Chris,
I am not sure of what you say, nor what background you have to say it. .
The traditional and correct forest management is based on continuos
cleaning and selective harvesting. The only base for an agricultural type
of replanting and harvesting is the clear cutting, which only been practised
for around 50 years.
The cycle is 20 to 30 years for clear cutting and replanting. 4-5 generations
is then a period of over 100 years. This means that we still have around
50 years more, to see if your statement is valid for trees. We know that
this is about true for normal farming with yearly planting and harvesting,
for some species it can be 2-3 times a year.
For trees, it is more complicated than this. I do not see any natural cycle
that supports your statement. The natural life time for pine trees are
hundreds of years.
Hakan
At 08:28 PM 7/6/2005, you wrote:
>Trees are renewable and the lumber industry now
replants more trees than it takes.<
The only problem with repanting trees, period, that i'm shocked no one has
mentioned (unless i missed it), is that the earth in a particular area can
only support 4-5 generations of trees before the soil is completely
exhausted. Trees take more nutrients out of the soil to grow than just
about anything else, and after several generations they will NOT grow any
longer. So yeah, replanting after clear cutting is nice and all, but after
a few times at the the soil stops growing... anyhting...
And as far as deforestation goes, i'm more worried about places outside
developed countries where no one really cares if trees are replanted. A
lot of the slash and burn taking place in the rainforest is regular old
people who are trying to grow food or make money, clearing land for cattle
and farms. Those people don't replant trees, and they aren't part of a
multibnation company with lots of enviromental regulations to uphold.
_Chris N
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Joe Street
To: <mailto:Biofuel@sustainablelists.org>Biofuel@sustainablelists.org
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 11:55 AM
Subject: Re: [Biofuel] How many trees were killed to build your home ?
Hi Hakan;
100% in agreement with all of that. Clearcutting IS bad, I thought I
made that distinction. It is also true that clearcutting does not hurt
bears or elk. Selective cutting and even the use of helicopters to
remove the odd massive tree are being used which is normally cost
prohibitive. But then again I guess my attitude is that basing
everything on dollar cost is not the right attitude for how to live in
this world. I bet lumber is more expensive in areas where selective
logging is being carried out as the norm. But that is a good thing and
makes people less wasteful when it impacts thier pocket book.
WRT your comments r.e. the treatment of animals yes and factory farming
techniques are easy to ignore when your meat is only seen as a nicely
packaged 'commodity' on the store shelf rather than the reality of
inhumane treatment animals experience in thier short lives at our
hands. We just don't look carefully enough at what we are doing and we
are encouraged not to.
Joe
Hakan Falk wrote:
>
> Joe,
>
> Only a couple of complementary things,
>
> The Elk an Moose also like clear cut, but they are very bad for
> forest management. They eat the top of the newly planted trees.
>
> Clear cuts are also bad, since it often result in that the top soil
> is washed down the streams and over fertilize them. this in its
> turn results in greater vulnerability to the acid rains from industrial
> areas, that kills our lakes. The only reason for clear cut, is the
> adoption to modern machinery.
>
> Proper forest management was developed in Southern Germany
> around 200 years ago and was implemented in Sweden 150 years
> ago. It has proven its viability, but clear cut was not a part of the
> those methods.
>
> Why we get a large amount of bushes etc. in clear cuts, is not
> because of more sunlight, it is because a lack of pines to control
> the vegetation. The pine tree is releasing chemicals from the needles
> it drops, that limit the under vegetation and give the pines the
> space and nutrition to grow. It is their way of fighting the competition
> and only allow species that are good for them.
>
> Fires have always been a natural part of the forest cycle, to keep
> the ground relatively clean and add nutrients. This is also done in
> good forest management, which starts to be a thing of the past and
> had to give way for the use of large machines.
>
> All of this and much more, are to be found in the biofuel archives
> from earlier extensive discussions. No need to repeat it in full.
>
> Harvesting properly managed forests for building material, has been
> proven viable for more than 150 years. We are also "killing" plants
> for food like bread etc. and the way the subject provoke is misleading
> and ignorant. We even "kill" animals to eat, but the real abuse is not
> that we kill them, it is often worse with the way we let them live.
