"Larry Caldwell" wrote in message
...
In article ,
writes:

Landowners with little vision
or education want to maximize income while leaving some trees. Cut the
big ones and leave the little onesresulting in a degraded forest stand.
Still it's "legal" - the land is "forested".

Market forces have pretty much mandated this style of management. There
is a $100 to $150/M penalty for delivering a log over 24", so it is not
feasible to grow large trees any more. Your choice is either clear cut
plantations on short rotation or selective cutting of any tree that gets
to 24" DBH.

It's crazy that the industry which once loved nothing but giant trees, now
won't take trees over 24". Perhaps if the forest owners cooperated and
agreed to grow large trees of very fine quality, the industry would take
them and pay good money for them.

Industry has always dominated "forest policy" when forest policy should be
dominated by an alliance of forest owners, foresters concerned about
biodiversity and good economics, and environmentalists. Industry has been
in the driver's seat thanks to disinformation- and the result is that North
America's forests are greatly depleted. The usual lame comeback that there
are more acres of forests than 100 years ago doesn't hold much water.




--
http://home.teleport.com/~larryc