Do you beieve that humans can harvest forest resources in an enviromentally friendly way?"?

Question

Do you beieve that humans can harvest forest resources in an enviromentally friendly way?"?

Answer 1

I know without question it can be done.  We do it on our farm all the time.

When I met my husband, he was a helicopter mechanic.  The helicopter was either fighting forest fires, or hauling out redwoods from selective logging.

If you fly over a redwood forest that has been selectively logged the year following, you would be very hard pressed to tell.  The smaller redwoods that were around the one that was logged have grown tremendously, because they suddenly have more water, and more sunlight.  

If logging is done correctly, it actually makes forests healthier, and extremely productive.

~Garnet

Permcaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years

Answer 2

Yes, you can extract lot of products from forest, without cutting trees like honey, medicinal and industrial raw material from tropical forests, depending which part of the world you live in!

Answer 3

Yes, just like there is always a solution to every problem. If we are going to cut a tree lets make sure it is old enough to be cut and always replace it with a new one.

Answer 4

Yes, we have been doing so for years. There are MORE trees now then there were at the turn of the 1800's. Clear cutting is the worst though. I was a gold miner in the back country of California and have seen the worst of it with my own eyes. They leave nothing but torn up dirt where the forest was. The erosion clogs up the rivers after it rains and leaves gullys down to bedrock on steep hillsides. Select cutting is best. They can take all the trees they need, plant more and never be without a forest at any time during or after the operation.

Answer 5

Yes, and if the forest is to stay healthy it must be harvested with good practices.  Look at CA, seems like there is a forest fire every year, much because a lot of the land is not managed. Under brush builds up, then one spark in an over crowed forest, and the not only do the leaves on the ground burn (which can be healthy) but the shorter under story leaves burn and provide a path to the crown of the forest, causing a crown fire. A crown fire can not be put out,only contained, it has to burn out leaving nothing but ash, and dead trees.

another disadvantage to never cutting the timber is that the biodiversity will suffer as the shade tolerant trees squeeze out the non shade tolerant trees (assuming trees not fire to wipe level it all)

A properly managed stand of timber will have the worst trees (sick, damaged or defective trees) removed at each cutting, only taking the prime timber as it reaches maturity.

Clear cutting should only be used as a last resort on stand of timber that have been hi-graded (cutting only the best timber, and leaving the sick and low grade to reproduce) repeatedly.

As proof, there is a tribe of American Indians out west (wish i could find the magazine that the article is in) who have been managing there land for 150 years, and NASA now uses there property boundary to focus satellite telescopes on because of the sharp line marked where there property meets land that wasn't managed.