Article Review: Deforestation and Reduce Impact Logging?

According to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the 33 million acres of forestland that are lost annually around the globe are responsible for 20 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. And  the bigger part that contribute to forest loss is deforestation activities.

Came across this post last week, and thought it would be good to review it to recite my memory about deforestation and what I have been working about recently. And the first paragraph caught my eyes was:

Trees are one of the human race’s most valuable resources, and yet we cut and consume them at the rate of 3-6 billion (stands??) a year. What other thing, natural or man made, can absorb carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, clean the soil, prevent erosion and control noise pollution, using only free solar energy?

Deforestation is one of the planet’s most dire environmental issues, and  few people realize that by eliminating our forests, we’re actually signing our own death sentence.

What is deforestation?

Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use.  Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use.The term deforestation refers to the slow but steady elimination of the Earth’s mature forests. There are many reasons for cutting down trees, but most are felled for profit or to make room for massive commercial agricultural operations. Depending on the species, it can take many decades for a tree to reach maturity.

What is the cause of deforestation?

Trees felled for source of timber or charcoal. The cleared land used as pasture for lifestock, agriculture such as oil palm, plantation for comodities or settlements.

War. Deforestation has also been used in war to deprive an enemy of cover for its forces and also vital resources. A modern example of this, for example, was the use of Agent orange in Vietnam. Deforested regions typically incur significant adverse soil erosion and frequently degrade into wasteland

What are the most destructive tools in deforestation?

Clear cutting is a traumatic process whereby all the trees in a given tract of land are felled and removed.  Although the area may be reseeded with young trees, it can take decades before those trees are absorbing carbon dioxide and emitting oxygen at pre-clearcut levels. 

Why clear cutting is destructive?

According to the NRDC, clearcutting can destroy an area’s ecological integrity in a number of other ways, including:

Ø  the destruction of buffer zones which reduce the severity of flooding by absorbing and holding water;

Ø  the immediate removal of forest canopy, which destroys the habitat for many rainforest-dependent insects and bacteria;

Ø  the elimination of fish and wildlife species due to soil erosion and habitat loss;

Ø  the removal of underground worms, fungi and bacteria that condition soil and protect plants growing in it from disease;

Ø  the loss of samall-scale economic opportunities, such as fruit-picking, sap extraction, and rubber tapping; and

Ø  the destruction of aesthetic values and recreational opportunities.

What are the alternatives to clear cutting?

We cannot stop or ban abruptly forest loss activities such as timber felling or land clearing as it is somehow link to human and/or country economic development. In recent years, the environmental NGO's successfully push public awareness to the public being responsible upon their purchasing, daily usage of wood materials and also banning support to illegal logging, which accounts a significant sum to deforestation. In terms of technicality in the forest, a different tree harvesting method such as Selective Harvesting System or Reduce Impact Logging  has been put in place, made as legislation for harvesting in several countries to reduce the impact of sudden loss in the forest.

What is Reduce Impact Logging (RIL)?

Reduced impact logging can be defined as 'the intensively planned and carefully controlled implementation of timber harvesting operations to minimise the environmental impact on forest stands and soils'.

And what are the practice involves?

1.  a pre-harvest inventory and the mapping of individual crop trees;

2. the pre-harvesting planning of roads, skid trails and landings to minimise soil disturbance and to protect streams and waterways with appropriate crossings;

3. pre-harvest vine-cutting in areas where heavy vines connect tree crowns;

4. the construction of roads, landings and skid trails following environmentally friendly design guidelines;

5. the use of appropriate felling and bucking techniques including directional felling, cutting stumps low to the ground to avoid waste, and the optimal crosscutting of tree stems into logs in a way that maximises the recovery of useful wood;

6. the winching of logs to planned skid trails and ensuring that skidding machines remain on the trails at all times;

7. where feasible, using yarding systems that protect soils and residual vegetation by suspending logs above the ground or by otherwise minimising soil disturbance; and

8. conducting a post-harvest assessment in order to provide feedback to the resource manager and logging crews and to evaluate the degree to which the RIL guidelines were successfully applied. 

Other than environmental benefits, RIL has been shown to reduce the percentage of 'lost' logs (those trees that are felled in the forest but not extracted because they aren't seen by tractor operators), thereby reducing timber wastage.

Any successful projects about RIL?

There are many RIL projects with collaboration with ITTO. Through its project program it provides training in RIL procedures; for example, one project in the Brazilian Amazon provided training in better logging to 138 operators and assisted several logging companies to achieve the certification of their operations. A new phase of this project commenced in 2003, and similar projects are under way in Indonesia, Guyana and Cambodia. Global Forestry Services is currently monitoring the overall RIL harvesting method in Sabah, Malaysia from 2010 until 2015. 

Hollow tree: A normal practice under Reduce Impact Logging harvesting technique where before felling a tree in the forest, the timber feller will knock on the tree or "poke" the tree with the "parang" to check for tree hollowness. If a tree marked for felling is hollow, it will be retain and not felled as there is no market value and left behind for habitat or ecology purposes.