Managing Old Growth. What is the Best Rate of Cut. Ostensibly when there is little left, Zero. Sept 28 Jorma Jyrkkanen

Hundred pound Chinook produced by gravels fed by an Old Growth Forest until we Europeans came along. Declining.

Old Growth Forest Harvest Rate Questioned May. 6th, 2011 at 8:46 AM Old Growth Forest Harvest Rate Author: Jorma Jyrkkanen Added : Friday, March 28th 2008 Related Tags : Old growth, forests, management, sustainable, Jorma Jyrkkanen If Old Growth Forest took a thousand or more years to reach its dynamic equilibrium state, then this needs to be taken into account to establish the harvest rotation cycle. Therefore, the rotation age for this forest should be at least a thousand years. If one were to use a four pass system in such a forest in order to assure the continuation of Old Growth, then a quarter of the operable wood (minus ESA's, reserves for seed, soil and science, net downs for buffers, corridors) could be harvested every 250 years. If it took 2400 years to reach Old Growth status, then a quarter could be harvested every 600 years and the rotation cycle would be 2400 years. This sort of thinking protects all of the 'Other Values' of old growth far far better than current practice. The problem is this, Forestry practice to date establishes a harvest cycle based upon the concept of Thrifty mature, a state where trees reach an annually decreasing growth rate which is tapering off. Most North American trees reach such a state in about 90 to 140 years. This practice is based solely on maximizing tree volume harvested in the shortest possible time and arose from viewing all trees as resources for man. Its an idea spawned in the boreal forest where fires, bugs or blow down destroys birch, poplar, pine and spruce forests when they are mature at about 90 -140 years old. The idea is that if you don't take the wood when its good, the bugs, fires, blowdown are going to take it for sure. Its an idea mis-applied to the West coast forests. West coast cedars, douglas firs and sitka spruce can live an enormous amount of time and be growing the whole while. There are trees alive today that took root the very moment when Julius Caesar was being stabbed by Brutus. Our Old Growth forests are not boreal in character or function in any way. There is clearly a clash between what the objectives of sound forest practice are here. Sound forestry should base harvest cycle on the dynamic equilibrium age for old growth forests when dealing with Old Growth forests, not tree thrifty mature age and take only a proportion of the annual growth. In an old growth forest, growth is balanced by death and decay. When a dead giant falls to the ground, it creates an opening which triggers a huge burst of growth of seedlings and saplings and poles, which live off other fallen giants being mulched by bugs and fungi. We are not seeing the Forest for the Trees. We need to be managing forests, not trees. It is only through this huge yet obvious logical paradigm shift that we will enable sustainable forestry practice. Clearly, this is not happening. There also needs to be moratoria put on Old Growth as apology areas for mistakes made in past forest management practice. Concepts developed around maximum return and disturbance renewed naturally short rotating forests like interior pine have no place on the west coast or interior Old Growth forests if we are to manage them wisely. All forests should not be painted with the same brush. By my reckoning, through application of this Pioneer miner's mentality, we have grossly over-estimated the British Columbia annual allowable harvest volume as well as the long run sustained yield and are seriously over logging this Province and are definitely not conducting sustainable forest practices. There is an old Geezer named Merve Wilkinson who lived near Ladysmith, Vancouver Island, who learned how to have your Forest and eat it too. Until we learn to do what he has done on a Provincial Old Growth Forest scale and abolish clear cutting of this forest type, we need to use the guidelines I have developed here. Merve's place is not exactly an old growth forest, because he removes all the annual growth. An Old Growth Forest that has reached dynamic equilibrium recycles it. But Merve has started leaving tops and organic debris on the site for recycling and so its a best case situation for everybody, because we, like bugs and woodpeckers, have a right to the forests annual production too. Here is what is true for Merve's place called Wildwood Wildwood has more wood on it today than when Merve Wilkinson, now 87, began managing the forest in 1938. He assessed the total timber stand, calculated its annual growth (68,000 board feet per year), and every five years he harvested the growth, with no clearcuts, and no disturbance of the soil. Over the years, he has extracted more timber than the forest held, and yet the entire forest still exists, trees, beauty, flowers, birds and all, with as much timber as ever. It is quality timber, too, since Merve has never planted a tree or used any pesticides or fungicides. Using small custom milling, he gets more wood from each log than the big mills do. Merve is completely opposed to clear cut logging. To find out more about how Merve does it go to this web site: http://managingwholes.com/merve.htm Copyright 2008 Jorma Jyrkkanen. All rights reserved.