BRIMFIELD – Red oak is by far the state’s most valuable hardwood and has been for decades, based on UMass Extension data of reported timber stumpage values.

Unfortunately, red oak leaves are the preferred food of gypsy moth caterpillars.

Three successive years of defoliation, the stress of past years of drought, and now secondary pests and pathogens have created a perfect storm in the region’s forests.

In certain areas of southern Worcester County, eastern Hampden and Hampshire counties and northeastern Connecticut, red oaks are dying in record numbers. And the longer the dead oaks stand, the faster they lose commercial value.

According to woodlot owners, foresters and timber mill owners, it takes only a matter of months before an oak log graded “Select and Better” becomes suitable only for firewood.

Rainfall throughout much of November made the forest floor here soft, wet, and incompatible for heavy logging equipment – log skidders, forwarders and feller bunchers. That placed an additional burden on woodlot owners and loggers already scrambling to get oaks harvested and to the mill as quickly as possible.

Gregory Cox, program director for the Massachusetts Forest Alliance, said oak mortality - primarily the result of gypsy moth caterpillar defoliation - will have a major impact on the region’s woodlands for a long time.

“What's really striking about the gypsy moth oak loss situation is that this is a slow-moving environmental disaster,” Mr. Cox said.

He continued, “When you have a tornado, the destruction and impacts are instantaneous and vivid. You cut down the wreckage and clean up the mess as best you can. It's immediate and nonnegotiable and you sort of move on. With the gypsy moths, it’s like you're standing in quicksand. You see the defoliation and the egg masses and you hold your breath hoping the trees survive,” he said.

“You don't want to overreact, but trees that don't re-leaf aren't going to and you've literally got to cut your losses. The woods will be woods but they won't be anything like what they were before.”

On Egypt Road on Prescott Peninsula in New Salem, loggers with John H. Conkey and Sons Logging Inc. of Belchertown are salvaging red oak. The lot covers 175 acres and is expected to yield about 650,000 board feet of oak timber.

According to Herm Eck, chief forester for the Quabbin and Ware River watersheds, the bid value of the salvage harvest was $63,000. This particular salvage project represents about 8 percent of the 2,200 Quabbin watershed acres where red oak succumbed to defoliation, drought and disease.

The Quabbin chief forester said Department of Conservation and Recreation foresters assigned to Quabbin have moved from marking dead and dying red pine for salvage to marking dead and dying red oak for harvest because of the difference in commercial value.

Mr. Eck said while the agency has an interest in covering costs, the priority for DCR’s Division of Water Supply Protection is maintaining a healthy forest filter for the 412-billion gallon reservoir. He said salvage lots are generally more difficult to sell than other lots because the quality of the wood is more difficult to predict.

“The quality of dead and dying wood can change quickly because the trees can no longer protect themselves from insects and diseases that degrade the wood,” the forester said.

Bill Hull, owner of Hull Forest Products in Pomfret Center, Conn., said the company is currently doing an oak salvage harvest on Steerage Rock Forest, a 300-acre woodlot it owns here. “There’s some good ground up there and east of the mountain some pretty good soil. It’s almost entirely red oak that came in after the blight wiped out the American chestnut at the turn of the century,” he said.

Thinned several times during 40 years of management, the oak forest is now half dead. “These trees should be thriving so I ask myself what’s going on. In part, I think the age of these trees is a factor. Many are a hundred years old, at the upper range of their lifespan, and just like people as they age, more susceptible to a variety of ailments,” he said.

“Now the gypsy moth caterpillar comes along for a couple of years and the trees have been weakened and secondary stressors coming into play, the two-lined chestnut borer and the Armillaria root rot.”

Pests and pathogens are always present and a healthy tree can withstand the attack. “These trees can’t,” he said.

The lumber mill owner said the company has received many calls from landowners looking for a quick harvest of dead and dying oaks to salvage as much commercial value as possible. But Mr. Hull said safety in some instances is as much a priority as the bottom line.

He said woodlot owners are understandably concerned about how quickly a dead oak will lose its value. “Timber cut from an oak that recently died is still good, but within a few months it begins to deteriorate and six months later, it’s not worth the same as a live tree that’s just been cut.”

“We’ve had to decline harvesting some woodlots because there are just too many dead trees that have been dead for too long,” he said.

“Unfortunately," Mr. Hull said, "I don’t see any good news on the horizon. As CEO of this company, I see this trend continuing, whether its gypsy moth or some other pest or pathogen.”

On Little Alum Road, John Freeman is overseeing a salvage crop of red oak on his 400-acre tree farm, the result of gypsy moth caterpillar defoliation of all age classes of both red and white oak. Mr. Freeman said he began marking oaks the first week of May that he knew would not survive.

And as if to add insult to injury, Mr. Freeman said the caterpillars preferred the best genetic trees – the straightest, tallest, healthiest trees. “The second week of July, I witnessed a brownout. The trees had leafed out completely and then all of sudden turned brown,” he said.

Seeking the advice of a former DCR service forester, Mr. Freeeman said he was told, “You better cut them. Those trees are stressed to the point they will not survive.”

Steady rainfall throughout November brought the salvage effort to a standstill. Now, the future of oak on Mr. Freeman’s woodlot is equally uncertain.

“This will have a huge financial impact for us. We’ll not see the likes of these mature trees in our lifetime and with no oak regeneration from these dead stumps and a huge opening in the canopy, I would expect to see multiflora rose, oriental bittersweet, and other invasives take over.”

Sean Mahoney, DCR utilization forester, said the economic impact of gypsy moth caterpillar defoliation will weigh most heavily on woodlot owners.

“Unfortunately, it’s a facet of life based on agriculture. Events happen and decades of careful forest management can be compromised very quickly. Woodlot owners don’t have a lot of flexibility when it comes to timing their harvest or where to ship their timber,” Mr. Mahoney said.

In addition to acre upon acre of dead or dying oak, Mr. Mahoney said woodlot owners are competing in a globalized marketplace with sellers of other high-value hardwoods, adding that tariffs have slowed demand from key foreign markets.

Scott Gerrish is a consulting forester and owns a woodlot here as well. “We’ve had four years of defoliation, heavy in some areas and my property has been hit hard,” he said. As for regeneration, Mr. Gerrish said there hasn’t been much of an acorn crop - understandable with trees under stress.

Greg Krol, a Belchertown logger and Hull Forest Products subcontractor is working the Steerage Rock woodlot owned by Hull. Looking around the site, he said the implications of no acorns on the ground are twofold.

“Without an acorn crop, wildlife dependent on them has nothing to eat. No acorns and dead stumps mean no oak regeneration,” Mr. Krol said. “I’ve seen deer on the property, but they’re moving around looking for food.”