Old-growth forests have a completely different ecology than forest that's been clear cut - and it takes decades if not centuries to recover.
If you don't care about the ecologies of forests, then maybe you don't care about whether or not we cut down some old trees. But I think you should care about the ecologies of forests, because forests have huge impacts on climate, atmosphere, water quality, erosion, and much much more.
The "old-school" logger mindset is that the forests would be better off "managed" by humans than left by itself. That is, it would be more productive. But a century of data is showing that this is not really correct. It's only in the last twenty years or so we've come to understand that long-term problems these things create.
For example, clear cutting tends to completely wipe out the biodiversity of that location. Even if they are re-seeded / re-planted, they tend to only be re-planted with one type of tree. Of course, when you start from zero, the biodiversity does increase quite rapidly, because it has a lot of room to grow, but like I said earlier, it takes decades if not centuries to fully recover.
In the PNW, clear cutting has been linked to increased risk of landslides.
This is a really big issue, and I won't even try to give it full voice here. A really good book on this issue is "Hidden Forest: The Biography of an Ecosystem" (http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Forest-Biography-Jon-Luoma/dp/0...) It's based on the best research available at the time (1999, I believe).
If you don't care about the ecologies of forests, then maybe you don't care about whether or not we cut down some old trees. But I think you should care about the ecologies of forests, because forests have huge impacts on climate, atmosphere, water quality, erosion, and much much more.
The "old-school" logger mindset is that the forests would be better off "managed" by humans than left by itself. That is, it would be more productive. But a century of data is showing that this is not really correct. It's only in the last twenty years or so we've come to understand that long-term problems these things create.
For example, clear cutting tends to completely wipe out the biodiversity of that location. Even if they are re-seeded / re-planted, they tend to only be re-planted with one type of tree. Of course, when you start from zero, the biodiversity does increase quite rapidly, because it has a lot of room to grow, but like I said earlier, it takes decades if not centuries to fully recover.
In the PNW, clear cutting has been linked to increased risk of landslides.
This is a really big issue, and I won't even try to give it full voice here. A really good book on this issue is "Hidden Forest: The Biography of an Ecosystem" (http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Forest-Biography-Jon-Luoma/dp/0...) It's based on the best research available at the time (1999, I believe).