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Biological Conservation Journal: Peak Timber
Buzz words sprout from controversies of the day. From the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, “subpoena” and “alpha lists” spilled into chatter at barbershops and even diplomatic receptions.
Emerging issues mint new buzz words. “Peak timber” is one of them.
“Tropical countries should consider implications of ‘peak timber’… [even as] it has become common to speak of ‘peak oil,’” the journal Biological Conservation suggests. Today’s 30- to 40-year logging cycles do not provide sufficient time for forests to recover.
This rule of thumb stems from a 1950s preliminary research on fertile Basilan Island with its abundant rainfall. Other provinces are less favored. Basilan’s 30-40 year yardsticks were applied nationwide. They are proving unsustainable.
“Peak timber” shoves against forest limits. The trajectory clones the “Hubbert Curve” in tracking oil, note Australian National University’s Phil Shearman and Jane Bryan with William Laurance of James Cook University. Harvests first surge, peter out on a peak, then plunge into free fall.
“Been there, done that,” Filipinos would shrug. In 1595, forests blanketed 27.5 million hectares here. Today, 7.7 million hectares are left, official data claims. That’s probably an overestimate.
Factor in unrecorded killer logs, unleashed by Tropical Storm “Sendong.” Most tumbled from the mountains of Lanao del Sur. Kaingin-scarred slopes, converted into pastures or corn fields, have patchy vegetative cover. They cannot stem soil erosion. Neither do they hold rain runoff. They result in massive soil erosion.
Thus, mud, rock and logs cascaded from plantations into vulnerable hillsides in the Bukidnon towns of Manolo Fortich, Libona, Talakag and Baungon. In Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, people were smothered by waves of mud.
The first Asian country to liquidate its forest wealth after World War II, the Philippines slammed into “peak timber” early. From less than 500,000 cubic meters in the late 1950s, log exports crested at 11.1 million cubic meters in 1974. Exports slumped to a mere 841,000 cubic meters a decade later.
It still has to recover. Forest cover dwindled, meanwhile, to 18 percent, far below the 30 percent safety benchmark. Loss of habitats threatens 89 species of wildlife. Most are endemic to the Philippines. “A prima donna of log exporters in the 1970s, we became a wood pauper in the 1980s,” observed Viewpoint. (Inquirer, 1/10/08)
“Leaks” are all over, notes former United Nations forester Napoleon Vergara. Penury and hunger drive kaingineros to slash and burn trees for a harvest or two. Rapid population growth spurs upland migration. Confronting illicit loggers, who bankroll politicians, can be lethal.
“Green” priest Neri Satur was shotgunned to death in 1991 for confiscating truckloads of “hot logs” in Bukidnon. Catholic radio journalist Dr. Gerry Ortega campaigned to protect indigenous communities and Palawan forests. He was gunned down last Jan. 24.
Botanist Leonard Co was shot while doing research in Leyte in 2011. Co was “probably the last of classically trained botanists in plant taxonomy and systematics.” Lt. Gen. Jessie Dellosa, the 43rd Armed Forces chief of staff, should resolve the glib claim that Co was “caught in a crossfire with communist guerrillas.”
“Peak timber” is spurred by slow growth rate of commercially viable species, the scientists note. “Logging in the tropics tends to focus on a small fraction of the trees.” Abandoned tree stumps symbolize extensive “collateral damage.”
The “second wave clearance” problem, cited by Biological Conservation, is a major glitch in Mindanao, Vergara adds. Roads bulldozed by loggers open once remote areas to a flood of land-hungry settlers, shifting cultivators—and yet more illegal loggers.
The impact of bulldozers and yarders dragging logs through fragile tropical soils is severe. “In retrospect, it would probably have been better from an environmental perspective to rely on the carabao power that small-scale illegal loggers depend upon.”
Asia and the Pacific are starting to reverse forest loss, asserts the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in its 2011 “Forest Beneath the Grass.”
“Asia gained 2.2 million hectares,” the report says. “Primary forests nonetheless continue to be chain-sawed.” The last virgin forests in Samar are being chopped down.
Government reforestation efforts have been erratic. And tree survival rates are low. Under the Arroyo administration, more than 72 centavos out of every peso was spent on salaries in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources .
“We’ve long gone over the peak,” says agro forestry specialist Patrick Dugan, co-author of “Forest Faces.” We must “now focus on options for turning around the situation.”
The first step to climb back up the peak is to adopt—then enforce—“policies that create incentives for people to plant, harvest and sell trees.” This would tamp down pressure to harvest from the natural forests.
Second is to address the lack of tangible and sustained support to help millions of small-scale farmers, living on steep slopes, apply improved land use methods. Only then will they jettison the unsustainable but the only farming systems they have. That would crib “the prevailing attitude that any cutting of trees is ipso facto a criminal act.”
