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CAPITAL IDEAS -- LIVE!
JANUARY 2013 News Conference for Forest Owners
Sponsored by the Alabama Forest Owners' Association, Inc.
This Conference was recorded on January 16,
2013
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Hayes D. Brown
starting time: (00:00)
Comment |
Moderator
Hayes D. Brown, attorney and forest owner, will moderate this news
conference. Hayes' email address is
hbrown@hayesbrown.com.
Click Here to View & Hear Prior News Conferences.
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John F. Lyle, III
(00:26)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Fiscal Cliff Aversion Law – What was in it that affects forest owners?
Johnny Lyle is Partner and
Tax Team
Leader at
Adams
and Reese LLP, working out of the firm's Mobile and Birmingham
offices. He is also a Board Member of the
Forest Landowners Tax Council,
so he is well situated to give us an update on the "Fiscal Cliff Aversion
Bill" of January 1, 2013. From the January 9, 2013 issue of the Forest
Landowners e-Newsletter, we read:
Mostly what Congress did by passing the fiscal cliff was to make permanent
the system that has been in effect for the past two years.
Specifically, this bill locks in place current tax rates for middle class
families, provides a permanent patch for the alternative minimum tax (AMT),
and holds down the death tax for farmers and ranchers.
Without any action on their part, the tax-free amount would have
automatically reverted to $1 million per person, and the rate for most
estates would have gone up to 55%. But at the end of the day the only thing
the lawmakers actually changed is the gift and estate-tax rate, which has
gone up to a top rate of 40% from a maximum of 35% on individual estates
valued over $5.12 million indexed for inflation.
“While far from perfect, the proposal protects 99% of taxpayers from
scheduled rate increases and provides the certainty necessary for families
to plan and businesses to grow by making this tax relief permanent,” said
Rep. Glenn Thompson House Agriculture Committee Chairman and supporter of
private forest landowners.
Source:
Congress Passes Fiscal Cliff Bill
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How the Fiscal Cliff Impacts Landowners
We will ask Johnny to discuss estate and gift
taxes, as well as the capital gains tax.
Phone: (251) 433-3234
Email: johnny.lyle@arlaw.com
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Rachna Choudhry
(05:19)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Focusing Grassroots Interests in DC
Rachna Choudhry
is a Co-Founder of
POPVOX, a
web-based tool designed to help you promote your political interests to your
members of Congress. A brief
Tutorial Slide Show will help you get started. The tutorial shows
you how to find a bill pending before Congress and how to send your message
to your Congressman. It leads you to maps which display constituent interest
in your bill, and then provides advice on how to bring in more support for
your position. If you have ever written to your Representative or Senator,
you may want to try POPVOX to see how it works. If you have never written to
Congress, it's time.
Rachna says, "A good place to get started using POPVOX is the
'New Bills' page. It gives
you a real-time look at the bills Congress is introducing:
https://www.popvox.com/newbills." She also recommends a visit to
POPVOX's Facebook
page. AFOA thinks you will find her article in Forest Landowner
magazine useful:
Harness Your Grassroots Power with POPVOX.com.
Email: rachna@popvox.com
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John R. Seiler
(08:44)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Tree and Shrub Identification:
vTree App
John Seiler
is Professor of Forestry in
The
Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at
Virginia Tech College of
Natural Resources and Environment. "Also known as Dr. Dendro, John, along with creative co-workers has developed
multimedia tools for tree identification including
Woody Plants in North
America published by Kendall/Hunt which contains over 23,000 color
photographs for 940 trees and shrubs found throughout North America..." John
and co-workers have also developed an
Android Tree ID App called vTree that has been downloaded more than
10,000 times. In the next week or two, vTree will be available as an iPhone
App. Check the iTunes store in about 2 weeks.
Phone: (540) 231-5461
Email: jseiler@vt.edu
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Kip Adams
(12:32)
Hear Conference
Comment |
An Average Hunter
Kip Adams is a
Certified Wildlife
Biologist and the
Director of
Education and Outreach for the
Quality Deer Management Association.
Kip lives in Knoxville,
Pennsylvania. He caught our attention when he translated some of the
information from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's
2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation
into an article in
Quality Whitetails, Dec-Jan 2012-2013, entitled,
Are You an Average Hunter? Kip
points out that in 2011, "the average hunter spent $2,484 on all things
hunting related." He reviews the top 10 expenditures made by hunters, number
1 on the list being Land Leasing and Ownership.
