[Terrapreta] Amazon cattle ranging

[lou gold]

Hi Max,

I'm afraid that what you say is not true.

*If, for example, 1/40th of the tree volume per hectare of a tropical forest
is extracted annually, there will not be any noticeable degradation.*

The following is from Mongabay at:
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0807.htm

Even without clear-cutting, the construction of logging roads to reach
forest resources is destructive in the its own right and encourages
settlement of previously inaccessible forest lands by speculators, land
developers, and poor farmers. Studies by the Environmental Defense Fund show
that areas that have been selectively logged are eight times more likely to
be settled and cleared by shifting cultivators than untouched rainforests
because of the access granted by logging roads. Research has found a high
correlation between the presence of logging roads and consumption of
"bushmeat"—wild animals hunted as food.

Logging roads aside, selective logging itself—where only one or two valuable
tree species <http://rainforests.mongabay.com/08mahogany.htm> are harvested
from an area—can take a heavy toll on primary tropical forests. A late 2005
study conducted by scientists from the Carnegie
Institution<http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1101-logging_amazon.html>at
Stanford University determined that "selective logging" creates twice
as
much damage as is detected by satellites while resulting in 25 percent more
greenhouse gas emissions than previously believed.

Selective logging—as usually practiced—is degrading to the forest because
the felling of a single large tree can bring down dozens of surrounding
trees which are connected to the target tree by vines and lianas. The
thinning of the protective canopy exposes the forest to increased sunlight
and drying winds that can kill symbiotic soil organisms essential for
decomposition and nutrient-fixing, while drying leaf litter and increasing
the forest's vulnerability to fire. Further, the use of tractors for
removing trees tears up the soil and increases erosion. Selective logging
has been found to reduce global biodiversity by destroying habitat for
primary forest species.




On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 1:39 AM, MFH <mfh01 at bigpond.net.au> wrote:

