It may come as a bit of a shock but logging has become the new best friend of our world's forests, according to the green community. Harvesting trees has now come to be a means of protecting the forests rather than the traditional notion that logging destroyed eco-systems, habitats and soil. Recently ecologist have discovered that the eco-conscious forestry has over all improved the health of the forests rather than letting them to sprawl at will. Sustainable forestry by definition is the stewardship and use of forests and forest lands in a way, and at a rate, that maintains their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality and their potential to fulfill, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic and social functions, at local, national, and global levels, and that does not cause damage to other ecosystems. But still their is controversy over what techniques shall be deemed sustainable.
Two very common techniques of logging include clear cutting and selective logging. Clear cutting is a controversial forestry/logging practice in which most or all trees in a harvest area are cut down. The controversy behind clear cutting spawns from being synonyms with deforestation. Clear cutting can have major negative impacts. These have been cited as soil erosion, poor quality re-growth, increased risk of pest epidemics, increased wildfires, loss of biodiversity, and loss of economic sustainability and increased environmental instability, loss of carbon contributing to global warming and so on. However clear cutting does have some benefits if properly executed is sometimes used by foresters as a method of mimicking disturbance and increasing primary successional species like poplar (aspen), willow and black cherry (North America). Clear-cutting has also proved to be effective in creating animal habitat and browsing areas, which otherwise would not exist without natural stand-replacing disturbances such as wildfires, large scale windthrow, or avalanches. The other common technique used by logging companies is selective logging. Selective logging is the practice of removing mature timber or the lessening of older trees to improve the timber stand. This system may be used to manage even or uneven-aged stands. Management objectives can include the protection of forest soils, maintenance or improvement of wildlife habitat, the increase of individual stem productivity, encouragement of regeneration / species diversity or the improvement of the visual amenity of plantations. Selection cutting may include opening up areas to allow tree species that require greater light intensity to grow but that are not large enough to meet the legal definition of a clear cut. Single tree selection logging is currently being used to limit the extensive damage that the pine beetles have caused in our own forests. By removing the infected timber it not only provides the foresting company with a sustainable product but also reduces the threat of more trees being infected. Despite some benefactors However, selective logging has fallen under serious criticism due to the destruction it is causing in the Amazon rain forest. Selective logging is seen as a gateway destructive practice, as it creates logging roads into the interior of forests leaving them accessible and vulnerable to other harmful human activities, like wildlife hunting and misuse of land. Furthermore, because one of the effects is to dry out the soil in the forest, selective logging has been linked to increased drought and wildfire vulnerability. "In 2005, it was suggested that selective logging actually
damages as many trees as full on clear cutting even though only a fraction of the trees are removed."( www.thebusinessplanconsultants.net) Many critics of selective logging see it as a thinly veiled commercial initiative to mislead eco-activists into labeling it sustainable with the least amount of change required on their part.
With such immense pros and cons it has made it very difficult for major global organizations, such as Forest Steward Council, to determine which technique shall be allowed. This lack of decisiveness has alternatively done more damage to the forests these organizations are so adamant about protecting, by permitting the continuation of illegal logging to flourish because of the lack of strict regulation policy. In recent years, illegal logging in the Amazon Rain forest has become a huge issue and a globally followed story. Illegal logging is responsible for much of the destruction and deforestation of the rain forest in Brazil, and recent reports suggest that the number of acres hurt by the practice is on the rise.
The solution needs to be an unbiased investigation into both clear cutting and selective logging
techniques to for once decipher which is really the greener; more sustainable option and what are other
options. It has been proven that current forestry organizations have an inability to come to a
consensus on what is the best practice, and therefore require a third party to make the decision
for them. Once the facts are collected, local, state, and federal governments need to be lobbied
to establish laws that reward green logging techniques and punish other practices. Perhaps a
system of tax credits, tax reduction, tax incentives could give loggers incentive to conform to
new policies that would result in a major benefits to the sustainability of our planet for us and future generations.
http://www.thebusinessplanconsultants.net/documents/Article-SustainbleLogging-CohesiveActionNeeded9-5-08.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_logging
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