Harvesting Operations to Forest Stands With Decreasing Productivity and Accessibility Raises Worries About Future Forest Sustainability

According to recent data, logging on B.C.'s Central Coast prioritized the highest value sites on the terrain during a 50-year span.

The gradual loss of environmentally valuable components raised questions about future sustainability and intergenerational access to natural resources.

Their research, led by SFU Ph.D. graduate Jordan Benner and professor emeritus Ken Lertzman, and published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that over time, harvesting operations moved to forest stands with decreasing productivity and accessibility, a phenomenon is known as "harvesting down the value chain." 

Logging down the value chain raises future forest sustainability concerns

(Photo : Steven Kamenar/Unsplash)

While the strategy, known as "high grading," is economically efficient, it contradicts many concepts about stewardship ethics in forest management, according to Benner, as per ScienceDaily.

However, the cumulative consequences of this historical trend, along with legislative reforms beginning in the mid-1990s, resulted in alterations in logging patterns that reflect a more stewardship-oriented approach.

The study focused on the competing economic and stewardship perspectives that exist in forest management, as well as how policy interventions to affect management play out on the landscape and their significance for long-term sustainability.

According to Benner, it is critical in forestry planning to recognize and incorporate the distinctive characteristics of residual high-value old growth, which represent increasingly uncommon ecological, economic, and cultural benefits.

We should fight to empower and assist communities seeking equality and benefits from their landscapes, particularly Indigenous people who have traditionally received a disproportionate amount of the value taken from their lands.

Benner and Lertzman's observations of forest management patterns are comparable to those of serial depletion found in fisheries and other natural resources, where lower-valued species replace those of greater value as they are depleted.

Humans have drastically impacted natural resources across the world through very particular consumption patterns: "We don't harvest arbitrarily; we tend to take first what is best or most economically effective, leaving an ecosystem deficient in those components," Lertzman added.

This has long-term ramifications for landscapes and the people who rely on them.

According to Benner, Indigenous groups are beginning to have a more important part in forestry and natural resource decision-making, which is long overdue.

However, the lengthy history of logging down the value chain has removed many possibilities for such decisions, such as the depletion of culturally significant huge cedar trees.

Lertzman added that productive valley-bottom old-growth forest plays important ecological and cultural roles in the environment.

However, in many regions, we lost the majority of this sort of forest early on.

As a result, our view of what the usual state has moved; we tend to normalize this depleted state in what is known as a 'shifting baseline' phenomenon.

However, we cannot comprehend the ecological context of our current actions until we acknowledge the past that has brought us here.

Also Read: Forest Outside Germany's Iconic Sleeping Beauty Castle is Dying at an Alarming Rate

What Exactly Is Sustainable Forestry?

Because the strategy attempts to preserve forests, the notion of sustainable forestry promotes the continued presence of forestlands, as per EOS Data Analytics.

In this sense, humanity may still profit from forests, but it must utilize the resource properly and repair it in order to do so for much longer.

Oregon, for example, was the first state in the United States to secure continuing forest usage.

The Oregon Department of Forestry created the Forest Practices Act in 1971, requiring wood-producing firms, among other things, to replant trees after harvesting.

The importance of sustainable forestry is highlighted via the advantages of forests to all living species on our planet.

Thus, sustainable forest management advantages are the same as forest benefits in general, with the significant distinction that people may enjoy them for an extended period of time.

Despite all of the benefits of sustainable forestry, worldwide deforestation rates are worrying, particularly in tropical latitudes, and agriculture is the greatest danger to forestlands.

Around 80% of global deforestation happens for agricultural purposes.

Because of the production of palm oil, soybeans, or cattle, the impact is most severe in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

This is why sustainable forest management in poorer nations is receiving special attention.

Related article: Tree Survival Strategy: New Study Sheds Light on How Forest Ecosystems Survive Damaging Winds