Dear sir:
I read with great interest Cliff McIntosh’s article (Future: Trending and Tending) in the Fort Frances Times. I agree with almost everything in the article.
I have been cutting pulpwood for over 60 years, not of great amount per year to be sure at this time and have never had to plant trees to keep a forest on my own property.
Of course, I do not log in the same fashion as the large companies, which cut wood in the same fashions as the large ships catch fish. Everything is caught or smashed down to get the one species that the harvester wants, and the rest is left to rot.
I think that if the wood is cut with care, a new crop of timber will be ready much quicker and at almost no cost, except for fire protection (and sometimes the fire is even a bonus as it starts a pine forest the quickest of anything).
Of course, the people who are supported to replant wherever they have logged would love this idea, and will probably promote this hands-off policy, and be looking for more forest limits to smash down, and leave to nature to rehabilitate.
At this time, almost all timber species are usable for something so not much needs to be discarded.
There are thousands of acres that have been planted, thinned, weeded, sometimes replanted and sprayed to kill weed species (which are now much in demand) at taxpayers’ expense.
In this area and other areas that are fine forest where nothing was done, they have a much nicer type of trees, with not near as much limbs and knots as the trees that were weeded and thinned.
Yours sincerely,
Wm. M. Neilson
Stratton, Ont.
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