Tree Planting for Timber and Wildlife - Part 2

The ever-vigilant trail cameras recorded this guy in the woods marking trees for harvest.  It looks like retirement is also going to include firing-up the chainsaw and dropping trees from time-to-time.

This happens to be a professional forester and he is singling-out those trees for removal to favor adjacent trees for release.  In lay-person terms thinning the less desirable to favor the more desirable.  Sure, it's manipulating the forest canopy and that's OK.  As I mentioned in the first of this series more than a couple of decades ago all that grew here was corn and soy beans and such - today it is a forest.  Those trees slated for release are the more valuable hardwood species,  dominant examples of all those planted and specimens best-suited to produce seed stock for forest regeneration.

For sure this rubs certain urbanites the wrong way but if you're into reforestation practices and sustainable management over a period of years the results can be pretty dang good. 

Perhaps if I repeat this enough times those who are horrified by the notion of active forest management might come-around to understanding that it's not to be scorned and ridiculed. There are far more serious issues in the world worthy of getting your undies in a bunch.