Pros And Cons Of Clear Cutting

Pros and Cons of Clearcutting There are many good and bad reasons to clear cut or not to clear cut and most people don’t understand that clear cutting isn’t bad per say but can be helpful in the long run. There are two versions of clear cutting, one called a commercial clear cut, where only the merchantable tree is cut, leaving the unmerchantable tree behind to be either left or burnt in the slash piles. The other is a plain old clear cut, where everything is cut, from the merchantable trees to even the unmerchantable are cut.
Clear cutting proscribes mostly to trees that do well in high sun areas. Trees like Doug fir, oak, and pines need the sun and tend to be shaded out by the larger trees unless they are planted where there are no large
The older complex forest has a layered canopy that has some smaller tree, and some animals. They Each are helping the forest and the animals in its own way. Since the 1900, clear cutting was used as a way to completely harvest a section of forest, by removing all the trees in a stand. Clear cutting is less disturbing of the forest floor, you go at once instead of multiplying times
Clear cutting is a good thing for the forest since it is helping to simulate a natural opening created by natural disturbances like a wildfire, a windstorm, etc. Since we now attempt to control wildfires, the forest doesn’t always have those natural disturbances, that would create these natural openings.
A clear cut is the next best option, by cutting a stand of old growth out and clear cutting it. It creates a clear opening that allows animals and sun loving shrubs like huckleberries to thrive. It allows animals like elk and deer to be able to forage food and flowers for the pollinators like bees and butterflies to thrive on. This is supposed to emulate what the land would be after a wildfire and it is helped by