Why old-growth forests matter

[rebewranger]

Why old-growth forests matter
Craig Welch - Friday
 

One of southern California’s oldest giant sequoias holds more leaves than there are people in China. It has stood since there were fewer people on Earth than live in modern Japan—more than 3,000 years. It was a seedling hundreds of years before Aristotle began tutoring Alexander the Great—and it is still living today.

In the Hoh Rainforest on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula, towering above mushrooms and damp ferns, are green, moss-draped spruces and hemlocks that were alive in the late 1500s “when Sir Francis Bacon and Johannes Kepler first recognized the value of objective data over mystical portents,” scientist Jerry Franklin and his co-author, Ruth Kirk, wrote in The Olympic Rain Forest: An Ecological Web. Those trees “have been pushing their roots through the soil and wafting seeds into the air throughout the entire existence of science."
 
These are examples of old-growth forests—one wet, one dry—both full of ancient trees with webs of roots surrounded by a complex array of life above and below ground. Far more than just linking us to our past, the world’s mature and old-growth forests perform amazing ecological feats, even as they face all new threats. They support a greater diversity of life, hold cleaner water, and host surprisingly complicated communication networks made of fungi that relay messages between trees underground—even trees of different species.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/why-old-growth-forests-matter/ar-AAWuZoB?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=33a7b2e04b3e4c339c4aea4875a90d41

[Free Vulcan]

There is no single definition for old-growth forests, because that depends on the ecosystem. Bristlecone pines can live 5,000 years. Some other tree species may only live 150 years, but if they are in forests largely undisturbed by humans, researchers may still consider them old-growth.

And there's the money quote. There are billions of acres of old trees that are never disturbed on normal, unremarkable private land, that by their definition could be called 'old growth.'

Which is another opportunity for the govt to exploit and lock down millions of square miles of territory as part of their statist utopia.

And the bs hype in this article makes me want to take a show. Old forests are not as healthy as young forests, and I question alot of their assertions.

[Smokin Joe]

And there's the money quote. There are billions of acres of old trees that are never disturbed on normal, unremarkable private land, that by their definition could be called 'old growth.'

Which is another opportunity for the govt to exploit and lock down millions of square miles of territory as part of their statist utopia.

And the bs hype in this article makes me want to take a show. Old forests are not as healthy as young forests, and I question alot of their assertions.

Considering an ancestor planted oaks on the family land over 150 years ago, and by virtue of location and wildlife, it takes nine different agency permits to cut one tree, I'd say the family has been screwed out of the value of that 22 acres of timber. Eventually, that wood will rot on the hoof, add to fuel load, and be a problem rather than the massive trees I recall in my youth. Between the insane rules and the taxes, I have no plans to live there again.

[roamer_1]

And the bs hype in this article makes me want to take a show. Old forests are not as healthy as young forests, and I question alot of their assertions.

I will differ slightly. I have walked old timber. Lived there some. Beautiful. Extraordinary. But fairly devoid of life by comparison. Still very healthy. Just different.

The difference being that in the Taiga, Old trees are rare. I have been where the land has never been logged, and is rarely visited by Man, except though-hikers that stick to the trails. An hour off the trail, and you are in the pristine. Which looks just like the rest of everything, less the garbage.

What they don't tell you is FIRE. The chances of an area going unburned for centuries to allow those old growth trees to exist are miniscule. Where they do exist, they become impervious to fire, because no undergrowth or ladder growth exists beneath their canopy. But it is pretty rare to find.

It ain't man. It's fire.