Forest Management Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Forest management is concerned with a range of scientific and management activities involved in the husbandry and administration of forested areas in countries around the world. Forests offer a variety of resources that can be exploited for commercial development, but ineffective monitoring regimes in many countries have led to over-exploitation of the forests, often on an unsustainable basis. The teak forests of Thailand, for example, have been almost destroyed through overlogging.

The rate at which the extensive rainforests of the Amazonian region of South America and elsewhere-are being felled not only damages the habitation of the people and wildlife living there, but also has a serious negative impact on global warming. When forest management efforts have sought to replant forests, there have been problems caused by the inability of this method to recreate the diversity of the original forest cover. Further, the loss of trees also reduces the ability of the land to hold water, which contributes to flooding, mudslides, and other problems, causing significant loss of life in many parts of the world.

Forest management aims to balance the opening of forestland to a reasonable degree of public use and commercial exploitation within a framework of sustainability. Forestlands in developed countries are often employed to provide aesthetic, tourist, and recreational opportunities, which places some pressure on a finite resource. In less-developed countries, forests may house valuable, or at least rare, wildlife species, necessitating assistance from governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Many people need forest resources for hunting, gathering, and fuelwood. Some semi-nomadic peoples practice swidden or slash-and-burn agricultural patterns, which have become unsustainable in the modern world in the face of population density and decreases in available forest land. Assistance is also required to help nomadic peoples adjust to new lifestyles on a sedentary pattern. In several parts of mainland southeast Asia, for example, a number of different ethnic minority groups have become accustomed to growing opium as a cash crop, which has been suppressed to a significant extent in recent years through aerial surveillance and multinational cooperation. Government schemes demonstrate alternative cash crops, including coffee and some types of vegetables. In other cases of inappropriate commercial exploitation of the forest, then the land may be designated a protected area and legal sanctions put in place to prevent the activity. These preserved areas may be combined with tourist destinations in some cases.

Forest Management Planning

To plan for management of forestry, it is important to first map and document the existing extent of the woodland and its flora and fauna. This can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, especially when human resources and technical capacity are comparatively low. The mapping process has been considerably facilitated by the availability of satellite mapping services, which are now able to cover the surface of the earth with some accuracy. However, creating new maps does not always help to understand the past nature and extent of forests, before more recent forms of degradation took place. The best that can be achieved, in these cases, is to provide a representation of forests as they were a comparatively few years ago.

Ideally, the forest management plan should be drawn up with contributions from local people and all relevant stakeholders. This can be problematic in those countries lacking a sufficient democracy. Planning should take account of the identification and preservervation of water resources within the forestland, together with the physical infrastructure that may be required for tourism, for people still living within the forest, and any other purposes. Accurate evaluation of the nature, maturity and size of trees, animal life, and profit opportunities should be conducted. This information can empower and inform forest workers and persuade local people or commercial interests of the implications of such acts. Incentives should ensure that not only do they understand the implications of forest exploitation, but that they also have solid alternatives for incomeraising activities. Some states have been exploring public-private sector partnerships in managing forests in this way.

Reforestation projects to replace depleted forests or areas that were not previously forested have been comparatively successful in terms of providing plantations of exploitable trees, but less successful in creating diverse forested areas. The use of single species, for example of eucalyptus trees in Thailand, has resulted in depletion of soil nutrients and damage to neighboring species.

Bibliography:

Lawrence Davis, Norman K. Johnson, Pete Bettinger, and Theodore E. Howard, Forest Management: To Sustain Ecological, Economic, and Social Values (Waveland Press Inc., 2005);
Michael Mortimer and Scott D. McLeod, “Managing Montana’s Trust Land Old-Growth Forests: Practical Challenges in Implementing Scientific Policy,” Administration and Society (v.38/4, 2006);
H. Waring and W.H. Schlesinger, Forest Ecosystems: Concepts and Management (Academic Press, 1985);
Daniel Zarin, Janaki R.R. Alavalapati, Frances E. Putz, and Marianne Schmink, eds., Working Forests in the Neotropics: Conservation through Sustainable Management? (Columbia University Press, 2004).