This horse logging debate is, sometimes, tiring.
But it is an interesting concept as well. When I am looking at a unit, I look at how it ought to be cut (silviculture), how it will be cut (economics) how it ought to be logged (harvest sytem), and how it CAN be logged given certain factors like harvest systems available social scrutiny.
Different systems have diffferent advantages and disadvantages, there are physical and economical limitations to different projects. Appealing to a landowner's emotions (i.e. got to log with horses) is no more respectable or appropriate than appealing to fear (i.e. arborist suggesting tree removal because needs work....) I will use logic and education rather than succumbing to opinions and emotional preferences. Social constraints to real forestry are real, how we deal with them is up to those of us participating in the industry.
If you want to do the best for the land, the forest and the landowner, look at what % of the job will be recieve significant disturbance from which harvest sytem, which harvest sytems will allow for the best application of silviculture, often with a restorative element forthose with mulitple objectives, and whaat will yield the landowner a competitve value for their timber.
Ifyou were to log with horses the places I have cut for yarders, helicopters, forwarder systems, and so forth, you wouuld have extreme environmental degradation. Each system has its place. Almost everywhere I've cut has been cut before and in the good spots, not since the first time it was logged somewhere between after the civil war and about 1910- when all of Appalachia was done and everyone headed to the lake states, then out west. The logging that occurred then would NEVER be allowed now due to environmental degredation. Horses and men and water quality were ENTIRELY disposable, it was not romantic.
Animal powered extraction has its niche. Its a very small niche limited severely by $/ton capability which is dicated principally by slope, skid distance, and avg, stem diameter (stand perameters and prescription applied). Other systems can participate in far better restorative forestry across a far more vast proportion of the landscape.
Niche.