It took Joplin, Missouri only thirty-four minutes to lose nearly half of its urban trees during an F-5 tornado that ripped the town apart on May 22, 2011. Nearly a third of the city including homes, businesses, and a major hospital complex were destroyed that night. Century-old trees came crashing down on homes, streets, and miles of power lines, causing further damage and complicating a massive and difficult search-and-rescue effort that lasted more than a week.

Removal of storm debris began almost immediately after the storm. A continuous line of trucks rumbled down the streets hauling the debris to the local landfill. With the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in charge of the initial cleanup, there was no attempt to separate out the debris or salvage or recycle any of the

With a little finesse and the proper forestry equipment, you can bring any log in from the woods with a lot less power and virtually no damage to your woodlot.

Years ago, we had a local logger with a good reputation harvest oak and walnut lumber on our family tree farm in southwest Missouri. The contract provided for an 8% bonus for careful practices that would not damage other growing stock or make ruts on trails. For the first week, I watched with great respect as he dropped the trees precisely where they would do the least damage and carefully pulled logs out of the woods with his cable skidder, coming within a hair of bumping crop trees, but never actually touching them. It was summer and the ground was hard and dry. He hardly left a mark.

Toward the middle of the second week, all that changed. The trees were coming d