ABSTRACT
People have been planting trees for thousands of years to achieve various objectives. The first planted forests were presumably established near human settlements to provide firewood, food, medicine and other goods. However, it is only with the advent of the science of forestry in the seventeenth century in Europe that tree planting and plantation forestry really started. The first forest plantations were established to restore previously forested sites, to satisfy an increasing appetite for wood following the industrial revolution. The objective was simple and clear: to establish desirable tree species quickly. Single tree species plantations seemed like the simplest way to achieve this objective and, since concerns about biodiversity were non-existent then, tree plantations were well-accepted and even promoted as a way to improve upon the natural world by concentrating primary production into one product (desirable timber) while maintaining tree cover for other uses such as hunting, food gathering, and so on. Furthermore, with the need for wood products having exploded since the eighteenth century, foresters were quick to adopt fast-growing exotic tree species or hybrids in different parts of the world. Indeed, plantation of exotic species is so efficient at producing wood that many countries now produce most of their lumber from such mono-specific tree plantations.
