Clear-Cutting Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Clear-cutting i s a logging method is which whole stands of trees are non-selectively harvested over a relatively large area. The goals of the technique are to maximize economic efficiency in harvesting or create conditions to re-establish stands of trees species that require sunlight for growth, or both. As an economic efficiency measure, it allows loggers to access and remove all of the valuable older trees without having to work around protected trees and younger trees of lesser value. As an ecological management tool, it allows large contiguous areas to be opened to sunlight and regrowth.

Clear-cutting has been controversial since World War II, when it became the dominant logging method in U.S. national forests; some foresters see it as a beneficial and legitimate logging method, while some environmentalists find clear-cutting to be environmentally detrimental. Silviculturists propose clear-cutting as a necessary practice for even-aged forest regeneration: to remove trees that have been impacted by disease and/or insects; to convert land to a new tree species through planting or seeding; to provide forest habitat for species that rely upon edge and high-density, even-aged stands; and to mimic the effects of large-scale, catastrophic wildfires or hurricanes.

Conservationists, on the other hand, point to the detrimental effects of clear-cutting, since the practice can result in fragmented landscapes, landslides, increases in flammable “slash” left on forest floors, watershed degradation, habitat degradation and loss, soil erosion, soil temperature increases, aesthetic blight, species extinction, and loss of a forest’s age and species diversity.

Dominant Method of Logging

Clear-cutting, while financially efficient, a useful management tool, and historically a standard practice, is often applied to forests that do not benefit from the practice. During the 1970s, it is estimated that clear-cutting took place on more than 250,000 acres each year, or an acre every two minutes. On June 4, 1992, the U.S. Forest Service, in response to the public outcry against clear-cutting, announced it would reduce clear-cutting by 70 percent from 1988 levels. Yet clear-cutting remains the dominant method used for logging the U.S. national forests. Many bills have been introduced unsuccessfully in Congress to ban the use of clear-cutting in national forests.

Temperate rainforests in both the United States and Canada have experienced extensive clear-cutting, and it remains the major method used to fell forests. For instance, in the Canadian province of British Columbia, government-sanctioned clearcutting is the dominant method of timber extraction for industrial purposes and the main cause of species endangerment for northern spotted owls; 70 percent of Vancouver Island has been clear-cut.

In underdeveloped countries, legal and illegal clear-cutting goes on unchallenged. Clear-cutting of tropical rain forests for wood exports and non-native tree plantations in Brazil, Congo, Indonesia, Malaysia, and elsewhere contributes to global warming and reduces biological diversity. According to the Rainforest Action Network, the world has already lost 80 percent of old growth forests worldwide, and less than 5 percent remain in the United States. According to the United Nations, at least 37.5 million acres of rainforests are lost annually, an area the size of Georgia. Despite the relatively small land area they cover, rainforests are home to about half of the 5-10 million plant and animal species on the Earth.

Bibliography:

Adela Backiel and Ross Gorte, Clearcutting in the National Forests: Environment and Natural Resources Policy Division Report for Congress (Congressional Research Service, 1992).