Cletuspsc
ArboristSite Operative
beat me to it
Discovery channel's "extreme logging"
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I can dig it but the show didnt say that. Tonight there is a whole bunch of people thinking that super trees are the way to go.
I can dig it but the show didnt say that. Tonight there is a whole bunch of people thinking that super trees are the way to go.
It's what's going to happen. There's no denying that. Big timber companies think in dollars...not in humanity or tradition. We're already logging plantation pine over here...not much but enough to see what it's going to be like. The trees are so much alike in diameter that they look manufactured. They're easy to mill I guess but they look like a load of fenceposts...and they're not much bigger, either.
I'm glad I won't be around to see the day when that's all there is. If our forests, and that includes both private and government ground, were managed better we'd still be cutting big timber 100 years from now...and a hundred years after that. Sustained yield is very doable. The potential is there and we have the science and technology to make it happen.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it, though.
windthrown
361 Junkie
Supertrees have failed in the past. When I was in a silviculture class at the OSU extention in Roseburg, we went on many field trips to stands in the area. We passed many failed attempts to grow KMX (Knobcone-Monetery pine cross) in that area, which was supposed to be super-fast growing and be the end all to to end all doug fir forestry in central west Oregon. Well, after 20 or so years, the trees just stopped growing. There are many stands there abandoned now, stunted at about 20-30 feet tall. Too cold for them to thrive there.
Similar to some stands I saw around central Califronia where people were trying to grow PNW Doug firs. Problem is that it is not cold enough there for doug firs to prosper. Another failed attempt at growing supertrees. The native doug firs around there are shorter and stouter, and tend to have multiple trunks (actually a sub-species). When I planted doug firs, we always used local seed sources for better trees. Early in the 1950s and 1960s, they tried planting all types of doug firs in the Tillimook fire areas, and that created a disaster. The trees are not adapted to the local environment, and many have grown into some weird stands that are hard to manage, and are now being thinned of the crappy non-local seeded trees.
Anyway, its one thing to predict some future super trees that will change silviculture practices in future, and quite another to actually do it. I think in NZ and Oz they have done well with Monterey pines, but it is very intensive forestry. They also have some super hybrid trees, the likes of which Monterey County, CA wants no part of. It is iillegal to bring any hybrid Monterey pines into that area, to avoid cross breeding with the wild/native trees there.
Also other attempts at introducing trees have failed, like the importing of eucalyptus into California from Oz about 100 years ago. It was all the rage back then. Now there are useless stands of Eucs all over California. They are invasive weeds. Some places have gone through great efforts to erradicate them, like on Angel Island north of San Francisco.
As Mel Brooks said in Spaceballs, "F:censored:k! Even in the future, nothing works!
Similar to some stands I saw around central Califronia where people were trying to grow PNW Doug firs. Problem is that it is not cold enough there for doug firs to prosper. Another failed attempt at growing supertrees. The native doug firs around there are shorter and stouter, and tend to have multiple trunks (actually a sub-species). When I planted doug firs, we always used local seed sources for better trees. Early in the 1950s and 1960s, they tried planting all types of doug firs in the Tillimook fire areas, and that created a disaster. The trees are not adapted to the local environment, and many have grown into some weird stands that are hard to manage, and are now being thinned of the crappy non-local seeded trees.
Anyway, its one thing to predict some future super trees that will change silviculture practices in future, and quite another to actually do it. I think in NZ and Oz they have done well with Monterey pines, but it is very intensive forestry. They also have some super hybrid trees, the likes of which Monterey County, CA wants no part of. It is iillegal to bring any hybrid Monterey pines into that area, to avoid cross breeding with the wild/native trees there.
Also other attempts at introducing trees have failed, like the importing of eucalyptus into California from Oz about 100 years ago. It was all the rage back then. Now there are useless stands of Eucs all over California. They are invasive weeds. Some places have gone through great efforts to erradicate them, like on Angel Island north of San Francisco.
As Mel Brooks said in Spaceballs, "F:censored:k! Even in the future, nothing works!
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