Stumpage
Stumpage is uncut trees standing in the forest, and the word is sometimes used to mean the commercial value of those standing trees. Virginia Cooperative Extension says the value of the timber standing in a woodlot is commonly called its stumpage value.
Uncut trees, and the value put on them before anyone cuts
Virginia Cooperative Extension states the idea in one plain sentence: the timber standing in a woodlot has a certain value, which is commonly called the stumpage value.
The Virginia Department of Forestry gives the word two closely related senses. Stumpage names the uncut trees themselves, still standing in the forest, and it is sometimes used to mean the commercial value of those standing trees. Read either way, the word is about timber that has not been cut.
Species, quality, size, location, market and terrain, in Extension's own order
Extension does not leave stumpage value as an abstraction. It names the factors that matter most, and none of them reduces to a single figure a glossary can print.
Per Extension, the most important stumpage value factors are the species of the trees, their quality and size, the woodlot's location, prevailing market conditions, the terrain, and the amount of wood for sale. A tract of valuable species that is hard to reach can price very differently from an easier tract with less valuable timber.
A timber cruise is how those factors get assessed on a given tract. For a figure on a particular stand, Extension points landowners to the VDOF county forester and to consulting foresters.
Timber trespass damages are measured on the timber's value on the stump, with one exception
Value on the stump is not only an Extension idea. Virginia's timber trespass law uses it as the base for damages when someone cuts timber without the right to.
When timber is cut from another's land without legal right or permission, Virginia's timber article sets the damages at three times the timber's value on the stump, plus listed costs, and the remedy reaches one who "encroaches and cuts timber, except when acting prudently and under bona fide claim of right". The full remedy, and the burden the exception puts on the defendant, are set out in how timber is valued.
The stumpage belongs to whoever owns the standing timber
Stumpage value is a figure for the standing trees, and the standing trees are not always the landowner's to sell.
On a tract whose timber was sold or reserved earlier, the stumpage may belong to someone other than the owner of the ground, a separation covered under timber rights. Whether timber is worth selling separately from a farm is one of the questions answered on selling your farm.
Trying to weigh the stumpage on a wooded tract?
Tell us where the woods are and what you know of any past harvest. Lowell will look at the standing trees as one part of the whole property and say when a forester's estimate should come first. No cost, no obligation.
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Questions about this term
Does the cost of logging a tract show up in its stumpage value?
Stumpage value is the value of the timber as it stands, before anyone cuts or hauls it, but the work of getting it out still bears on that value. Extension lists terrain and the woodlot's location among the most important stumpage factors, and says buyers also weigh road building, culverts and access across adjoining properties before making an offer.
Can stumpage value change between a cruise and a sale?
Prevailing market conditions are one of the factors Extension lists as setting stumpage value, so an estimate made during a cruise reflects the market at that time. How a particular estimate holds up by the time a timber sale is signed is a question for the forester or the buyer involved in that sale.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.
- Forest Landowner's Guide to the Measurement of Timber and Logs (420-085) Virginia Cooperative Extension
- Glossary: Stumpage Virginia Department of Forestry
- Va. Code 55.1-2835 and 55.1-2836: timber trespass damages and the claim-of-right exception Code of Virginia
- Va. Code 10.1-1162: Seed Tree Law definitions (owner of timber, owner of timber rights) Code of Virginia