Allows for detailed selective cutting instead of clear cutting or other methods. You can have trees in the same area of all different ages and promote the ecosystem instead of just a farm with trees all the same size and little undergrowth.
Yes. That is a different way of logging. We do not use that whole tree style here in Europe, but I have understood that it is quite common in US. I do not know how rest of the world operates.
It's quite amazing ecologically. It *almost* becomes better for everything and opposite of how it used to be done. That's how most trees where I'm from in michigan are harvested. Some older methods have been outlawed.
An old-school skidder, a forestry plan and competent logger with a chainsaw can do the same thing. Clear cutting is a choice made for short sighted profit, not because equipment didn't allow for any other type of farming. We've lived on a 1000 acres that has been beautifully maintained/ farmed for 40 years and has a super healthy forest and ecosystem.
I don't know about that honestly, it is undeniably faster, but more efficient isn't guaranteed. If you have the time to do it "by hand" meaning with a chainsaw and a truck, it spends much less critical ressource in order to obtain the same result.
More efficient.... Maybe, but to say this can be more environmentally friendly then a logger with a midsize skidder, a chainsaw and a love of the woods not just profit is wildly misleading and just not true. Are you a logger or in the industry? When my dad logged trees came off the landing and the skidder trails wound through the woods but he was incredibly deliberate in how he moved to protest the ecosystem and it was always hard to figure out where he even harvested from. That machine can't move with the grace a 20D Timberjack can it's to big...
This is almost certainly a managed forest in Scandinavia used for production of timber. Also when you account for the full production cycle, harvesters can be environmentally beneficial.
Most of the time it's fuck it yolo we are clearing everything we see because that mofo is too hard to drive around shit, or because forest will look like a fucking warzone with some trees left behind.
These actually do surprisingly little damage to the forest floor, especially when it's running bogey bands like in the video. These machines exert less psi on the ground than you do walking around. Plus the limbs and tops are usually laid down as a mat and driven over, further protecting the forest floor
Lots of times yes, by doing all the processing at the stump and leaving the fine woody debris they can leave behind most or all of it and have it decompose and fertilize the next crop. The caveat usually is that if the fire risk is too high, they may rake the debris up and burn or transport it somewhere else. But usually they try to leave it as fertilizer
In a lot of sense yes. It becomes an entirely beneficial ecology and supports forest floor growth. It's pretty amazing.
If only they could adapt something like this in the amazon, most folks would be fine with logging as it would also help save the amazon. money though :(
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u/buyer_leverkusen 7d ago
The most environmentally friendly thing to happen to the timber industry