Clearing land of dead trees

I am finally getting around to clearing the timbered land around my house and barn. It is heavily timbered and through the years large trees have died and fallen. The termites have made meals out of many of them but I am faced with a decision. Is it better to collect the fallen trees and burn them (legal here) or allow them to decompose and perhaps replenish the earth with the remains after the termites and the normal rotting process takes effect. I have roughly 33 acres that are involved. Regards

If you want to keep the acreage clean and mowed you will have to clean them up as up here in Dakota land it takes many years for them to decompose and go back into the ground so that you can mow.

Do what I do, clean up around the buildings and leave the rest natural, great for deer and other wildlife.

here in denton, I just 'dozed them over and then burned all I could....I had several large piles burning for 3-4 days ...
waiting for them to "rot" would probably take years and make for too many obstacles to mow around

All depends on the end game. Dead (upright) trees actually have some real benefits to certain cavity dwelling species of wildlife. Depending on the conditions, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department actually encourages the creation of "snags" through deliberate killing of undesirable trees (such as through girdling). Of course, that doesn't mean you have to leave everything just laying around either, as there are some benefits to eliminating it as well (such as helping to reduce fire risks.) I guess what I'm saying is that it depends on your goals and your specific conditions.

Soil does need replendishment. I leave all standing dead trees for the birds and the fallen ones stay to rot. Hangups may be cut down if they are damageing to a good tree. Windblown trees that can be converted to lumber are used.

As a general statment I'd say " clear those around the yard area and not worry about the rest.

Egon

I just knocked down a couple of dead trees. One was near enough to my overhead power line to take it down if that tree fell in that direction. Taking it down was a good choice.

The other was in an old, overgrown fence line about thirty yards from my pole barn. There are a number of downed, dead trees in there and I've been working to pull them out and put them into a burn pile.

My thinking was that I didn't want to provide a home for termites. I remembered having a city rental property on which the local utility came and took down two trees in the easement and just left the wood piled there. I ended up with termites there and in the house. While I couldn't say one resulted in the other, I didn't want to run another empirical test on another property. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

How great or small a distance is "safe" in such a situation?