To start with developed regions
stop using wood for fuel. This means
that fallen wood is no longer been hauled out.
After that they stopped cutting so aggressively. The result is that our forests are actually getting
older.
The woodlots I walked as a young
man had only rare mature trees. In the
previous century, the lots had supplied logs and poles and posts for the
hundred acre farms. It is all two or
three farms now and far less wood is used in that manner. That means that those woodlots have now aged
forty years and the lots are full of sixty to one hundred year old trees. Of course there is more mass.
What needs to be actively
encouraged today is actual good husbandry rather than benign neglect. Simply gathering in dead falls opens space up
as does general thinning and a healthier forest soon emerges. A lot of this has been done on planted
forests but certainly needs to be the practice universally.
As I have posted in the past, the
regeneration of the forests is continuing with or without us.
No comments:
Post a Comment