>>1172087>Do we really still clearcut? I remember reading somewhere the amount of woodland in America has actually increasedClearcutting isn't necessarily a bad way to harvest timber. Clearcutting can potentially better replicate the natural disturbance of fire than overly selective logging. But, it isn't necessarily always the best way to go about things.
There might be more forest cover today in much of the US than say, 50-80-100 years ago, but you have to realize that a massive amount of the eastern deciduous forests were clearcut. And so from that baseline there is more forest today. But from a pre-European arrival baseline -- we have much less forest today.
There's also been some massive ecological shifts with the practical extinction of species like the American Chestnut tree; not to mention the loss of the Passenger Pigeon (probably there were more passenger pigeons in North America than all other birds combined).
In general, in North America, a lot of forestry has sort of levelled off in terms of total forest area, but we are continuing to cut down old growth forest. In most forests it doesn't make economic sense for forestry companies to wait until forests become mature before they harvest, thus forest are being logged when they are either old growth, or somewhere in the 40-80 year old range. This means that the average age of forests across the continent continues to decrease.
Changes continue today. Invasive species and climate change are big ones. The eastern hemlock tree is dying from the south moving north as the fucking little Woolly Agelid invasive pest is wiping them out... perhaps my fav tree....
