This consists of a mechanical device that affords high mechanical advantage, a winch or capstan with ratio of 50 to 1 or better is used (old army truck winches have been found ideal).
Construction is simply by direct powering these winches with 8 to 16 HP gasoline engines for lightness and portability. The winch and engine are set on a common steel base with provisions to anchor the contraption to suitable existing trees or a buried “dead man” (a log buried and spiked down to afford good anchorage).
Operation:
A good anchorage is chosen
near of river bank - for easy transport of usable tree trunks and for easy disposal of branches
near a suitable big, strong tree
The equipment is positioned and secured to a good tree and spiked to the ground.
The main cable is fed out - 3 or more secondary cables are used by separate teams. These secondary cables have easy attach and detach systems with main cables.
As soon as one team is ready, the tree is pulled down and dragged to a clearing area.
Secondary cable (engaged) is detached and the primary cable again fed out for any ready secondary cable.
It should be noted that the tree is not pulled down by the low main trunk but from about 3/4 to the top - in a place where the tree will not break yet give good leverage for the winch to pull it down wholly. For extra large trees, anchor roots opposite the winch may have to be cut if the winch cannot pull the tree out entirely.
The site of the winch set-up is transferred every now and then where practicable.
There may be 2 to 4 teams handling the secondary cables (hooking up to trees and unhooking them when uprooted trees reach the clearing area). A number of people are employed to clear the area of downed trees.
This system is particularly helpful as it clears areas not only of trees but also of stumps most commonly seen in newly developed fishponds. This also prevents the soil and water turning acidic due to rotting of roots and stumps left if clearing consisted of cutting trees. The pond turning acidic is specially true in ponds where predominant trees are high in tannin such as Rhizophora, Nypa and Bruguiera. This system also yields the area to easy mechanization for excavation or levelling with the absence of trunks, stumps and roots. Although the system appears cumbersome and laborious yet it is labour saving in that hauling of trees are centralized to several points where the winch is set up. It also saves years of efforts to dig up the stumps if trees were only cut down.
FIGURE 14 a
TREE PULLER
