Permsteading.com

I agree that select cutting is the way to go. There are places out west that use timber as a crop however. They clear cut the entire crop of pines and replant improved seeding all the same size. They grow up together as a crop. They are clear cutting ever 27 years. That is a relative short time to raise a tree from seeding to mature tree. With a hard wood forest it is much different. I selectively logged my place about 3 years ago. The fellow I used to mark the trees and select the one to cut told me that I can now do that every 15 years perpetually. The trees I left will be huge in 15 years, and the young tree that are starting now will be mature in 30 years. It is a different way to use timber as a renewable resourse. One way uses the trees as a crop, the way a Farmer would and takes the entire crop. There is no diversity in the forest, every tree is the same improved pine, a mono culture if you will, The 2nd was uses the woods more as a Forest and wild Life eco-system. It takes some and leaves some, allowing Nature to take her course. I like the 2nd way better.

I recently watched a Sepp Holzer video (don't remember the title that was in a Germanic language, but it had English dubbing) where he was complaining about the pine tree mono-culture and how bad it was for the local ecology. It seems that pine roots are shallow, so the don't help to keep the hillsides in place the same way a mixed forest does.