Selection Harvesting -- with Horses

Privately owned forests represent about half of the total forestland in Nova Scotia. As such, they provide crucial habitat for forest wildlife and resources that are fundamental for the economic viability of rural communities. The old practice of selection logging with horses, which sustained communities for centuries, has in recent years been replaced by clearcut harvesting. Forestry companies and independent operators, having exhausted resources on crown lands, are now buying up and competing for the rights to clearcut privately owned forests.

Standing Forest Horselogging came into existence on the idea that modern day commercial forestry is more destructive than forestry needs be. Our purpose is to offer an alternative forestry practice that allows for the removal of tree fiber without deteriorating the fiber productivity or the quality of other forest components and functions. For this, we have resorted back to the benign technology of heavy draft horses to remove individually selected trees. With the horses we can harvest the trees that are unhealthy, poor quality, mature, or overcrowding more favorable trees, without building roads for heavy equipment and with minimal damage to remaining trees. In this way, like our forefathers, we are able to again reap the bounty of the forest without deteriorating its capacity to support us and other species. The forest remains a forest: a watershed, a habitat for wildlife, a place for recreation, a climate regulator, a savings account for the landowner, and the basis of stable employment for a community.

And then there's Clearcutting...

Company managers in charge of wood acquisitions approach private woodland owners with money and arguments that their forests will be wasted by wind and insect damage unless the companies are permitted to clearcut immediately. These arguments, however, are more often half-truths meant to generate anxiety in landowners so that they will allow their forests to be clearcut. The following aspects of clearcut harvesting are often not mentioned:

• Clearcut forests in NS generally will not provide harvestable wood fiber again for at least 60 years; during the same period, multiple selection harvests can produce a higher cumulative volume compared to successive clearcuts, and comparatively, the fiber is usually of higher quality.
• Most clearcut harvesters generally view the wood fiber as the primary product. In selection harvesting, one views the forest as the primary product, on which the quality of future harvests will depend; therefore, much effort during selection harvesting is aimed at maximizing the growth rate and quality of the trees that remain, generating higher value in the future fiber and the forest.
• Many economically favorable tree species do not reach their peak growth rate until about 70 years of age; thus clearcut harvesting with short rotations often removes trees when they are in the peak of their productivity, or even before they have reached this peak.
• Clearcutting is usually done by a single machine operated by one person cutting a property in a few days or weeks; the same forests could employ more people using alternative harvesting techniques for months or years at a time, and for 4 to 10 harvests during the time span of a typical clearcut rotation.
• As a disturbance, clearcutting differs greatly from natural disturbances in how it affects the physical nature of the forest environment. Compared to natural wind disturbance, for example, clearcutting always changes the amount and diversity of dead and living trees, the temperature and humidity of forest microclimates, the rate at which rainwater reaches streams and lakes and the chemistry of that water, and the structure and composition of forest soil.
• Because the habitats of forest wildlife depend on the physical forest environment, clearcutting alters the natural community of forest wildlife; negative effects are well documented for numerous bird and mammal species like Pileated Woodpeckers, Flying Squirrels, Fishers, and Pine Martins. Hundreds of invertebrate and fungus species are suspected to be endangered due to habitat loss caused by clearcutting.
• Clearcutting that is followed by replanting is especially negative from the ecological point of view because it replaces a naturally diverse assemblage of many tree species of many ages with one or a few economically favorable species growing in the same age cohort. This, as in agricultural monocultures, increases the risk of economic losses due to market changes. Monocultures are also more prone to insect and disease outbreaks.
• While the initial return from clearcut liquidation of a woodlot will always be higher than selection harvesting, the reduced value of the clearcut land must also be accounted for. The returns from selection harvesting plus the value of the woodlot will generally exceed the return from liquidation combined with the new value of the clearcut land. For a crude example, a property with a stumpage value of $50,000, may have a forestland value of $100,000, but be worth less than $25,000 after being clearcut.

Warren McConnell, flagging a dwindeling balsam fir for harvest.