look at a horse logging operation. Timberlands manage the largest man made forest in the southern hemisphere which we live in the middle of. So horse logging is certainly getting noticed by the logging powers that be in NZ anyway. All this may well never have happened if i hadn’t come across your web site so keep up  the good  work mate.

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Jason Rutledge wrote:

Hello Jason,

Hopefully this forward will come through with this letter and that you can find the fellows email address.  Not that Rein Visser is promoter of Animal powered logging, but he has never been a detractor of our work and has always been open minded in exposing his students to these methods.

I would suggest you contact him so he can introduce you to other folks in the nation that are interested in modern animal powered logging.  So let me know if you get in touch, I always enjoyed his worldly view, which was refreshing coming from a major industrial University in the middle of the forested eastern U.S. He introduced hundreds of students to our work by bringing then into the harvesting sites to see it in person. I think he could help you maybe in ways we don’t even understand yet.

Just knowing you are there and working horses in the forest is a good thing and it expands both your worlds.

Now I am going back to your other and reply directly from that about your harness questions. Good to hear from you mate.

Cheers,

Jason Rutledge
Environmentally Sensitive Logging and Lumber Co.
8014 Bear Ridge Road SE
Copper Hill, Va. 24079
540-651-6355

Hey Jason Rutledge
Cc Chad Bolding

Good to hear from you and I hope all is well. We are very much enjoying
our ‘new’ lives ‘back’ here in New Zealand, the family is doing well and
work is great. The industry is much smaller and so easier to get
research work done both in terms of support and places to go – and not
having any deportation concerns is certainly easier on the soul.
However, I have not yet come across horse logging here yet – but am
working with some PhD students in Iran who have done some very
interesting work on Mule logging!

Chad Bolding is my replacement at VT (I have cc’ed on this email), and
from all accounts he is doing a much better job than I ever did. I know
he has taken an interest in some of the cable logging projects. He is
originally from down south, did his PhD in Oregon, and then worked a
couple of years at Clemson. I know he has also had an interest in small
scale harvesting systems in the past. I would not hesitate to approach
him.

Chad – Jason is horse logging contractor based up in Floyd, as well as
being a strong advocate for well managed natural forests. I have taken
my students up to see his operations many times, and if my memory serves
me correctly, he has also given 3 lectures at VT to my harvesting class,
as well as helped out at workshops. The students have always enjoyed the
interaction and learned a lot, it certainly provides plenty of
discussion material. Horse logging is obviously a bit different to the
status quo of harvesting in Virginia, but especially because it is so it
has been great to be in touch with him.

All for now,

Cheers

Rien

___________________
Rien Visser
Associate Professor
Director of Studies, Forest Engineering
School of Forestry
Canterbury University
Phone: +64-3-364-2127
Email: rien.visser@canterbury.ac.nz

—–Original Message—–
From: Jason Rutledge
Sent: Friday, 6 February 2009 3:26 a.m.
To: Rien Visser
Subject: Animal Powered Practitioners in NZ

Hello Rien,

Hope you are happy and prospering back in the homeland. I thought of you
recently when on a chat board we had a fellow make an entry, that called
himself the kiwi horselogger. I thought if you are interested I could share his
contact information so you would have that connection there if you have
anyone interested in such culture down there.

Do you think your replacement (not that it is really possible to replace
a rare individual like yourself) at VPI would be interested in learning
about our group and work?

Let me know what you think sir.

Warm Salute,

Jason Rutledge

http://healingharvestforestfoundation.org

Tags: biological woodsmen, modern horse logging, restorative forestry | Posted in Forest Understories | No Comments »