Forest - Planted
From Christmas tree farms on five-acre lots in Pennsylvania to million-acre swaths in Quebec and the Canadian Northwest to pine tree plantations in the Carolinas, planted forests are big business in North America, and on other continents.
According to Weyerhaeuser Company, one of the largest of the forest products companies in the world, old growth forests are 40 percent of forestland in Canada's British Columbia province. The company notes trees cover one-third of the U.S., with more than a third of that tree coverage in public hands.
Companies like Weyerhaeuser Company, Louisiana-Pacific, Bowater, Potlatch, Fort Howard, Sappi, Timberwest, Plum Creek and Longview Fiber either own forests, lease them or process wood into various products, or in some cases, a combination of all three activities.
The federal Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Forest Service also manage forests and lease land for logging. Although logging on public lands, and in old-growth regions, continues to be controversial, environmentalists and logging companies in North America have achieved détente in some cases, by working together to reduce wholesale clear-cutting, while pursuing erosion-control and species and habitat-preservation plans.
Although the forest products industry record is not perfect with regard to land-use, its practices today are markedly different, and many would say markedly better, than they were a generation ago, and very different from mid-twentieth century routines. The concept of renewable resource management has taken root, at least in North America.
In Asia, South America and Africa, logging continues to be practiced-in many cases-as it has been for centuries: clear-cutting, with little regard for wildlife, habitat or water resource quality protection through erosion and pollution control. This has especially been a problem in Indonesia, where loggers have systematically destroyed orangutan habitat. Similar episodes have occurred in Brazil and in Equatorial Africa.
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