ABSTRACT

Our purpose in this chapter is to address the argument that increasing industrial wood production on plantations to meet future wood demand will reduce harvest pressure on existing old-growth and “natural” forests and lead to their protection. The work of Victor and Ausubel illustrates this argument: “[T]he main benefit of the new approach to forests will not reside within the planted woods, however. It will lie elsewhere, in the trees spared by more efficient forestry. An industry that draws from planted forests rather than cutting from the wild will disturb only one-fifth or less of the area for the same volume of wood. Instead of logging half the world's forests, humanity can leave almost 90 percent of them minimally disturbed. And nearly all new tree plantations are established on abandoned croplands which are already abundant and accessible” (2000, 138). Other natural resource scientists have made this argument as well (e.g., Binkley 1997; Mather 1990; Pandey 1995; Sedjo and Botkin 1997; Siry et al. 2001; Whitmore 1999; Sedjo 2001).