>
> Hakan
>
>
>
> At 04:15 PM 7/6/2005, you wrote:
>
>> Hi Chris;
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> <>Granted a mature forest supports a
>>>> <>different ecology than a second growth but for instance studies have
>>>> <>shown that there is more food for bears in a clearcut zone than
>>>> there is
>>>>
>>>> in a mature forest.<
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> i don't see the relevance of this. you could make the same argument
>>> for
>>> garbage dumps. does that mean we should be sending all these huge
>>> barges full of
>>> waste to the canadian wilderness? who conducted these studies? and
>>> who funded
>>> them?
>>>
>>>
>> Well here in Canada there is a very strong movement for the
>> preservation of wildlife habitat and bears are a favorite focus
>> point. The welfare of bears seems to have become a symbol of
>> environmental awareness for some folks, so much so that due to
>> restrictions in hunting regulations we have a situation in northern
>> Ontario where bears are litterally trying to break in to people's
>> houses. There is a misguided notion that clearcutting forests puts
>> the bear population at risk and this is clearly an example of public
>> misinformation which is gladly exploited by those who would like to
>> see all logging in this country put to an end. I admit I don't know
>> about the details of the studies I mentioned but I can get
>> references. I am speaking from experience though. I spend a lot of
>> time roaming around the forests of this country and I have come
>> across bears many times and often enough to have a general sense of
>> the likelihood and frequency of such encounters in a remote forest
>> of Canada be it hardwood, softwood or boreal. Let me tell you
>> walking around in a clearcut in northern B.C. is a different
>> experience where it is routine to see bears EVERY DAY and often
>> several times a day, so much so that it requires a different attitude
>> to being out there. Clearcutting results in a more plentiful food
>> supply for bears so much so that they are beginning to overpopulate
>> which is also not natural and is a problem in itself ( for people AND
>> bears). I used this example not to say that clearcutting is good but
>> rather just to illustrate that there are misconceptions about the
>> lumber industry destroying habitat and threatening the extinction of
>> bears which are pervasive and obviously untrue. I guess I can't
>> blame ecoterrorist mouthpieces like David Suzuki for using the same
>> fear mongering and disinformation tactics to arouse us that the
>> wealthy commonly use to keep us all hypnotized with our faces in the
>> food trough of excess. But I don't have to like it.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> forest fires have been sending co2 into the atmosphere for millenia,
>>> but that
>>> isn't what has precipitated global warming. furhtermore, in the
>>> case of
>>> north america, fire has been one of the primary evolutionary
>>> forces. the
>>> ecosystem of this continent has a sort of co-dependency with fire;
>>> sort of like a
>>> purging/renewal mechanism. in fact, there are certain conifers
>>> which need the
>>> high tempatures of a wildfire for their cones to open and release
>>> the seeds.
>>>
>> Yes the Jack Pine cone requires heat to release it's seeds and after
>> a fire a similar thing happens to the burnt area due to opening up
>> the forest floor to sunlight as what happens after mature trees are
>> removed although the ground is not torn up and looking like an ugly
>> wound on the earth as a clearcut does. ( If you've never seen one up
>> close you can't imagine how ugly it is). Many scrub plants and berry
>> bushes suddenly shoot up where they couldn't grow before due to lack
>> of light. You are right that fire does beneficial things but my point
>> was that something useful to human life is also lost and we still
>> have the need for it so we will still take it from somewhere else
>> resulting in deforestation in two places. If we were to go in and
>> selectively remove the largest trees which are most likely to get a
>> lightning strike and have the most board feet of lumber we can reduce
>> the loss to fire, keep that CO2 sequestered, and make use of the
>> wood simultaneously. More and more this is becoming an approach the
>> logging industry is taking. It is more costly than clearcutting and
>> hence would result in an increase in luber costs for the consumer
>> which is something I eagerly applaud. I smile when I consider the
>> day when our cost of living will skyrocket in this society. As it
>> should.
>>
>> Having said this I also want to say that I agree we should set asside
>> certain areas like the old growth coastal rain forests with the huge
>> douglas firs and sitka spruce that escaped the last glaciation and
>> are something truely wonderful to behold and spend time in just as we
>> do with other natural wonders.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> i don't know about this, but i've kind of always assumed that a plant's
>>> 'oxygen cycle' and 'co2 cycle' pretty much cancel each other out.
>>> but there's no
>>> denying that trees sequester large quantities of carbon (breaking
>>> down co2 to
>>> do so, no?).
>>>
>> Yeah if only humans were as smart as plants........
>>
>> Joe
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