"The average hunter spent $540 for a
total of nearly $7.4 billion. This was by far the top category as it was
57 percent higher than the second item. The survey did not separate
leasing and land purchasing, but another U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
survey showed just under 7 percent of hunters leased land in the U.S. in
2006. That same survey showed 1.3 million hunters owned over 134 million
acres, and over a decade ago (2001) the number of hunters owning land
exceeded the number leasing land."
Phone: (814) 326-4023
Email: kadams@qdma.com
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Wayne Bassett
(15:39)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Antique Apples for Wildlife and People
Wayne Bassett
is President of
The Wildlife Group, a tree and shrub nursery that focuses on the
interests of hunters and wildlife habitat enthusiasts. A few weeks ago,
Wayne told us about a book he thought forest landowners and hunters would be
interested in. His excitement for
Creighton Lee Calhoun's
Old Southern Apples bubbled over as he described the hundreds of
antique or heritage apples Calhoun has documented and collected. He
mentioned that these old cultivars tend to be disease resistant and do well
in wildlife food plots and near cabins, feeding both wildlife and people.
The Wildlife Group has several varieties available now (Yates, Arkansas
Black, Deer Gold, Gibson Golden, Gala, Anna, Autumn Rush, Horse Apple,
Brogden, Royal Limbertwig). Wayne suggests planting prior to mid-March.
Click here
for driving directions to The Wildlife Group or
click here for a Google Map.
The Wildlife Group will welcome AFOA members
on their way to the 2013 Annual Meeting in Opelika on Friday, April
5. Details will be posted later to
www.afoa.org/pdf/2013am.pdf.
Phone: 1-800-221-9703
Email: wayne@becksturf.com
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John C. Chitwood
(20:02)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Safe Use of Power Line Rights of Way
John Chitwood is Encroachments
Supervisor for
Alabama Power Company's Transmission Right of Way Services.
The company owns and maintains approximately 10,000 miles of electric transmission
lines and it is John's responsibility to ensure that the rights of way are
clear of encroachments and obstructions that could interfere with the
company's
ability to provide safe and reliable energy. That being said, John is with
us today to tell us how to safely use the land under the transmission lines.
AFOA has noticed that many landowners, when
advertising hunting land for lease, will highlight that a power line
crosses the property and is available for planting game food plots. Hunters
like to place shooting houses as close to the power lines as John will
allow, because of the excellent view up and down the line.
Suggested Reading:
Phone: (205) 257-3667
Email:
jchitwoo@southernco.com
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Beth W. Richardson
(23:12)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Improving Return on Your Forestry Investments
Beth Richardson is an
Area Forester for the
Clemson
University Extension Service. We were impressed with the advice she
passed along in an article in the
Association of Consulting
Foresters Newsletter, and thought you would enjoy hearing her ideas
on managing pines you or your family members have planted. In a sidebar
following the article, Beth reported that the Internal Rate of Return for a
26 year rotation demonstration forest was 22.09%, including costs of taxes,
mid-rotation herbicide release, and planting costs. She used
FORVAL to
help her analyze the investment.
Most landowners don’t consider their
timber an economic investment. They have other ownership priorities such
as aesthetics, wildlife, recreation, or just the peace of mind that
comes with open space. Thus, people’s healthy emotional attachment to
their woodlands should never be discounted by foresters. There are
millions of acres that are owned by just such individuals and, by and
large, are left to let Nature take her course. The good news about
forestry is, in many ways, you can have it all. A scientifically valid,
well-conceived forest management plan can help achieve a variety of
non-timber objectives, while simultaneously profiting from timber
harvests. To optimize your investment:
- Don't Wait to Thin
- Consider Site Quality
- Maintain Adequate Live Crown
- Thin Often
- Watch the Canopy
- Leave the Best
- Get a Good Thinning Crew
- Clearcut When the Time is Right
Phone: (803) 664-0860
Email: mrchrds@clemson.edu
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Peter J. Stewart
(26:06)
Hear Conference
Comment |
Timber Market Report & Daily News Indicators
Pete Stewart
is the Founder, President, and CEO of
Forest2Market,
an organization that "provides market price data, supply chain expertise and
other decision support services to participants in the forest, wood and
paper products, recovered fiber and bioenergy industries." Today we asked
Pete to give us an idea of what lies ahead for us in the sawtimber and fiber
markets. We also asked him to discuss market indicators such as new home
building, paper demand, wood fuel regulations in Europe, and other headlines
in the news that might help us make better forest management decisions.
Suggested Reading:
Phone: (704) 540-1440 ext 11
Email:
pete.stewart@forest2market.com
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