Green Group discussion

The Forester

What is Sustainable Forestry?

James Kraus

Hi James,

Good topic as many people would not know much about tree species or forestry operations.

Rather than promoting one book, I'd prefer if you could lead a discussion on the general topic. If readers want to find out more, they can access your book and those of other authors.

If you have time, you could start by showing the difference between ideally sustainable forestry and forest destruction, biodiversity loss or unsustainable practices.

I agree with Claire, James. Self-promotion belongs elsewhere. Use this opportunity to explain sustainable forestry to us. You will find more potential buyers that way.

http://www.ecowatch.com/plant-50-mill...

Afforestation in India - 50 million saplings planted in one day!

Clare wrote: "http://www.ecowatch.com/plant-50-mill...

Afforestation in India - 50 million saplings planted in one day!"

Now that's a world record I'd love to be a part of. (Does Guinness ever offer beer samples as an incentive? ;-)

Not that I know of Brian, but visit Ireland, tell us we did really well in the European football championships, and you'll be bought a pint!

Clare wrote: "Not that I know of Brian, but visit Ireland, tell us we did really well in the European football championships, and you'll be bought a pint!"

If only! My wife and I were lucky enough to travel to Ireland shortly after we got married. It was beautiful, breathtaking, and the pubs served dark nectar (I'm a big stout fan, myself).

Congrats on the football success! (Does that earn me a digital pint? ;-)

I'm sure it does. (pours) Slainte!

The Forester
Hello,
I have fallen behind with my correspondence on this site, sorry about that. I have been busy with a writing project. But I promise to come back & talk about Sustainable Forrstry.
Jim Kraus

Looking forward to it, Jim.
The more contributors, the better.

Clare,
I have copied the part of the text from THE FORESTER, that contrasts Sustainable Forestry with regular Commercial Forestry below. Hope this helps?
I started to read the Journal of Forestry and other professional magazines that had piled up over the years. I read articles on high-yield production forestry, which was the principal management method used to grow trees in northern Maine. A few articles were about sustainable forestry, a new management concept designed to protect and sustain the integrity of a forest ecosystem while managing and harvesting timber.
With sustainable forestry, cutting is limited to small segments of a forest or single slow-growing trees. This technique provides space, nutrients, and light for the remaining trees to grow faster, and leaves a variety of tree species, sizes and ages in a forest. Large trees are often left for reproduction, ecological, and aesthetic purposes. This practice maintains a diversity of ground plants to provide food and cover for wildlife. The outcome is an ongoing supply of timber, wildlife, water, recreation, aesthetic, and other forest values from a healthy forest ecosystem.
Harvesting in large clear cuts, artificially planting one or two tree species in uniform spaced patterns, creating an even-aged forest, spraying with herbicides to control unwanted tree and ground cover species, and other high-yield production practices were not acceptable in sustainable forestry. The high-yield method produced a large amount of wood from a monoculture crop of trees that generated large profits. Other forest values were not usually a major priority with this type of management.
Production forestry was about controlling nature. Sustainable forestry was about working with nature.
James Kraus

Claire,
Let me add a few more thoughts and comments.
Sustainable forestry was developed in the real world in the early 1990s. It might be considered the organic farming of forestry. The college forest where I taught forestry is now a sustainable forest.
Sustainable forestry is a third option of land-use management between locking land up as wilderness areas and doing commercial forestry practices such as clearcutting. Sustainable forestry allows cutting but it also utilizes a third-party review and inventory of ground plants which indicate that a forest is healthy from an ecological point of view.
The Forest Stewardship Council, website, www.fscus.org is one of these review organizations that you can check out on the web that provides this type of professional service. A forest is certified by this organization and the benefit is that the wood can be sold as Greenwood and charged a slightly higher price. Many small landowners like sustainable forestry because it keeps a forest in a healthy ecological condition and allows some harvesting, usually by the selection method. This harvesting method works nicely with other forest values such as recreation, wildlife, natural beauty, plant diversity, and some watershed protection.
My book, THE FORESTER, is about a man, a forester, who changes his environmental values and when he does this he decides that he no longer wants to practice commercial forestry and then decides he wants to practice sustainable forestry because it is more ecological acceptable to his new values.
After teaching forestry for 30 years and having my students debate economic and non-economic forest values I realized how important values and ethics are in the forest profession and in the American culture. I also wondered if it was possible for a person to change their environmental values and if so, what events might cause this to happen. I began to realize I was thinking more and more about the human relationship with nature and what this should or should not be.
So, 15 years ago I decided to write a novel about this subject. I wanted to show with a story how this type of value transformation might happen. I decided that a man would be motivated to change his values by a love for his wife, by the people he would meet, and his own personal experiences with nature. In other words he would take a journey that produces a transformation in his values, and that is what my book is about, a journey of understanding and change. It is also a love story and an adventure story.
Sustainable forestry simply provided an outcome for the forester’s value transformation and helped to produce a practical, real world story conclusion.
I hope this helps people in our group to understand what sustainable forestry is and what this book is all about.
James Kraus

Thanks James!

They plant a lot of trees in India because they burn a lot of wood as an energy source. They manage to keep planting more than they burn.

The forests have a lot of diversity which contributes to a large non wood forest product industry in rural areas. Unfortunately as the rural areas are modernized the forest areas lose their diversity.

One of the early uses of the term "sustainability" in forestry dates back to the 60's which was "sustained yield" which meant sustainable harvest, which supported sustain extraction of a renewable resource. The more recent term, "sustainable forestry"
Refers to forestry harvesting methods that are "ecologically sustainable" with the emphasis on maintaining a healthy ecological
Forest, much different than the older sustainable term. A continuous Yield is always desirable, but if you have an
Expanding population, sustainable yield & ecologically sustainability
Becomes A difficult plan to achieve. Is it possible, that we need to have more
Discussing on population control, I know a lightning rod topic,
But with 2 more billion more people Scheduled to arrive in 2050,
At some point we will need to include population increases in our discussion of sustainability, so I would love to hear some discussion
On this point, if not now, then When?