>  Lou, as you say, there is much sense in the wise extraction of forest
> products. Trees don't live forever – they get old and die, are killed by
> lightning strikes, by insect damage and disease. The forest constantly
> recycles and renews.
>
>
>
> If, for example, 1/40th of the tree volume per hectare of a tropical
> forest is extracted annually, there will not be any noticeable degradation.
> Economics have something to do with the promotion of this as a system.
> Generally, the owners of the forests and the trees receive a pittance for
> the "stump" prices. One of our aims in PNG was to demonstrate to the
> landowners that the trees in their forests were akin to a bank account.
> Protect the capital, make a modest withdrawal from time to time, and this
> would be balanced by the new growth (interest). At that stage they were
> receiving $3/c.m. stumpage when the logger was getting $150/c.m. fob for
> round logs. One of the aims of providing small portable sawmills was to
> demonstrate the value difference. For a 5 c.m. log they could get as much as
> $250 for the sawn timber versus $15 as a round log. This reinforced the
> value of the trees and the value of the forest, and led to many landowner
> groups refusing to deal with loggers.
>
>
>
> I'm aware of the results of some of these projects some 15 years after
> commencement, and in the best of these the diversity and the vigour of the
> forest has been maintained. In some areas a comparison can be made to an
> adjacent block that has been industrially logged. From the air after 15
> years both areas look similarly vigorous, but on the ground the logged area
> is a mess of vines, creepers and (often exotic, i.e. foreign) pioneer
> species which have no commercial value. A reasonable estimate is that it
> will take 100 years for the area to return to the sort of species mix that
> existed prior to logging.
>
>
>
> So another approach is to work towards a wider realisation that trees are
> more valuable than the miserable royalties paid, and that forests have many
> additional economic values. Maybe this means that timber is too cheap –
> absolutely. Woodchip sells for a miserly few dollars/tonne at source.
>
>
>
> This can be looked at from many angles, e.g., how many people can live off
> a hectare of "managed" tropical forest, as compared to (a) how many can live
> off a hectare of 'slash and burn' agriculture after the 3rd year, or (b)
> how many from a cash crop such as cocoa or coffee. The assumption in the
> first instance would be limited timber extraction plus a range of non-timber
> forest products (fruits, nuts, shelter materials). Any of the calculations I
> did showed that the forest had more annual income value when left in place
> and managed.
>
>
>
> Max H
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  ------------------------------
>
> *From:* terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org [mailto:
> terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] *On Behalf Of *lou gold
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 21 May 2008 1:08 PM
> *To:* Nikolaus Foidl
> *Cc:* terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Terrapreta] Amazon cattle ranging
>
>
>
> Oh boy Folke, since David Yarrow and I seem to be the tree-huggers who
> regularly contribute to this forum I can't help but think that your lecture
> is being delivered at least in part to me. So let me take the time to
> correct some of your statements that simply seem off-the-mark to me.
>
> *I know, everybody loves trees and it is a gut feeling for everybody that
> cutting trees is bad. *
>
>
> I don't know who the "everyone" is that you are refering to but it
> definitely does not include me. I am not against cutting trees and I am not
> against the logging industry. The problem is that somehow you really don't
> seem to see the forest for the trees.
>
> In fact, one can take a long term view of the earth's vegetative cover and
> see a ceaseless war between forestland and grassland. . The territory
> controlled by these two great vegetative kingdoms has shifted back and for
> across the earth many times due mostly to changing climatic conditions.
>
> In general, human beings have been soldiers in the army of the grasslands
> using all the weapons of "civilization" and "domestication" to achieve
> victory over the forest. In general, BUT NOT ALWAYS. Apparently, one of the
> great exceptions is to be found among -- you guessed it -- the Indios de
> Terra Preta -- who are thought to have had millions of people living in the
> central Amazon basin without ceaseless deforestation.
> *
> Deforestation sounds like a catastrophic event.
>
> *Well, some times it is and some times it is not*.* It is when it triggers
> climate change. Human deforestation created the climate shifts that resulted
> in the Sahara desert, making it uninhabitable by most plants and critters. A
> shift like that is catastrophic. When deforestation starts to trigger
> regional climate change we might prefer to keep a lot of the forest
> standing.
>
> *A grown established forest has neutral balance of fixation and loss, if
> the forest gets too old the danger of loosing all the stored biomass with a
> big scale fire is imminent and very often.*
>
> This is not true for the central Amazon basin where fire has historically
> been extremely rare due to heavy rainfall. And where does the rainfall come
> from? It comes from the transpiration of the trees in the forest. Without
> the forest, the climate shifts to drought as has already been ocurring in
> the Eastern Amazon. And drought triggers more fire, etc, etc in a positive
> feedback loop that can alter both regional and global climate in
> catastrophic ways.
>
> With all due respects for the important work that you are doing in Bolivia
> -- and the creative stewardship for both conservation and food production
> that it represents -- I've got to say that the lowland basin of the Eastern
> Amazon presents a radically different situation. Here is what Dan Nepstad
> from Woods Hole says about it:
>
> *Mongabay: **In Bali you also put out some rather dire projections for the
> Amazon in 2030. Could you elaborate on this?
>
> **Nepstad:* There are all these models (namely the Hadley model) pointing
> to the end of the century when there will be a big forest die-back in the
> Amazon. But before global warming is going to kick in there is going to be
> all sorts of damage from the droughts we are already seeing as well as
> deforestation, logging, and the fires that are part of that regime. To
> factor in these effects, we took our deforestation model, our logging model,
> and what we know about the effect of drought on tree mortality, and
> projected out the year 2030 using current climate patterns — the last 10
> years repeated into the future. We found that by the year 2030, 55 percent
> of the forest will be either cleared or damaged — I think 31 percent cleared
> and 24 percent damaged by either logging or drought, with a large portion of
> that damaged forest catching fire. This produces a huge amount of emissions.
> We're looking at 16-25 billion tons of carbon going into the atmosphere in a
> very short time frame -- the next 22 years. The scary thing is some of these
> assumptions are quite conservative.
> http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0124-nepstad.html
>
> *We have to see that this planet is the only one and until we do not have
> an alternative to agricultural food production we cannot save all the trees
> in this world.*
>
> In what possible scenario do you imagine that anyone seriously involved in
> these issues is trying to "save all the trees in the world"?
> OK, I'm glad to think about how we can be most creativily involved in earth
> changes INCLUDING DEFORESTATION but let's not clutter the discussion with
> assertions that simply are not true.
>
> Touch the earth and blessed be.
>
> lou
>
>
>
>


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