Forest Management :: essays research papers

Forest management is the maintaining and management of not only thetrees in the woodwind, but the streams, habitat, watersheds, and even thedecaying trees or logs on the timbre floor. Managing our forests is not onlyimportant to the wildlife, but to our future economy and way of life. We needto continue to save the Oregon forests and help the ecosystems within thembecause mankind beings are also part of the ecosystem.By using forest management, it can help certain species of wildlife. Some species of birds, such as the pileated woodpecker, which need largesnags to plant nest cavities(7). But the worst possible approach to maintaininga wide diversity of species would be to manage every acre of the forest thesame way. Any smorgasbord in forest habitat creates &8220winners and &8220losers. Asforests go through natural cycles of growth, death and regeneration, speciesmay inhabit or be absent from a disposed(p) area partly in response to naturalchanges in the structure of trees and other forest vegetation(4). The sameoccurs when forest stands are managed by humans.Unless future reasonable research indicates otherwise, effort should bemade to manage a wide range of forest structures. Maintaining diversity wouldbe best served by using a broader range of management tools. Those wouldinclude harvesting on federal land - not simply thinning - and increasing thecommitment to old-growth attributes on private forest land throughtechniques such as retaining large trees and snags. As long as federal landsare substantially committed to providing late successional habitat, privateforest land can be substantially committed to younger, intensively managedstands, provided critical habitat characteristics are available.The federal lands make up more than 50% to 60% of the forests inOregon(3). Because timber harvest in now dramatically reduced on federallands, those lands represent a sizable, well distributed pool of both old-growthforests and forests that could conk old-gr owth, providing habitat to thosespecies associated with forests with old-growth characteristics. While a largeportion of federal land is committed to sustaining species that needold-growth, the difficult question remains, how much is enough? Leaving theseforests altogether unharvested invites unacceptable, large-scale insectinfestations and catastrophic fires(6).Because federal lands comprise nearly 50 to 60 percent of Oregon&8217sforests, practices on these lands have a major impact on forest-dwellingvertebrates(2). These lands are well distributed throughout the state. Private land ownership accounts for approximately 40 percent of the statesforests(5). Of this private ownership, over half is in industrial ownership andthe rest is held mostly by small woodland owners(7).Since 1992 harvesting on federal lands has dropped sharply.