Foresters judge hungry deer by checking a small woodland flower
Deer nibbling young saplings can change which trees a forest grows into, so foresters need to know how hard they are browsing. One study proposed a clever gauge: the large white trillium, a low woodland flower. How heavily it gets eaten hints at the pressure on the whole forest's future.
That example shows how broad forestry has become. Once treated as a stand-alone science about growing timber, it is now seen as a land-use discipline alongside agriculture, drawing on ecology, economics and even politics. Modern foresters juggle many goals at once: timber and firewood, but also wildlife habitat, clean water, erosion control, recreation, attractive landscapes and forests that soak up carbon dioxide. Growing trees mainly for wood has its own name, silviculture, though the two terms are often used interchangeably.
Forests matter enormously to livelihoods. They provide more than 86 million green jobs worldwide. In Germany, where woodland covers nearly a third of the land, forestry supports over a million jobs and about 181 billion euros of economic value a year. Elsewhere the picture is harsher: some 880 million people, many of them women, spend part of their time gathering firewood or making charcoal, and around 252 million people living in forests and savannahs earn under 1.25 dollars a day.
Where seedlings come from turns out to be crucial. Trees with a broad genetic mix cope better with pests, disease and a changing climate, so most European countries advise on which species and seed sources suit each site. Those genetic reserves face real threats. In 2015 fire touched about 98 million hectares of forest, mostly in the tropics and largely in Africa and South America, while insects, disease and storms damaged roughly 40 million more.
The profession has deep roots in English writing, with early works including John Manwood's 1592 collection of forest law and John Evelyn's Sylva of 1662. Today Canadian forestry graduates from accredited programmes receive a silver ring.
Source: Forestry
