What’s the world’s most valuable renewable resource? It’s something everyone uses in some form every day, from books to musical instruments to homes to a heat source to food. It’s trees! From fruit trees to trees for lumber. A thousand different species! From their tiny seeds we can grow a forest, an orchard or a tree farm.
Using modern horticultural practice (thinning, pruning, weeding, fertilizing, irrigation, disease control), we can double the size of a tree and triple its food production in half the time compared to nature. Covering our local conifer forest, a stand of evergreen trees can create a dense, dark canopy and deposit a dense layer of acidic needles thus smothering all plant life (except moss) and creating a dead zone. (See picture at local forestry office.) Whereas a deciduous tree drops its leaves, creating compost and letting sun in. When dominant, old-growth conifer forests create large dead zones, it becomes detrimental to plant and wildlife, and it’s time to remove these half-rotten, disease-prone trees, bust up the compacted soil and create a vibrant, new diverse forest. It’s good forestry practice, creates jobs and produces a useful product – lumber.
Dave Werner