Yeah, I would have liked to hear the whole story too. Back in the early 90s an uncle of mine bought some land in a similar situation. A 3000 acre tract was divided into tracts of 100-300 acres and sold at auction, but all the timber was already sold and they had 2 years to get it out. He ended up with 500 acres of good land at under $400 an acre. He negotiated with the timber folks and bought back some pretty wide SMZs, but that turned out to be a bad investment as those trees were not able to stand up to the wind and a lot of them ended up down.

Still, he did the best he could and much of the second forest has been cut now.

The guy who bought the land next to him tried to thwart the timber company in everything they did. It was a constant battle, and he lost every round. They got their timber out and gave up on making him happy. I suspect the OP will end up like that guy.