HARVESTING HELPS CORTES FORESTS: A Follow-up

Here’s a few more thoughts from your Malcolm Gladwell termed, on-Island expert in Forest Science.

The intent of harvesting trees is to remove the trunks, take the wood, and leave the small branches and foliage behind, for this is where the nutrients are. The decomposing small litter adds to the soil and supports growth of the next forest.

Wood, that wonderful aggregation of cells that nature evolved to give trees tallness (like the legs of a windmill), is not nutrient rich. Wood, like its building counterparts of steel and concrete, is relatively inert. Wood, because we produce it, is the most sustainable of building products. Wood lasts and stay sound for hundreds of years if a good roof keeps it dry.

Making up facts or creating narrative from photoshopped pictures will not help the quality of our decisions or our forests. It will not help the diversity of our forest ecosystem or the relationships between the organisms of this place.

Old-growth is valuable because of its deemed scarcity; however, like too much of a good thing, an estate of single-aged forest (whether young or old) is not what we need. A single aged forest is a less desirable outcome than having a forest with blocks of different ages; that reflect complexity like some “coat of many colours”.

John Drew