"We Plant 10 Trees For Every One We Cut Down"

The timber industry never tires of reiterating how much good they are doing for the Pacific Northwest's forests, while they cut them all down. One of their most laughable arguments is the fact that they are required by law to "replant" the areas they clearcut. While it is true that they plant more trees than they cut, they are removing giant old growth and replacing it with a monoculture of douglas fir seedlings. The "trees" they plant are a few inches tall! Even if they survive their first few years, which is often not the case, it would be hundreds of years before they could begin to provide the benefits of shade, water storage, and species biodiversity that the old growth is providing right now.

Even that estimate assumes that the industry plans on allowing these trees to live a few hundred years, which they don't. Most timber lands get "rotated" like a crop of corn, on a cycle ranging anywhere from thirty or forty years up to about eighty. In no case do they plan on allowing the forest to return to a condition anything like natural old growth. The whole process is geared toward maximum wood production, with healthy forest ecology coming in far behind. They might plant ten trees for each one they cut down, but it would be a lot better for everybody if they just left the one standing in the first place!

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