Looking to the past for sustainable forestry practice
By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The motorize timber harvesters use tens of gallons of diesel a day in operations and do serious damage to the forest floor and the environment through their actions, such as the dragging of trees and the simple driving around with their weight.
In addition to the above the machine harvesters are responsible for the loss of many jobs in forestry and it is, thus, not a very ethical tool either.
Chainsaws, while still requiring the operator, and thus giving employment to people in forestry, are, however, also not harmless for the environment and neither for the operator who ends up breathing gasoline combustion fumes on a daily basis for many hours.
In many areas, it has to be said, the dragging out of trees from the felling areas has gone over from tractor back to the horse. This has been done for more than one reason. The first one being environmental but the second also economical. It is cheaper to use a horse than a hundred horsepower tractor who also can only drag a few tree trunks at a time but churns up the forest floor no end and costs lots money in the form of fuel to run.
It is no longer, it would appear, a question as to if the oil, the abundant and cheap oil, runs out but when and the when does not appear all that far away. Gasoline costs are rising and rising, in the UK, on almost weekly basis and there will come the day when running such machines, including chainsaws, will no longer be economical and when manpower and animal power will be cheaper again than machines.
But, will we still have the necessary skills to go back to using the crosscut saw and the axe. Especially here I am referring not just the skills of use, though they are important, but to the skills of sharpening axe and saw and the skills of properly setting the teeth on a saw.
The crosscut saw skills and those of the axe should never have allowed to been lost (almost). But everyone though, no doubt, that the mechanization and the automation would go on for ever and we would never ever have to think about hand tools and their usage again. The truth, it would appear though, is butt a different one and we best reconsider our approach.
The use of the crosscut saw and the axe cause no white finger disease and such like problems nor was there the danger of cutting off your arm or leg with the saw or hearing loss.
Yes, an axe can cut of a limb easy enough in an accident or at least case serious injury. More often or not, however, this is due to serious stupidity, such as willy-nilly usage or a loose head; a loose axe head not axe user one.
In general, however, the hand tools were safer, though, I know, it was hard work. I have been there and done it and done it for many years. But, it kept people in work and the lumber wasn't more expensive than today either, comparatively speaking.
Other old practices of forest management too need to be brought back to bring sustainability back into forestry and those are horses, as already mentioned, and the use of chalk lime to aid the soil.
A lot of the acidification of forests is not so much due to the acid rain – though that has somewhat to answer for it – but the very fact that mono cultures, especially of conifers, cause the soil to acidify. The application of chalk lime counteracts this.
But those practices were looked down upon as too labor intensive and outdated. It would appear, however, that they are not. But, then again, in those days when everyone thought that productivity was everything sustainability was not something they even thought of.
While forestry, with replanting the trees felled, is, in a way, sustainable in itself, some practices are not very sustainable or are even unsustainable, especially in the long run and with the way things are going.
It is for that reason that we must take a close, deep and long look, once again, at the way things were done in the past, and to find the best practices and reintroduce them, including the use of the good old hand felling practices, and such like.
© 2011
