Turner: That is excellent news. Dan Kincaid has been a breath of fresh air at the Division of Forestry and seems to be juggling all the balls that his job entails very well. I will try to find out who some of the foresters are that have been given access to the rangefinders and suggest that they give the ENTS tree measuring methods a try. I think that there are several serious height record contenders here and getting realistic height measurements from different parts of the state could be extremely interesting. I know that the Widen poplar is the tallest yellow poplar documented in WV but after having visited the tree and seen its appearance relative to other, much younger trees I have encountered while working in various parts of the state I am pretty certain that somewhere in West Virginia there lurks a 120 year old yellow poplar tree approaching 200 feet in height. I don't know what such trees could look like at 200 years! What would be your vote for the location of the tallest yellow poplar? Russ In a message dated 11/22/2009 8:59:36 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
ENTS Last summer I had a chance to meet with Dan Kincaid, the new Big Tree Coordinator for West Virginia to express my concern on the moribund status of the Big Tree register in West Virginia. After a couple of additional meetings and one with the WV State Forester I can announce that the WV Division of Forestry has appointed 2 Big Tree measurers in each their regions(3). They also have eight new Nikon 550 rangefinders and a desire to bring the register up to date in next two years with good height measurements. I would like to relay how ENTS made this possible. First, ED Frank maintains a pretty good web site with lots of good information and links that I still have not fully reviewed. Second, occasionally some ENTS venture forth to measure a big tree or two and post their results on the web site. On such foray was made in March of 2006 by Carl Harting, Anthony Kelly, Russ Richardson and Mike Plevich to check out the 195’ Widen (Clay County) Yellow-poplar. It turned out to be a measly 172’, but still the tallest verified north of the Smokies However I had access to the past files on this poplar and prior measurements varied by more then 60’ with some higher then 195’. They were quite receptive when I pointed out that there was a method that is more accurate and consistent and easily taught. The rangefinders were ordered and arrived last week. I spent last Thursday with six foresters to get them started using the sine method to measure tree height. I expect we will have better tree height information coming out of West Virginia. I also encouraged them to use the great ENTS website and participate in discussions and share measurements. A promise to Chief ENT Will Blozan - The 196’ Yellow Buckeye and 185’ Yellow-poplar will be found and measured. Turner Sharp -- Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -- Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected]
