Remnant Old Growth

Altissimus

Altissimus

TreeHouser
Joined
Jul 1, 2008
Messages
7,991
Location
southern Vermont
...parcels though small are out there , public or private. There is a stand of White Pine in Vermont on conservation land. Never been cut , only losses are natural. I camped in Henry Cowell regular ....Trees so nice his wife asked them to be spared , now a park.
 
I expect so. Easier for a harvested forest to reclaim old growth status than a backfilled and paved over slough, though.
 
There are patches of old growth around here mostly oak 250-350~ years old and some of the oaks are deceptively small for how old they are.
 
Takes a lot of walking/travel to find any old growth of quantity in Mi that is past 60-100 years of age.

Hartwick pines is most notable but pretty underwhelming when you think of the vast areas that used to be covered in white pine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartwick_Pines_State_Park

I have found a few places over the years were white pines got overlooked because of their location being to hard to harvest.

But there are many counts of trees that were to hard to harvest being blown with tnt just to get them down so the Logging company's didn't get docked back in the day.
 
There are two in Austria that I visited in 99, when I went there for the solar eclipse.
Grosser and Kleiner urwald.
Typically they are only there, because they are situated on two adjacent mountain tops, that would have been hard to log back in the days.

Europe is mostly logged completel off. Been habitated by greedy humans for too long. Scotland used to be covered in Scots pine ( Oddly enough!) it is all gone. So are the majestic pine forests of Pommern, that used to produce renowned qualities of timber to all of Northern Europe.

In Denmark our total amount of old growth forest consists of 3 trees. I'm not joking.................3 trees. Oaks all of them, and left because they are in bogg areas, so the timber would have been near impossible to get out.

In 1763 they did a survey and found out that we only had 5% forest left, everything else had been turned into farmland.
So they imported a German forester Johann Georg Von Langen, and set him the task of mplementing sustained forestry practices.

So we've practiced sustained logging since 1763, but even then it was too late to save anything worth saving.

That may give you an idea why I'm so strongly against old growth logging.

It is too late to wake up and call a stop to it, when everything is gone.

3 frigging trees!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Imo, people get too bogged down in old growth stuff, sure big redwoods are impressive and not to be lost.
There are many ancient woodlands in the UK and France, but we're not just talking about big trees, coppiced chestnut woods been there for hundreds/thousands of years. Fungi that depend on the stumps.
Regularly harvested woods can support more wildlife than a climax woodland. Wild flowers and the insects that thrive on them move from clearing to clearing gradually vacating as the shade increases.
Wild life's not all about trees you know.
 
Ahhh, ya daft hippies... There's heaps of seven foot 250' Firpigs about 8 miles from my house. As far as the "inestimable value for humanity,"..... Bosh!!!.... hardly anybody even hikes around, or ever even goes up there even though it's literally a two minute long walk from the I90 Freeway. :lol::(

Man, if the ground weren't so impossible, we'd have long ago logged them off too; but just between you and me Stig, (you Californinan Hippy ;)) I'm really glad the ground is so bad....... They're amazing pigs.
 
La becasse said:
Imo, people get too bogged down in old growth stuff, sure big redwoods are impressive and not to be lost.
There are many ancient woodlands in the UK and France, but we're not just talking about big trees, coppiced chestnut woods been there for hundreds/thousands of years. Fungi that depend on the stumps.
Regularly harvested woods can support more wildlife than a climax woodland. Wild flowers and the insects that thrive on them move from clearing to clearing gradually vacating as the shade increases.
Wild life's not all about trees you know.
Click to expand...

what do you mean bogged down in old growth? I don't see much of it around to get bogged down in. Michigan being so flat it was pretty accessible. I think old trees deserve a bit of respect if they have made it this far. Cruise around the globe on Google earth, you can tell old growth from regenerated quite clearly. Hardly much left worldwide to get bogged down in
 
Pretty dinky little peice of the world in the scheme of things. Does looks good. I would love to get bogged down in that sometime.
 
The porcupine mountains is the largest tract in the UP. There are some awesome trees there. other than that the UP is pretty much monoculture tree farms.
reading a bit more about California Oregon and Washington, about 5% of never industrially logged forests remain.

One of the tricky things about this is that there is the assumption that these forests were untouched by humans before the Europeans which is definitly not true. These forests have been utilized and managed by humans for thousands and thousands of years. Fire being the main management tool. The difference being that in the last 200 years, the forests have been attacked with no regard for the future.
 
kevin bingham said:
The porcupine mountains is the largest tract in the UP. There are some awesome trees there. other than that the UP is pretty much monoculture tree farms.
Click to expand...

Damn that's a shame, I was under the UP had a heckuva lot of nice country/trees in it.
 
La becasse said:
Imo, people get too bogged down in old growth stuff, sure big redwoods are impressive and not to be lost.
There are many ancient woodlands in the UK and France, but we're not just talking about big trees, coppiced chestnut woods been there for hundreds/thousands of years. Fungi that depend on the stumps.
Regularly harvested woods can support more wildlife than a climax woodland. Wild flowers and the insects that thrive on them move from clearing to clearing gradually vacating as the shade increases.
Wild life's not all about trees you know.
Click to expand...

My thoughts as well pard.

kevin bingham said:
what do you mean bogged down in old growth? I don't see much of it around to get bogged down in. Michigan being so flat it was pretty accessible. I think old trees deserve a bit of respect if they have made it this far. Cruise around the globe on Google earth, you can tell old growth from regenerated quite clearly. Hardly much left worldwide to get bogged down in
Click to expand...

Kevin, searching for old growth on google earth is definitely no substitute for hiking the terrain and seeing it with your own eyes. Maybe take some trips, try the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, plan to spend some time trying to hike around and see every old growth patch out there...and I think you might change your thinking. Also, remember, a tree doesn't have to bee huge, to make it an old growth.

kevin bingham said:
The difference being that in the last 200 years, the forests have been attacked with no regard for the future.
Click to expand...

Every forest, my pards and I "attacked" had a timber harvest plan (thp), that we had to adhere to. Typical thp's may include, some or all of the folowing guidelines: selective harvest, replanting, brush management, soil restoration (if needed), watershed protection, and wildlife protection. Most of my career, I worked for helicopter logging companies, which is very environmentally friendly (although very expensive). How is this not regarding the future? I admit that the early days of logging around here were not very sustainable, but those days are long gone, and it gets old when people still try to beat modern day loggers with that stick...at least everywhere I ever fell timber (Montana, Idaho, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, California, Colorado, Wyoming, Florida and Alabama).
 
Some of the most amazing old growth are the bristlecone pines in colorado. Barely 20 feet tall. The s are thing is that they are dying at an unprecedented rate after having survived 4000 years. I coukd hike for a long ways without seeing any old growth where I am. I would love to go to Siberia or the amazon or alaska. Google Earth will have to do me for now
 
I have nothING against logging. I d ok nt want to be clumped into that category. But it is important to draw some lines.
 
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