Sec. 152.003. DEFINITIONS

In this chapter:

(1) "Service" means the Texas Forest Service.

(2) "Forest pests" means insects and diseases that are harmful, injurious, or destructive to forests and whose damage, if uncontrolled, is of considerable economic importance, and includes:

(A) pine bark beetles of the genera Dendroctonus, Ips, Pissodes, and Hylobius;

(B) sawflies of the genus Neodiprion;

(C) defoliators in the genera Datana, Malacosoma, Hyphantria, Diapheromera, and Galerucella;

(D) pine shoot moth of the genus Rhyacionia;

(E) wilt of the genus Chalora; and

(F) rots of the genera Fomes and Polyporus.

(3) "Forest land" means land on which the trees are potentially valuable for timber products, protection of watersheds, wildlife habitat, recreational uses, or for other purposes, but does not include land within the incorporated limits of a village, town, or city.

(4) "Forest" means the standing trees on forest land.

(5) "Control" means prevent, retard, suppress, eradicate, or destroy.

(6) "Infestation" means actual infestation or infection at conditions beyond normal proportion causing abnormal epidemic loss to present or future commercial timber supply or both.

(7) "Landowner" and "owner" mean a person who owns forest land or has forest land under his direction irrespective of ownership.

(8) "Forest owner" means a person who owns the standing trees on forest land, either by a present right or by a future right under the terms of a valid existing contract.

(9) "Tract" means all contiguous land in common ownership.

Acts 1977, 65th Leg., p. 2647, ch. 871, art. I, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1977.