Forestry Essay

3.0 The Practice of Forestry
Forestry loosely defined as the systematic management and use of forests and their natural resources for human benefit. Most often, forestry efforts have been initiated in response to indiscriminate timber cutting that denuded the land and caused erosion, floods or a shortage of food products.
Ancient Forestry Practices
In ancient times forest protection and nature conservation laws were in effect as early as 1, 700 BC. In the African Tropics, agroforestry (growing of food crops in association with trees) has been practiced for hundreds of years. Relatively little is known about tropical forestry before the mid 1800’s in most places. At that time, the European colonial empires brought modern forest management practices to African and other countries. Centres for forestry and forestry research were established and more careful records kept.
Sustainable Forestry
Modern forestry has its basis in 18th century. Forestry is essentially agricultural. Trees are managed as a crop. Two concepts are important. Renewability and sustainability.
Sustainability means that forest harvest can be sustained over the long term. How far into the future were foresters expected to plan? As long as there were vast acres of virgin (original) forest remaining, this question was somewhat academic. Today, however, sustainability is a vital issue in forestry. Most of the world’s virgin forest are gone, and people must rely more and more on second growth or managed forests. Perhaps we now face, as never before, the limits to long term productivity. Harvest of wood products is a goal but a forester’s principal task is to assure long-term productivity. That is achieved by cutting the older, mature and slow-growing timber to make way for a new, young, and fast growing