Trevor Roush, a member of the Pine Plains Town Board and candidate for town supervisor, fractured vertebrae in his upper neck and suffered a serious concussion after a tree limb struck him in the head while he was logging in Gallatin on Aug. 6.
Roush, 36, was working alone and felling a red oak more than 80 feet tall when a dead limb broke loose as the tree fell and struck his logging helmet.
Roush said the impact fractured three cervical vertebrae, C1, C2, and C7, caused a serious concussion, and left a wound on the top of his head that required 15 staples.
“I’m only alive because of my helmet,” he said.
Much of what Roush knows about the hours surrounding the accident has been reconstructed from what others told him afterward. After being struck by the tree limb, Roush managed to walk himself out of the forest. A state Department of Environmental Conservation forester who had been scheduled to inspect the timber harvest that day later found Roush sitting near the landing along the roadside, beside his skidder, which he uses to pull logs out of the woods. Roush’s helmet and saw were found beneath the tree he had been cutting.
Roush remembers none of that period, he said. Memory loss surrounding a concussion is common. He said his memory resumes several hours later at Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie.
Roush was initially taken to Northern Dutchess Hospital before being transferred to Vassar. He was released the following afternoon after doctors determined that the fractures did not require surgery, Roush said.
He said he cannot drive or lift heavy objects while he recovers. The injuries have not changed his plans to continue his campaign for town supervisor. He said he plans to continue logging.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration identifies such events as a hazard in manual tree felling. When a falling tree passes through surrounding trees or lands on other objects, branches or other material can be thrown back toward the logger.
“It’s not a safe job to begin with,” Roush said. “I think anyone going in knows that we run those risks.”
Federal statistics reflect the hazards facing loggers. In 2024, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded 51 fatal work injuries among logging workers nationwide. Logging workers had a fatal injury rate of 110.4 deaths per 100,000 full-time-equivalent workers, compared with 3.3 for workers overall.
A more detailed BLS analysis covering 2006 through 2015 found that 426 of 655 logging fatalities, or 65%, resulted from workers being struck by a falling object or equipment. Trees or logs were involved in 74% of the deaths during that period.
Roush said the condition of the trees on the Gallatin property added to the difficulty of the work.
The harvest includes red, black, and chestnut oaks that he said were damaged by spongy moths. Some trees that appeared healthier when the property was marked had since declined, he said, leaving more dead wood and brittle limbs overhead.
“What’s happening with all the oaks is they’re degrading really quickly right now because of the spongy moth damage,” Roush said.
The Gallatin property is enrolled in New York’s 480-a Forest Tax Law program, Roush said, and the trees designated for removal were marked by a licensed forester. The state program provides tax incentives to qualifying owners of at least 50 contiguous acres of forest who commit to managing the land under an approved forest management plan.
Roush is a logging contractor, not a forester. On the Gallatin job, he is responsible for cutting the designated trees, skidding the logs out of the woods, and marketing the timber to mills.
Much of the timber he was cutting was lower-grade wood that could be used for products such as flooring or pallets, he said.
Roush views markets for such timber as important to forest management. Without buyers for lower-quality trees, he said, loggers have more financial incentive to remove the most valuable trees while leaving poorer-quality ones behind, a practice known as high grading.
Without a low-grade market, Roush said, “you kind of are just high grading the woods, so you’re just cutting the best trees and leaving the worst trees, which in the long run creates non-healthy forests.”
He also sees a role for smaller logging operations like his own.
Roush cuts trees by hand and uses relatively small machinery to move timber. He said that allows him to work on smaller parcels that may not be financially practical for larger operations using heavily mechanized equipment.
“There’s not very many people that hand cut trees anymore and use small skidders or tractors to get the wood out because they don’t see it as economically viable,” Roush said.
For Roush, who also farms, the work is part of a broader view of the rural economy. He said farming and forestry were once more closely connected, with some farmers turning to logging during slower parts of the agricultural year.
“I think that forestry and farming used to go hand in hand,” he said. “A lot of farmers in the winter would become loggers.”
Roush said he is also interested in keeping more timber within the regional economy, with trees harvested nearby, processed at nearby mills, and ultimately used closer to where they grew.
He believes timber harvesting can also be misunderstood as inherently detrimental to forests. Selective cutting can encourage new growth and create wildlife habitat, Roush said, though forest management must also account for problems including invasive plants and deer browsing.
“I think that there needs to be more education around forestry in general,” he said.
The Gallatin harvest includes about 700 trees, according to Roush. He estimated that completing the job would ordinarily take him four or five months, and he had removed only a fraction of the marked timber before the accident.
Roush said he intends to return to logging after he recovers and will complete the Gallatin job.