Sustainable Forest Management: Contemporary Approaches And Strategies

Selection Cutting

Discuss about the Sustainable Management of Forest.

Human civilization has transformed in ways unimagined by the virtue of trans-global urbanization and the nature has paid the price of it. The alarmingly increasing rate of natural disasters is the ripe evidence of this emerging issue (Higman, 2013). Time has come for the society to take heed of the repercussion of uncontrolled developmental procedures that has affected the natural balance of our environment.

Sustainable management of the forest can be defined as the use of forestlands and resources in a manner and rate that maintains the biodiversity, yield and regeneration capacity. (Long and Mock, 2012). This report attempts to highlight three contemporary takes to sustainable forest management and evaluate the pros and cons of it.

Sustainable forest management has expanded significantly ever since its onset in the 1990s (Kant and Albert Berry, 2005). Selection cutting method aids in the managing the continued growth of several age classes of trees within a particular stand. (Hahn and Knoke, 2010). Despite having few implementation issues, there are benefits that elevates the status of selective cutting, some of them are:

• Uneven-aged stands usually exhibit higher level of vertical structure that is preferred by various species of birds and mammals.
• These stands facilitate higher carbon sequestration levels
• Uneven aged stands are known to produce a higher level of concentrated flow of market and nonmarket woodland resources than even aged stands (Pelleetier et al., 2017).

Timber undoubtedly is a valuable and irreplaceable resource, and there will always be need for it. Selective cutting assures the discretion in uprooting trees, and ensures that the particular species has a chance to reseed itself. It also allows better yields to know which trees to log, and which ones to leave out (Higman, 2013).

One example of selection cutting can be the Canadian author on alternative forestry, Merve Wilkinson (Van gadow, Pukkala and Tome, 2012). According to him, he could harvest over 1670000 board feet of wood from his own property using selective logging. Research suggests that he could elevate annual growth percentage by 10 % due to selective logging; this example itself validates the viability of the procedure (Duncker et al., 2012).

Strip cutting is a method of clear cutting that explains the practice of cutting down all stems in a row that attempts to minimize the possibility of wind-throw. This natural forest management technique clear-cuts the narrow strips alternating with every harvest cycle of 40 years (Mori, Lertzman and Gungstafsson, 2016).

            This method has mostly been utilized in Canada and Northern Alberta in a few forest sites with black spruce boreal forests. Strip clear-cut can be of two types:

• Alternate strip clear cutting: This technique has two stages, the initial stage produces narrow clearcuts with leave-strips in between, the next stage is after regeneration of first-pass strips (Higman, 2013).
• Progressive strip clear cutting: This method is almost similar to the alternate striping with just more pass stages than the alternate method

The advantages of strip clear cut might not be as much as selection cutting, some of the benefits of strip cuttings are the ease of harvesting as the method only requires harvesting by removing several strips rather than an entire stand with just the  restriction of time and expense (Pelletier et al., 2017).

Strip Cutting

Deforestation has taught the world the lesson by the virtue of increasing rate of natural disasters every day. In order to generate more connected communication across the world, each and every strip of land is now connected by roads. However, road building into old growth uncut areas has more cons than pros (Higman, 2013).  

Different countries have different regulations upon road construction in uncut forests and all these regulations heavily depend on the societal and political aspects of the respective countries, but they all have similar objectives (Pelletier et al., 2017). The increasing rate of road kills and habitat fragmentation has prompted the authority to enforce strict regulations on woodland road construction and many forest roads have been blocked in dense regions. There are some pros to the legislations,

• Evidence suggests that more than 1 million wild animals are killed in a day due to road accidents all over the world, reduction in road construction in the uncut forest areas will significantly decrease the road kill stats (Von Gadow et al., 2012).
• Habitat fragmentation is a major concern of the environmentalists and reduction in excessive road construction will reduce the severe risk of biodiversity loss due to habitat fragmentation.
• Studies suggest that a large number of avian species change their habitat course due to their road aversion tendencies. Reduction of road construction will also ensure a limitation in the soil erosion and will diminish the possibility of disturbance to the forest areas (Von Gadow et al., 2012).

On another hand, there are certain cons to the concept as well:

• Forest products contribute a large chunk to the economy of the nations concerned and the lack of connectivity to the forest can serve as a hurdle in the path of proper utilization of the forest products (Brack, 2014).
• Timber still is the major resource of human society and the loss of connectivity to the forests will damage the timber industry drastically.
• The survival of indigenous population in many countries depends on the forest resources and complete disconnection from the forest will inflict profound damage to their lives (Von Gadow et al., 2012).

