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As a professional wildlife biologist I have the view of a scientist, not an environmentalist and am propelled forward in my thinking through the process of deductive reasoning and critical analysis. I have worked on the Northwet Forest Plan, helped to write the Aquatic Conservation Strategy to recover anadromous fisheries, and simply have taken numerous hikes in a daily interaction with old growth forests. The key to defininging, hence understanding, old growth forests is to view the landscape as a continuum of mixed ages of trees. An old growth stand is a multi-story community with trees of different ages, with multi-stages of canopy closure accompanied by ddowned logs and standing dead trees or snags of various sizes and heights. Sizes of trees arent important as all these fetures combined. Higher elevation stands do not fit the "eyes" sense of an old growth forest, but may function as one with all the aforementioned parameters.

Timber harvest is not the stand replacement event that was created with fire and wind in pre-settlement times. Planting after timber harvest with Douglas fir seedlings is not natural regeneration - it is creating a plantation of trees. But the following fact cannot be dismissed: in order to supply timber for houses which is required to shelter young couples who still are having babies and buying new homes (once the recession is over) then this is how the forest must be managed and this system of harvest will not create old growth forest.

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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