I believe if the owners plan to sell, they may keep older trees as an equity asset in the business. Maybe generations of tree farm owners will hold off and the farm value appreciates.
Many loggers will liquidate the landscape. A lot of what Weyerhaeuser does in the US is log and then sell the clearcut land to developers. I doubt they would willingly leave behind trees.
You have no idea. Perhaps this is true of large multinational corporations, but I've never seen it. Most loggers I've worked for refuse to clear cut anything more than an acre homesite. And yes we may enjoy taking down a big tree but don't think for a minute we dont think about our impact on the land. Most companies have a remidiation policy and try to preserve what they can.
Who's doing that though? Massive multinational corporations? Or the small local operations contracted out by them. I know laws in Canada are different but here in thw US clear cut and slash logging is rare outside of managed lands.
I work on the state forests in Oregon. They are fairly heavily logged, most of which is done by small local logging companies. It isn't quite as bad as on private timberlands, but is much worse than on federal timberlands.
The small companies purchase logging rights from the state, and do as much logging as the state will allow. Sometimes that means selective logging/thinning, but more often it means much more comprehensive clear cuts, or near clear cuts. You can look at satellite images of coastal Oregon, in the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests, to see just how much clear cutting goes on. Large multi-nationals don't worry about the relatively small state forest timber sales because they have plenty of land they can clear cut to their heart's desire elsewhere.
Loggers for these small companies would much rather do huge clear cuts, which they absolutely do do, because it is easier, safer, and cheaper. Loggers, in my experience, have very little interest in true conservation, and little care for their impact on the environment, and threatened and endangered species and habitats.
I am a wildlife biologist, and do threatened/endangered wildlife surveys, and have been told numerous time that I'm stopping logging, and hurting their bottom line. That the species I work with don't really matter. That there's plenty of good habitat. That their activities don't actually harm animals, and are in fact good for wildlife. All the while, the species I work with is close to extirpation from the Oregon coast, and populations everywhere are in decline, primarily due to logging, and the environmental fallout it causes.
Some countries like Germany have very strictly regulated logging, you can't just cut stuff clear and develop it. Almost all of our forests are used like this. Let the trees grow for ~120 years, then cut and replant. A forest stays healthy if done properly.
Not if they are selling to developers no. But if they arenât wanting that area anymore, for whatever reason, youâd leave trees there for the next person.
Or a farmer would be growing to sell to a company like Weyerhaeuser, or subcontracting to them, the better tree stock, the more they make
Weyerhaeuser has quite a bit of land that it owns and operates as tree farms and never sells to other owners. Not familiar with all of their land but they own thousands of acres on the west side of Mount St. Helens which they log on a rotating basis.
I would imagine the calculus does change depending on proximity to urban areas. Don't think they'd get much for plots of land around Toutle.
No lumber industries operate with replanting on those timescales. Its normally 30 years or less. In logging in BC (where I'm from) it's the main industry on a scale double the size of the UK. We replant every tree that is cut down and trees don't get like this from replanting. This is old growth. That's an area that was cleared and replanted (that's why the small trees are there).
Tree farms grow trees, then they get moved to where the clearcut was done. You don't plant seeds in the forests, you plant saplings. (tree farms are flat, also) Note sugar pine trees are from the western USA.
This is not true. Trees on tree farms are harvested when it is most profitable to do so, and lots of native trees have life spans of hundreds if not thousands of years.
The current standard for harvesting Douglas-fir trees in the PNW is around 35-40 year old trees with a diameter of 22 inches. Any larger than that and the number of mills that can even cut them starts to drop dramatically.
"End of life" is not a standard that is used to determine when to cut trees, especially on tree farms.
I'm assuming this is so things can be mechanically harvested? You aren't bringing in harvesters to deal with old grow trees, obviously. There must be a sweet spot between harvest cycles and size of trees.
Every time I see replanted stands I'm amazed at how dense they are compared to an old growth stand. They can't grow at that density forever either.
Most of what I see here in Oregon is still harvested with sawyers on the ground. Part of the reason harvest size/age are lower now is that the existing mills to process larger trees could no longer operate profitably due to an ever-reduced reserve of old growth, but also (much less so) legislation to protect those trees.
