OK, how is that "done right"? Please tell us.
Did you know that the lumber industry plants more trees than it cuts down? That there are more forest now than 70 years ago?
http://sharplogger.vt.edu/virginiasfi/faq.html
C'mon, dude. That was simply a chart showing different harvesting methods. His point was that done right, forest cutting can be beneficial, not that this was a picture of such cutting done right.
There are corporations who excel at this sort of thing. Anderson Tully for instance can take a million board feet from a forest and leave it looking like old growth, because of their ethic but even more so because of their products. Sustainable harvest of hardwoods for high grade lumber needs hardwoods grown in mature forests, because the canopy encourages young trees to spend their energy growing up toward the light rather than growing spreading limbs to better catch the light. By selectively cutting young but mature, straight trees overshadowed by huge old trees, Anderson Tully can harvest very high quality timber without damaging the forest, and it will naturally regenerate a new crop of high quality timber. It's even good for the forest, since the new growth encouraged offers excellent and accessible browse.
However, there is very little profit compared to simply clearcutting. Quality companies like Anderson Tully, who cut the lands they own, are in it for the long haul, and are actively seeking the highest quality timber will forgo that quick profit to guarantee a long term supply of the highest quality timber. But the highest profit will always come from clear-cutting, and unless restrained from doing so cash-strapped states will tend to go for the high return much more often than the federal government, which can simply print a new batch of cash or call Uncle Chang.
Once clear cut, a forest takes hundreds of years to fully regenerate. The first trees to grow are those smaller opportunistic species which grow quickly. Typically the hardwoods naturally regenerate, depending on browser bioload, but as they grow more slowly and are spreading out to compete for light they don't form the mature forest canopy. Only as those trees age and die are they replaced by the majestic, tall-rising trees of a mature hardwood forest that grew up in the original hardwood colonizers' shadow. For hardwoods that takes at least sixty years and often much longer, and then the faunal population (and the obligate shadow-dwelling flora) needs time to recolonize the restored habitat.
I believe that Norseamd was referring to selective clearcuts, where foresters clear cut relatively small swaths among healthy forests as a means of increasing carrying capacity. Mature old growth forests are fairly unproductive and since we've removed so much of the wilderness, we need our National Forests to support more animals per acre. (Especially big, tasty animals like deer and elk.)
Sure, but comparing the hybrid quick growing pine trees that are the staple of "reforestation" by private corps. aren't a replacement for old growth trees, like maple, oak, walnut, etc. Those hardwoods have decades of growing before they're worth seeking out and cutting.
And it's those tree species that are highly prized for their value in furniture building, among other things....certainly not in home building, which is mentioned in your linked article. That wood is almost exclusively pine.
You do know tree farms are harvested about once every ten years, on average. That's how long it takes the hybrid pines to grow enough to be commercially viable for harvesting. So, it's rather disingenuous to crow about how we've got more land planted with trees than any other time in our history, which is correct, but leave out what these trees actually are....a very less desirable tree replacing more valuable, slower growing trees that will never be replaced.
I don't think that's correct. Last I read up on it, typically it takes sixteen to twenty years for the structural changes that makes lumber valuable. Pure pulpers might take trees that are younger, but that market is heavily declining anyway as the Chinese take over the printing market. Young pines are not a very valuable commodity in today's market.
I resent that!!!!!!!
Fern
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