Guess what happens when you type "I love removing standing deadwood from the forest" in Google

I don't why it bothers me so much but the fact that the very first sentence is "Removing standing deadwood from a forest actually harms the ecosystem because standing dead trees, known as snags, provide critical homes and food for wildlife." just pizzes me off.

Maybe I'm just a bit more angry because of the brutal wildfires that we've had in Spain this summer, but this is just wrong and ultimately detrimental for thriving forests and correct woodland management. On the plus side, it does provide me with another reason as to why I actively dislike AI

Thoughts?

 

Around here there’s plenty of Poplar snags to keep the woodpeckers busy. The wood ducks, Owls and flying squirrels can live in cavities in living trees. It’s probably safer than dead snags.
In NC they do controlled burns on Ft Bragg and other wildlife refuge Pine forests to protect the Red-cockaded woodpecker. Longleaf and Shortleaf Pines are fire resistant and dependent for reproduction. Shortleaf Pine is a threatened species in the NE because the libs are scared of fire. Jk New Englanders burn your forests.
Before the arrival of Europeans most of the Southeastern coastal plains were Short/Longleaf Pine forests. Thanks for attending my healthy pine forest Tedtalk.

 

It's a really nuanced issue. Letting all the dead stuff accumulate brings one set of problems, and removing every snag brings with it another set of issues. Maybe the best case scenario is to harvest some, but leave enough behind for the animals, insects, fungi and microbes.

 

I agree with you that a balanced approach is the best thing to do. Not overexploit but to work in communion with nature.

Good Tedtalk! Controlled burns are one definetly one way of dealing with it

 

We are a rare breed, and I doubt we’re putting that big a dent in the nations dead standing trees. I’ll cut every dead standing there is on my property, and my neighbor on each side of me will never touch any of their dead standing. There’s your balance

 

Ecologically speaking, it is true. However, so is 99% of the things we do as humans.

Ma nature did a pretty good job of taking care of the forests for a few years before we came along to "manage" them.

There are positives to removing dead trees for sure, but also negatives.

Proper forest mangement is very subjective. Managing for timber can be much different than managing for wildlife.

FWIW, the AI result did list the forest fire concern that you did.

 

The 'AI' assumes complete exploitation, because that's what the people who program it do.

 

I agree that is subjective and complex. Personally I think that a balance that can be struck between managing for timber and managing for wildlife, they are not mutually exclusive - but perhaps not economically viable?-

Lately, I get the impression that forested areas in first world countries are being gradually neglected due to the economic outcome -or lack thereof- but also under a misconstrued idea that "wild unatended areas = biodiversity" which is partially true but also does not factor in that a catastrophic wildfire does far more damage to biodiversity and that those could be prevented with good woodland management; hence the reason why that opening statement rubs me the wrong way. (even though if, as you pointed out, wildfires are listed below)

I have recency bias and I could be wrong, but because of the wildfires next to where I live where thousands and thousands of acres have been burnt to a crisp I'm growing increasingly frustrated by the lack of proper woodland management.

 

I hadn't thought about it. That could also be it.

 

Fits my scenario well. My wood lot is 45 acres. Theres 10,000 acres next to it that doesn’t get touched. I do have a few trees that I know critters are living in that I leave alone. Mostly because they’ve been so hollowed out they are of less value to me than the squirrels/raccoons.

 

exactly. These AI search engines are nothing but opinions on most subjects gathered from media or social media. As such they’re not really accurate just prevailing opinion. A good place to start looking at a subject but just that, a beginning point. Then you have to open the sources it used and find out how much truth there is to it. Many times you’ll find out it’s just opinions formulated by emotions. The old axiom, repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth

 

They all give 'the stroke' to users too. Kinda unnerving. I do use it for numbers/statistics. It seems to be pretty good at that. The questions are mostly 'unconventional'.

Example:

 

Agreed, and well said

 

But how many ten's of thousands of acres of natural habitat are gone in just your area alone?

 

Nature has done a fine job of sustaining itself through time and will continue to do so once we are gone and done "managing" things.

 

Where is my natural habitat located, as a human? Am I unnatural?

 

Very little of the forests that were once growing along the east coast of North America when Europeans arrived are still there. What nobody talks about is that those forests were already actively being managed by the indigenous long before the Europeans arrived. Forests were burned, as were the savannah grasslands. Early accounts described the forests as being open, almost a park-like setting. The natives understood that left alone, a forest would eventually reach its climax by becoming a thick stand of hemlocks shading out everything else. That's good if you want a cool place to go on a hot day, but it offers very little if you depend on hunting and foraging to survive. You need mast producing trees: oaks, hickories, chestnuts, etc. to sustain both people and especially the animals that people hunt. Those trees need sunlight hitting the forest floor to regenerate. So the natives selectively cut/burned timber, and managed the grasslands where the animals that they hunted grazed on. Habitat management done right is a symbiotic relationship. If an area was prone to natural wildfires historically, then the habitat and species living there need it to maintain an equilibrium. Not allowing that process is a form of mismanagement, just as much so as an open field left to fill up with callery pears, burning bush, privet and bittersweet vines is.

 

I do the same as you on my 18 acres.. I left a big Chestnut oak that died and would have been easy pickings standing for the squirrels and cavity nesting birds cause the top was full of holes and cavities, and probably hollow trunk too.
Solid oaks that die I turn into firewood.

 

I mean it's not wrong. If you cut every single stick of dead wood out that wouldn't be good.

Without knowing the size of the stand of woods, removing dead stuff to heat a single family home probably isn't going to make a meaningful or measurable negative impact on anything.

You could also make an argument that if you are going to return the hydrocarbons stored in the wood into the atmosphere you might as well recover the energy for heating your house.

 

According to some you and I ARE unnatural and don't belong here. While others believe this world was made for us. I know which one I'm gonna believe.