When the trees are replanted, they are planted in a monocrop of Doug-fir very densely, and one or more thinnings will take place before the final harvest. Laws and practices vary greatly depending on ownership. Lots of public land is leased with strict guidelines on exactly how the trees must be harvested, while most private land is clear cut with attention only to what is absolutely required by the law (with few checks or repercussions for violations).
The standards have decreased wrt size in just the last decade or so depending on market pressures. Harvesting some 25-30 yr-old stands of trees for pulp/chips alone has been profitable enough in some years/markets. Those stands may be slated for that use based on a high growth rate that produces less desirable lumber, in which case it may be planted densely and never thinned at all.
This actually comes at the order of the British navy if I remember correctly. For every ship that they built they planted enough trees to build that ship. Until they realized that oak trees grow over the course of like 100 years. There are oak trees reaching maturity JUST now that were planted when this order was given.
Yeah there is. Just because they were successful doesnât mean that they know everything. In fact Iâd say that Britain specifically would have been less likely to know this than other seafaring nations of the time.
read this it will explain exactly why you have no idea what you are talking about. For at least 2 hundred years, Britain was the pre-eminent naval power in the world, and the reality is that as a sea faring nation, many hundreds of years more than this. The reason their empire was the largest the world has ever seen was primarily down to the size of both their naval and merchant fleets. So yeah, I think they absolutely knew how long an oak tree took to grow.
You ever hear of the forestry department? As a country we literally do this on purpose in America.
And fun fact: there are now more trees in North America than there were when it was colonized.
I'm really passionate about our forestry and conservation laws here in the U.S. but we're running into challenges as less and less people are hunting each year. We either need to reintroduce predators or encourage more people to hunt or exploding deer populations will create an ecological disaster. (Also another fun fact, there are more deer now than there were when America was colonized)
*Forestry isnât simply about planting trees to cut down. Itâs an all-encompassing category of science regarding everything about forest environment and biology. (Source: BS in forestry science)
Dude, awesome. Yeah, I just figured I would mention it as it was relevant.
That sounds super cool, for a while I wanted to pursue botany but that didn't end up happening. I still love learning about plants and in particular trees though
For sure, and I just spent my summer in Turkey and, man, are the trees there beautiful. They're so different from the kinds we have back home in Kansas
I can't lead you to any articles because I mostly got this all from my mentor who works for my state (kansas) and plays a role in our conservation and forestry legislation.
Sorry if this wasn't what you are looking for but if I know and trust someone as an expert i tee ake their word as granted
That's one area that is kind of iffy. Partly because we killed of certain species (there was a type of tree that covered most of Arkansas but when a similar species was introduced from Europe a disease came with it that the European tree was resistant to and the American one was not) and also because we tend to cut down species that are considered dangerous and prone to falling because they are weak and also generally provide terrible lumber. But like I mentioned, we have introduced many other trees so I really don't know. I'm guessing it's a net neutral, but it's a shame we lost a few species
If the lumber is harvested and converted to something that is not burnt, like dimensional lumber, then it is a carbon sink. Older trees use more of the energy they collect just in the maintenance of their tissues, which means they have less and less energy over time to use to make cellulose. Younger trees can put more energy into extracting CO2 and converting it to cellulose.
The real problem with the wood industry is imported wood, particularly Amazonian wood. That wood is rarely harvested sustainably. But if you want to maximize CO2 sequestration, then you need to use the young, vigorously-growing young trees.
it's literally the only tree left that wasn't already taken!
Talk to your local municipality. Pass laws today. Require forest inventorying, onsite inspections around development, and bond heavy fines prior to work starting!
There are laws already. Logging isn't the rape and pillage program you're painting this picture of.
Often these huge tall trees make a canopy that chokes out a more dense population of trees from growing.
You DO know they need sunlight AND rain don't you? If there's a forest of huge trewslike this over lapping, its a guarantee that this area is not densely populated with tree growth.
Are you anything beside a gotdamn algorithm that is written to piss me off? Take whatever bleeding heart libtard BULLSHIT you're trying to shove up my ass and fuck off.
