As stewards of our land we must be familiar with “Best Management Practices for Forestry”. These rules help insure our environment is not damaged by our forest activities. Although I live in Alabama I’m sure most states have similar rules

Purpose of Best Management Practices

Alabama’s Best Management Practices for Forestry are non-regulatory guidelines (except for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s baseline BMPs on pages 16 and 17 which are mandatory) suggested to help Alabama’s forestry community maintain and protect the physical, chemical and biological integrity of waters of the state as required by the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the Alabama Water Pollution Control Act, the Clean Water Act,
the Water Quality Act, and the Coastal Zone Management Act.

The BMPs booklet lays out a framework of sound stewardship practices that, when consistently applied, will contribute positively to maintaining a high degree of water quality flowing from a forest. These BMPs are not intended to be all inclusive. Rational and objective on-site judgment must be applied to ensure that water quality standards are maintained.

The most important guidance that these BMPs can offer the forestry community is to think and plan before you act. Adequate forethought will pay off in two ways: to avoid unnecessary site disturbance or damage in the first place and to minimize the expense of stabilizing or restoring unavoidable disturbances when the operation is finished.

Following sound stewardship principles in carrying out forestry practices will ensure that our forests continue to meet the needs of their owners, provide jobs, forest products, clean water and a healthy environment without costly regulations. Only through sound stewardship principles will all of these needs be met.

Responsibility

Responsibility for maintaining water quality standards during a forestry operation has been broadly interpreted to include all parties involved in the authorization, planning or implementation of the operation. The responsible parties may include professional forestry practitioner(s) such as forest resource managers, timber purchasers, loggers,
vendors, forest engineers or others. Due to this inherent responsibility it is in the best interest of all those involved in silvicultural operations to make every effort to prevent and correct violations of state and federal water quality laws,regulations and standards by consistently implementing BMPs.

Alabama’s Best Practices manual is available at: Alabama’s Best Management Practices Manual

 

 

 

 

 

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