Consanguine Philosophies of Traditional Timber-Based and Contemporary Sustainability-Based Forest Resource Management Plans

Thomas J Straka,Tamara L Cushing,Robert D Tew

doi:10.4236/nr.2013.45048

Abstract

The earliest American forest resource management plans date to the birth of the forestry profession around 1900. For the next half century, these management plans were essentially timber production management plans. Certainly, other forest values, especially watershed protection, were important parts of the planning. But not until the second half of the twentieth century did multiple-use and a wide array of forest values become normal components of a forest management plan. Within the last twenty-five years forest management plans have developed a forest stewardship or sustainable forest management foundation. That is, a forest resource management plan is now expected to consider an entire set of forest values, to have a long-term sustainability focus, and to meet a set of expected management and operational criteria. Often, the forest management plan is the basis of a forest certification scheme. The early forest management plans were primarily timber-based and thus had a commercial or financial focus. Today’s forest management plans are based on multiple forest values and may or may not have a financial focus. We contrast the traditional timber management plan with today’s sustainable forest management plan, realizing the basis of both plans is by definition the forest or the timber. Involving both timber harvesting activities and the operational foundation of the sustainable forest management plan is essentially a timber management plan. One cannot ignore the fact that all forest management plans accomplish silvicultural objectives via manipulation of timber density variables, like stocking and spacing. Management of a forest still involves timber harvests. Our discussion shows that the timber management plan is still very much alive and forms the basis of modern sustainable forest management plans.

Highlights

In the first half of the last century, forested properties that were administered under a management plan usually emphasized timber production [1,2,3]
A forest resource management plan is expected to consider an entire set of forest values, to have a long-term sustainability focus, and to meet a set of expected management and operational criteria
We contrast the traditional timber management plan with today’s sustainable forest management plan, realizing the basis of both plans is by definition the forest or the timber

Summary

Introduction

In the first half of the last century, forested properties that were administered under a management plan usually emphasized timber production [1,2,3]. For the first half of the twentieth century the traditional timber-based forest management plan dominated, for the second half of that century forest management plans were in transition with multiple-use forestry gaining more and more importance, and for the last few decades the sustainable forest management or forest stewardship plan has dominated [31,32,33]. Forest certification, based on a forest sustainability foundation, developed as a major factor impacting forest resource management planning over the last two decades of the twentieth century [46,47,48]. Examples are the Forest Stewardship Council, the American Tree Farm System, and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative These certification programs have gained wide acceptance and are an example of consumer-driven quasi-regulation [58,59,60]. The traditional timber management plan, with its multiple-use focus, is quite similar to the sustainable forest management plan

The Traditional Timber Management Plan

Conclusions