THE ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS OF MODERN PINE PLANTATIONS
Soon to be published in the scholarly "Journal of Industrial Ecology" is a long technical article documenting the big opportunities for landowners and foresters to conserve forests for environmental benefits. If you give any thought to your impact on the world around you, this article is worth your serious study. Here are brief excerpts from it:
"...foresters have means to affect forest extent dramatically. Harvesting a bigger fraction of trees and even cutting more of the trees per hectare seem unlikely as well as unattractive means. Growth is the lever. Given the neglect of American timberland and thus the slow present average growth of three cubic meters per hectare and given the plantations already planted as a start and the opportunity to plant still more, the chance to produce more wood while sparing more forest is excellent....
"Great opportunities seem open for forestry to raise yields and so de-couple need for land from demand for timber....
"A 1% annual improvement in forest growth would compound the benefits of steady or falling demand by shrinking the area affected by logging by 1.5% annually....The environmental benefits of such sustained diligence include preserving a national treasure, sparing land for undisturbed nature to provide services to humanity and its fellow creatures, and sequestering carbon from the rich supply of CO2 in the atmosphere."
Authors are Iddo K. Wernick and Jesse H. Ausubel, Rockefeller University, and Paul E. Waggoner, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. For more information, get in touch with Dr. Ausubel, The Rockefeller University, Box 234, 1230 York Ave., New York, NY 10021-6399, phone 212+327-7842, fax 212+327-7519, e-mail: phe@rockvax.rockefeller.edu.
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