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
trees to shade them out
First thing you must understand is that most tree stands are split into three levels, young-open forests; The young-open forests are shoots and sprouts of young trees that allow animals like mountain blue bird and black bears to thrive.
The middle-aged dense forest has a canopy cover, but it still has shrubs on the ground that some animals like,
Older complex forests with large trees which are also known as an old growth forest.
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
its
But on the other hand, it effects the habit of endangered animals liked the spotted owl. The land that's been cut won’t be habitable for the owls. It could take up to thirty or more years before the owls can return to the area that’s been cut. On the other hand, the people who believe that clearcutting is not the way to go, they think that it causes the animals that live in the old growth forest to disappear. Some people when they see a clear cut, they think that it causes the area that was cut to become ugly looking.
Another con is that it allows increase steam flow, this allows more water to enter the underwater aquifer since the trees aren’t taking the water in. If the clear cut gets close to the river, it can cause irreversible damage to the river, but if this is especially true if there is no buffer of the stream and it can erode away the land and change the flow of the streams or rivers.