Timber certification can be defined as the process that validates the timber raw material and its quality standards via sets of quality assessment procedures (Brack, 2014).. The policy has been designed to check the forest management standards of the traders and correlate their management practices to the government standards (Kitayama, 2013). The concept of forest management targets ton main sectors, certifying sustainable forestry practices that includes various sustainability practices like forest inventory planning, silviculture, harvesting, road construction regulations and certifying the product itself.

Undoubtedly, the objective of timber certification is to link the consumers with environmental awareness with the products and this policy can be the ultimate tool in establishing sustainable forestry worldwide (Duncker et al., 2012). Consumers are aware of the environmental implication of excessive industrialization now more than ever; with the correct strategic approach, the certified timber policy can change the scenario,

• Certified timber can significantly change the purchase pattern in the customers by comparing the products on the basis of their environmental attributes (Brack, 2014).
• Producer behavior can also be changed with strict regulations imposed and periodic evaluations that mandates certified timber policy.
• The cost benefit of premium products can be raised which will benefit the producers and will encourage the producers more to adopt the certified timber policy (Brack, 2014).

Many agencies are already adapting to the current market scenario and have incorporated certified timber policy in their arsenal like Australian choice timber and Vicforest. The UK based PEFC have mandated the use of certified timber policy and that has only seen positive results (Brack, 2014). Canada has also succeeded in successfully implementing certified timber policy in many sectors and many other countries have now started to follow their footsteps.

Conclusion:

Ecosystem runs on balance and that balance is vital for the survival of each and every species in the world. Loss of biodiversity does not just mean the extinction of particular species, it has profound effects on the survival and viability of the existing ones. The nature has already lost a large chunk due to the unwarranted human activities, and it is critical now that we start remedying those blunders.

Sustainable forest management has emerged like a blessing at the time of need, which can restore the ecological balance that we have deliberately destroyed. Numerous viable and contemporary methods as mentioned above are now coming up, utilizing which we can reach the stage where the nature is no longer suffocated by the toxic fumes of development.

This report has discussed three contemporary sustainable forest management policies and has highlighted the benefits and pitfalls of each. Theses disadvantages can be overcome by some strategic actions, such as,

• Silviculture is undoubtedly a flexible tool in sustainable forestry but careful action needs to be taken so that these measures are utilized without exploitations.
• Benefits of regulations on reduction of woodland road construction are being outweighed by the disadvantages, discretion is required that ensures optimum utilization of the forest resources without disturbing the ecosystem in any manner.
• Lastly, certified timber policy has emerged as a blessing in disguise with sole restriction of expense, with strategic government actions this restriction can be overcome as well.

Reference List:                                                                                               

Brack, Duncan., 2012. "Promoting legal and sustainable timber: using public procurement policy." Research Paper. London: Chatham House. Available at https://? www.? chathamhouse.? org/publication/promoting-legal-and-sustainable-timber-using-public-procurement-policy 

Duncker, Philipp S., et al. 2012."Classification of forest management approaches: a new conceptual framework and its applicability to European forestry." Ecology and Society 17.4.

Hahn, W. Andreas., and Thomas Knoke. 2010. "Sustainable development and sustainable forestry: analogies, differences, and the role of flexibility." European Journal of Forest Research 129.5 (2010): 787-801.

Higman, Sophie. 2012.  The sustainable forestry handbook: a practical guide for tropical forest managers on implementing new standards. Earthscan, 2013.

Kant, Shashi., and R. Albert Berry. 2005. "Economics, Sustainability, and Natural Resources." 

Kitayama, Kanehiro. 2013. "Co-benefits of Sustainable Forestry–Ecological Studies of a Certified Bornean Rain Forest." International Forestry Review 15

Long, James N., and Karen Mock. 2012. "Changing perspectives on regeneration ecology and genetic diversity in western quaking aspen: implications for silviculture." Canadian Journal of Forest Research 42.12

Mori, Akira S., Kenneth P. Lertzman., and Lena Gustafsson. 2016. "Biodiversity and ecosystem services in forest ecosystems: a research agenda for applied forest ecology." Journal of Applied Ecology.

Pelletier, David, et al. 2017.  "Forest Connectivity Regions of Canada Using Circuit Theory and Image Analysis." PLOS ONE 12.2: e0169428.

Von Gadow, Klaus., Timo Pukkala, and Margarida Tomé. 2012. eds. Sustainable forest .management. Vol. 1. Springer Science & Business Media.