Tree farms are also not a forest. There's no real ecosystem there. They're just rows of commercially viable trees planted and left until they're old enough to harvest.
They're not forests. They are monocultural tree farms. Better than nothing, assuming the harvested carbon is used sustainably, but they're nothing like a natural forest, spruce or not.
Tree farms are no different than other farms in that respect, except for much longer harvest cycles. A corn field is a mono-culture with very little animal life, but most people don't have a problem with them.
Clear-cutting old-growth forests—yes, that's terrible and should never happen. But clear-cutting forests that were planted specifically to be harvested? That's fine, good even.
This is not the case, at least in Oregon. Our tree farms are generally healthy, left undisturbed for 40 or so years between harvests, and are parceled out so that entire areas aren't harvested at once. All state run timber sales are surveyed to ensure there are no endangered species present, and, are tagged to reasonably protect against runoff issues (can't cut all the way up to a creek for example). The straight row plantations you may have been referring to are generally for wood pulp, AKA toilet paper.
Note: I am not a ecogeek, I just have a brother in law who is a wildlife biologist and works at a firm that does this stuff for the state, and, I regularly recreate (dirt bike, mountain bike, deer hunt) in a few different "working forests" here in oregon. These working forests aren't pristine old growth, but then again I wouldn't dirt bike etc in a virgin forest either.
I have no problem with timber companies managing their tree farms, so long as they protect water ways (offsets), slopes (no clear cuts causing mud slides), etc. I also think we need new management practices (eg permit more smallers fires to reduce likelihood of huge fires).
My problem is when timber companies must extract every board foot from every acre, threatening critical habitat, from public forests. To add insult to injury, we (the public) build the roads, and sell the timber at a loss.
I wouldn't mind so much if the mythical "free market" was working, so that timber, mining, fishing, and ranching companies actually paid fair market price for the resources they're stealing.
Unless you believe rivers flow uphill into the mountains, farming has nothing to do with trees dying in the mountains. Salmon downstream in rivers have a complaint, trees upstream do not.
"Logging forests," "working forests" are not forests. They're tree farms. Calling them forests evokes a bunch of assumptions about conservation that are mostly not true about forestry trees.
We have a great deal of logging going on in temperate rainforests and there are whole swaths of the food chain that require moss growing on old growth trees. Clearcutting kills all of this. So does leaving a few trees intact, which is seen as some sort of improvement to conservation. It is not. Everything dies, it just dies slower. Most of the flora and fauna are adapted to full forest cover and high humidity. A copse of trees does not provide any of this. Summer comes and everything dries out.
We are still in need of a very different process for creating paper products. Fishing exclusion zones are an interesting model, but fish can move a lot farther than ferns, and a hell of a lot farther than moss and the habitat they provide. We may end up having to leaving a considerable amount of land intact (larger blocks, closer to everywhere) to avoid tree farm situations.
I'm not sure about the fishing industry but there's an odd phenomenon among loggers. Loggers hate tree-planters. It's as if it's a war on trees, and hippies are supporting the enemy. The notion that today's saplings are next-generation loggers' income never seems to take
I'm not an expert on the timber industry. I'm sure that there are sustainable lumber practices, but I have no idea what the dominant sources are today. Still, tree farms are not a replacement for the old growth forests that were destroyed throughout the US. It takes hundreds of years for an old growth forest to regenerate, if ever.
Tree farming is probably one of the biggest issues in the pacific northwest today. They spray Glyphosate (round up) after every forest fire to prevent Aspen from growing (a natural firebreak), and then they plant GMO pine monocultures. This + pine beetle + putting out any small forest fires, lead to massive fuel build ups, which leads to massive forest fires (and subsequent flooding in the winter). It's definitely not sustainable.
Yes, and industrial farming is a known major problem that wreaks havoc on the environment and in the case of animal farming at an industrial scale commits horrible atrocities. So yes, you are right... it is not just pulp trees at issue.
Modern tree farms are sparser than natural growth forest. The quantity they are optimized for is yearly increase of new wood per area as opposed to maximum amount of wood that will eventually grow once trees are mature and planting trees as densely as possible is not ideal for this. (That is, trees planted somewhat sparser grow faster and mature quicker.)
> Mind you, I'm not saying that it is not sustainable, just that we did not necessarily make it so. It just happens to play out.
Again in Finland, it didn't just play out this way, the current state of affairs is result of intensive government-led research into sustainable and effective forestry methods started in the 1920s. Back then, the forests were the most important export resource of the recently independent nation, we needed a lot of imports and therefore ensuring that there will be new trees to cut down was a national priority.
Trees are great, but when it is timber and other _avoid-carbon-tax_ interests driving it, you can be sure it’s being done with the priority of corporate profit rather than environment.
And generally speaking, it is safe to assume that mass monoculture systems are flawed, even if it takes 50 years for us to prove and illustrate those flaws.
My problem is when timber companies must extract every board foot from every acre, threatening critical habitat, from public forests. To add insult to injury, we (the public) build the roads, and sell the timber at a loss.
Lies, lies, and more lies. Have you even been to a cut down forest within the last 20 years? Streams have required easements, there are requirements for leaving a number of trees per acre and any logging roads are paid for by the landowner. The roads are a cost of the harvesting.
...actually paid fair market price for the resources they're stealing.
You act like it's a quick turn around. We are talking decades after replanting, there are very few industries that have to follow this. And then, after waiting all that time, you need to hope that the market isn't in the state that it's currently in. Domestic timber is in the dumpster right now due to foreign logs and a lack of new housing.
It's none of my business if Ikea wants to buy productive forest land and take it out of production.
However, I don't understand how it is any kind of signal of virtue.
Would it be virtuous to buy productive farm land and take it out of circulation?
How is forest land any different?
In a previous life, it would be broadly correct to say that I worked in the forest industry. My body still hurts when I think about it.
I worked for wood lot owners, felling trees, trimming off the branches, sectioning the logs, splitting the wood and then stacking it to be sold by the cord. These woodlots had been in operation for over 150 years. Same land, different trees. They still operate now.
I also worked as a tree planter, hired by small contractors working for 'big forest'. Us tree planters went in after the heavy equipment had ripped out the trees, tearing the land to shreds in the process. It felt like what ground would have been like after a B-52 strike, an eerie hell scape, but with an explosion of small plants and flowers with new access to the sun, deer and other wildlife roaming free, wondering at the strange human interloper. Sometimes wolves and bears, at which point it felt rather lonely, me with a Swiss Army knife (mostly for the fork) and my nearest crew mate being well outside shouting distance.
The churned up land we were planting had been pulp forest itself for over a hundred years. As I planted, others were taking soil and water samples. To the forest company, the forest was a long term asset and that it thrived was in their interest.
I didn't think about it much then, but others long dead had planted that ground before me. Those foot long trees I planted have long been harvested and new trees planted in their place.
Trees are like wheat, or corn, or quinoa. Except instead of being a once a year crop, trees are once every twenty five years or so.
Many”profitable” forests are monoculture that are not sustainable. To better understand the dynamic ecosystem of unmanaged forests, read The Hidden Forest by Jon R. Luoma
http://www.alexandramorton.ca/salmon-confidential-booklet/
Tree farms are also not a forest. There's no real ecosystem there. They're just rows of commercially viable trees planted and left until they're old enough to harvest.
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