I'm not sure forests being cut down is the problem these days. Wood is one of the most renewable and sustainable materials out there. Old growth has been cut down, or become out of most people's price range at this point in NA, but farmed fast growing pine is cheap and sustainable. Perhaps NA has more land to support such farms though.
Finding better trees to farm might help. It might be easier to get people to choose something other than cutting down old growth forests if the alternative wasn't white pine.
I take the point. Removing land from the potential to be developed is different from removing land from production.
Not that anyone is saying this directly, but I disagree with the argument that good, productive land left fallow is better than good productive land that is producing.
My brother makes a living and feeds his family based on his wood lot. Traces of original settlers from nearly two hundred years ago are found throughout the forest. Which is to say, it is pretty obvious now that it was not suited for farming.
But as forest, it is wonderful. There are at least six species of viable commercial trees at scale. Maple, oak, cedar, black cherry, pine. Most original species, or those introduced by the original indigenous people or the first settlers. The crab apple trees pop up in strange places.
My brother has a government approved forestry management plan that takes from the forest each year far, far less than what the forest produces. The forest will remain diverse and support a family well, indefinitely.
The trees are coming out in a managed way that is creating trails, with clear evidence that wildlife is making good use of the trails. Across the forest, he has installed a wide assortment of habitat for species at risk, birds, bats and others, several of which had not been seen in the area for generations - and they are being used! Under the managed forest, wildlife is returning in which there is no evidence had been there for at least two generations. This wildlife is moving into the adjacent conservation authority land, not the other way around.
If this was not an owned and managed forest, this would be happening at a much slower rate.
If I had to compare that against a plan that left the land alone, I'd tilt my hand to the one that actually supported people, in harmony with nature.
The argument is that the company could have preserved their forest because it would’ve been more profitable to keep it.
That old growth or near old growth forest of red woods shouldn’t be harvested at all is a separate issue, has little to do with Star Wars, except that Star Wars vi was shot in such a forest.
This is a very weak argument for something that is so damaging as letting the forest be destroyed for what is virtually zero economical gain to the population.
To extend that, there was an article here a while back about how many of the people growing these monoculture pine forests for paper production have stopped cutting them because gathering the pinestraw and selling it for landscaping purposes is much more lucrative.
> As to burning forests, fast growth wood can be harvested in decades not centuries.
Yes, but the main problem being pointed to here is the logging of old forests (they are nature preserves), this isn't about the fast industrial tree plantations of marginal ecological value.
> "save the trees" is probably better re-labelled as "save the old growth trees". Would you agree?
yes, we should most certainly protect old growth stands. they are very rare in the forests that i'm familiar with in the US east, and maintaining that ecology overrides any economic benefit gained from cutting the trees, imo. i'm in no way advocating for cutting down old growth stands, my comment was more in response to how we manage the forests that came after we cut the old growth.
> Would you consider tree farms as ecologically sound? (I'll note those are intentionally over-planted, homogeneous, and burn like crazy)
this depends on how the forest is managed. monocultures are bad and diversity is good (though a lot of stands have predominant species, naturally), forests need disturbances (whether through thinning or fire or naturally), etc. but a diverse forest can still be in rough shape. i'm getting at the edge of my knowledge fwiw.
> Which key facts caused you to change your mind?
i bought forest land and learned as much as i could about forest management, so there is too much information to list. i can share books if you're genuinely curious.
The lumber industries in the 90's were dead set on aggressively clearcutting old growth forest. Once environmentalists started having successes slowing them down, the lumber industry started using salvage logging exemptions to bypass environmental regulations and log protected areas. If a small fire ran through an old-growth area (a good and healthy event!), you could bet that it would soon be followed by an effort to cut down the 'damaged' surviving trees.
The Timber Wars podcast is a pretty great recent look at the forest politics of the 80's and 90's. I think it does a great job of presenting many sides of the issues. At the end, it demonstrates a much closer relationship between current working environmentalists and lumber operations, with environmentalists even working to keep a mill open at one point. (Because they, too, support selective logging and healthy forests.)
> Cutting an ancient forest, they are destroying an ecosystem.
Which is why this would have been a non-issue if they'd planted some Willow 10 years ago and harvested that instead. Energy forests are just another farmed monoculture.
"See the issue is, at least in the southern U.S. they clear cut nearly everything in the 1800s. There is very little old growth left."
I pity them. Real forest is something very different, than a wood farm.
With the recent droughts and dying out of the monoculture spruce, more and more mixed forest is coming back to europe. Idealism brought a little change, but the big drive was the huge economical loss of the timber industry that forced them to rethink how to do things.
> Wood is a renewable resource, it gets cut and replanted all_the_time. Pine is a 30 year cycle and our country is full of it. Can you tell me what restrictions you think are in place preventing tree farmers from growing and selling trees?
Nothing. But they also aren't growing the kind of wood your grandparents' furniture was made from.
The trees grown today are the fastest growing varieties available, and are correspondingly softer on average. You certainly couldn't dig your thumbnail into a plank of old growth pine like you can into a modern 2x4 (even though pine is technically a softwood).
I live rurally and know the difference, and guess what: the forest I'm in the middle of right now was actually cleared to fields by settlers 150+ years ago. Since it hasn't been farmed for more than 60-70 years, it's reverting back to a more natural state all on its own. I have watched over the past 40 years how the fields have been filled in with more and more trees, and, yes, it's wonderful. Old growth forests can regrow perfectly fine when left alone. Nature is awesome in that regard.
If the US actually gave the slightest care about preserving the environment, then they should rein in the companies that are destroying the environment with no chance of nature being able to recover. Cut back on the amount of oil being pulled from the ground and burned, stop bleeding all the rivers dry because of century old water rights, stop creating newer and worse pesticides and stop building bigger and bigger SUVs for the love of god. That it's being done on softwood lumber is entirely a protectionist measure. It has absolutely nothing to do with the valuing the environment; it only matters because the lumber industry has a vested interest in maintaining high prices.
I thought they mainly used fast-growing pine plantations planted specifically to harvest for paper.
(Which still isn't 100% ideal, because monocultured pine isn't friendly to the local species and they're generally devoid of animal life, but way better than clearcutting wild forest.)
> If you removed plantations from the listed forests, people would be shocked.
The vast majority of Canadian forests are not plantations and are, in fact, actual natural forest.
In fact, we learned our lessons about "mono-culture tree plantations" in the 80s and a lot of replanting is mixed except in areas that already had naturally occurring mono-cultures.
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