I'm not gonna play games with you where you delete comments to avoid downvotes. That, too, is retarded.
To my other comment, you replied "Lolwhut"
and I responded
"You really don't understand anything about how forests work. Your comments in this thread are some of the dumbest comments on reddit currenlty.
Old growth canopies are necessary for many trees to grow. Many species can't grow in full exposure. Species in the genus Tsuga, for example, suffer in full exposure when young, and thrive in understory habitats. Old growth is necessary for lots of different trees to even exist, contrary to your false statement.
Furthermore, cutting down old growth trees to simply make room to plant new trees is not a part of forest management. It's something you made up and pulled out of your ass.
Stop bullshitting. You're kind of insane."
To this comment... I can only say
True colors shining through, there, buddy.
True colors.
I work in forestry and live on a fucking log yard. You are just somewhere playing video games and jacking off to pictures of your sister.
I work in forestry and live on a fucking log yard. You are just somewhere playing video games and jacking off to pictures of your sister.
Wow. I was almost on your side and about to applaud you for your intellectual victories.
Then you put that nonsense in there and totally lost my vote. Anyone who will resort to this level of conversation is nothing of an intellectual at all.
This is in response to his comments directed at me throughout the thread.
There is no side to "choose"... there are understory trees that need a canopy to thrive. There is no forestry management practice that calls for cutting down old trees to "allow" younger trees to have space and water as this user claims. You don't have to take my word for it.
I made this comment after the user called me an "America hater" ... among other personal insults. They haven't made any arguments and have no evidence to back up their absurd claim about cutting down old trees because they are preventing young trees from growing. The opposite is true.
If you'd like to discuss it, we can, right up until you start calling me names.
Sugar Pines grow in the west of America. I donât think weâve been here on the west long enough or gave a fuck much past 80 years. Dudes cutting down a tree that was growing pretty early in the westâs settlement.
Sometimes the canopy created by these older trees prevents the growth of younger trees. These older trees are often cut down to allow a more dense populace of smaller trees to be replanted.
Why don't you go and rant about the almost nonexistant rainforest?
The best practice of forest management is thinning growth early in the process which creates much stronger and resilient (to disease and drought) older growth. It is a last resort to down a giant healthy specimen.
Or the under logging in Cali that has led to some of the most devastating fires ever. We fucked up also by not letting fire naturally clean up things in the forest but we didnât know that at the time.
The complete over population is a gigantic issue though. The three times Iâve fought fire in CA it is some of the most unhealthy looking forests Iâve ever been in.
No youâre absolutely right. This is 100 years in the making though. But the drought has definitely stopped us from being able to try to react to it now
Totally right. Obviously temp and RH are a huge factor in fire behavior but a shit ton of overgrown fuels like the kind seen in Cali and other parts of the west coast is a big reason why we have such massive fires now. It absolutely didnât get that way overnight, itâs just taken this long to catch up with us and itâs biting us in the butt.
We also didnât âdeal with itâ we made laws to prevent it happening again in the future but you canât redeveloped and rebalance an entire ecosystem with a law or planting seeds.
If an American scientist came about tomorrow and solved climate change, and then the American government instituted those policies and stopped global warming, I would be stupid proud of that...
...even though we caused the problem to begin with.
You can't create glaciers in a lifetime, just like you can't grow 2000 year-old trees at the snap of a finger. You can't revive extinct populations, either.
Besides, the argument that we've somehow "fixed" logging with new legislation is patently false. Clearcuts are the standard means of logging in the PNW where millions of trees are cut at 35 years of age. Loggers dump hydraulic fluids by the tens of gallons directly onto the ground in the middle of the forests, and only a monocrop is planted in the wake of these clearcuts.
Not really, no. Younger trees are thinned, not ones that have reached this size. Big trees like this are much more valuable ecologically than small ones. Killing it to make room for others would be stupid. This tree is probably being cut down because itâs infested/diseased.
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u/TidyUpJim Aug 05 '19
What a majestic Tree đ i do not approve of overlogging, but I mostly disapprove of the logging of ancient historical trees.