Hello Ken,
Thanks for your reply, I wonder if you remember me visiting you a few years back. You showed me the old church which was around during the plague, it had the beautiful big bade crucks visible at the back-side of the church (if memory serves me correct).
Anyways, yes there needs to be two policies. One for decidous forests and one for coniferous. There will some overlap of course. The protection of top-soil for example.
I am wondering if the abundance of smaller trees in England were due to the Romans clear-cutting for their ships etc.? The notion is that older is not better. The notion is that older is an integral part of the system. I like how the traditional Chinese medical system sees the body as a flow of energy (chi) as it sees the earth as a flow of energy (chi), there is no fundamental difference. If this is true, then old is to be respected and have its deserved place in the family. Just because you are older than me and cannot lift or work as vigorously (assumption), it does not follow that we should have nothing but young whipper snappers in the system and cull the old ones. There is obvious wisdom in the older "trees" and are necessary to the health of the overall symbiosis.
As a woodland owner the long-term success of your woodlot hangs in the balance of your understanding the short and the long term goals. There should be some parts of your woodlot that should wait for harvest long passed your death, don't you think? This is the unselfish compromise that Merv is heralded for. He did not drift-net his supply of fish to near extinction. He left some fish for other generations.
To cut down the beech trees and replace them with oak is to repeat the same mistake. The mistake being that of short-sightedness and mono-culture. I think the painful lesson is to slowly/quickly return the beech tree-farm to a natural state, meaning return diversity to the tree-farm to allow it to become a functioning ecosystem and at the same time a working forest. Diversity is the fail-safe operative when in doubt. All not only survive, but thrive in a state of diversity.
We can only be the change, that we want to see.