Hopes for the future rest with people given a stake in planting and thereafter protecting forests, writes BBC’s Mark Kinver. The alternative is an old buzz word: disaster.
20 Comments on "Biological Conservation Journal: Peak Timber"
BillT on Tue, 31st Jan 2012 1:59 am
Too little, too late. I live in the Philippines where all of that happened. I read about it in the newspapers and see the flooding on TV. But, tell a farmer that he cannot plant his land and he will do it anyway. It is plant or starve.
Corruption is more the cause in some areas as the huge trees are tempting and the land owners don’t live where the landslides happen. They don’t care.
They log off the land and abandon it. Most of the big plantations are land grants from the colonial days of the Spanish and are owned by only a few families who are wealthy and powerful. You know, like the big corporations in the US that are killing their customers with chemicals and debt. Same difference…greed.
DC on Tue, 31st Jan 2012 9:52 am
If it helps any BillT, I can tell what it is like in B.C. A province that logging ‘built’. The winters have become so mild and short, that the mountain pine beetle is literally eating the forest alive. Red trees are bug kill, green is healthly.
There are a lot of red trees in BC now…
Trees even in urban area are being cut down and removed due to bug kill in places.
The other thing is, if you look in google earth, BC looks well…green. But that is deceptive too. If you fly from say, Prince George to Vancouver(500 miles) and look down, all you can see are vast areas of clear cut. You cant really see them from the ground, and even on GE they dont look like there even there. But fly overhead and the amount of missing trees is startling. Throw in the bug-infestion that NO one knows how to deal with, besides the usual carpet bombing with chemicals(which is almost useless as a tactic), things do not look much better here on the west coast of N.A. either. We may not have illegal logging like there, but the legal variety has been no less devasating. I still have no idea what the govt or people expect will pick up the slack for forestries continuing decline.
Yes we replant, but even projects initiated in the 1970’s are just barely comeing along. And what does grow back is nothing like what was there before. And the industry loves to invest in big-machines called feller-bunchers which are basically one-man forest harvesting machines. Much more ‘efficent’ than the old work-crew methods. Now one machine can do more damange than 50 men used too..
No the forest is not much greener on the other side of the fence either.
Frank Kling on Tue, 31st Jan 2012 12:04 pm
The felling of forests and extraction of other natural resources is now occurring on a scale unlike anything I have seen before. The chain saws and bulldozers are working 24/7 clearing what remains of Colombia’s virgin forests on the Pacific coast and in the Amazon, and nothing can stand in the way. The rule of law is a joke and when a person of integrity stands up to the wholesale destruction the right-wing paramilitaries, which are funded by rich and powerful land owners, immediately eliminate the person as an example to the community. Consequently, everyone gets into the grab. The philosophy is to get as much as you can as quickly as you can otherwise someone else will. National parks? Since there is no enforcement it’s open season there as well. The one bright spot are international NGOs like World land Tryst-US which buys and protects in perpetuity highly threatened ecosystems and species.
Kenz300 on Tue, 31st Jan 2012 7:02 pm
PEAK OIL, peak water, peak fish stocks, peak timber, peak rare earth metals, peak phosphorus…… All of the earth resources have limits. The earths population keeps growing while the resources keep declining. The fight for resources necessary for survival will get ugly.
BillT on Wed, 1st Feb 2012 4:25 am
Kenz, I think the word you want is not ‘ugly’, I think the word is ‘war’. We have already begun the ongoing resource wars in 3rd world countries, but eventually, they will spill into Western countries.
Leanna Partridge on Wed, 11th May 2016 2:59 am
Timely writing , With reference to which , if your business requires to rearrange two images , my boss saw piece here http://goo.gl/Xk4rSy
makati1 on Wed, 11th May 2016 4:04 am
billT, I live in the Ps also and the land I have traveled thru seems to be well forested. Maybe not with long lived hardwoods, but green and forested. Most of my native America has also been stripped of the good trees, leaving junk/weed trees and pulp plantations in their place. I think it is typical of every country to strip mine everything of value, like locusts.
Davy on Wed, 11th May 2016 4:30 am
You are losing it Makati Bill, did you turn to wiskey by the pool like so many old people do. Digging up trash from 2012.
makati1 on Wed, 11th May 2016 4:35 am
Davy, are you the one at the pool with the moonshine? I thought it was hilarious that someone is using my old Avatar. I’m interested in where he really lives and who he is. If it is you, it is on poor taste, but that is to be expected from you. I only replied to your comment so that you would stop thinking it is me. I don’t need alternate egos. I’m the one and only. Go back to sleep.
Davy on Wed, 11th May 2016 4:57 am
Don’t drink Makati Bill.
Nope not me Billy. Who would use your stupid avatars? Avatars remind me of vanity plates anyway. Yours is the worst and reflects your narcissism and fake perspective. You are just an old man slipping of into the darkness of old age…
You don’t respond to my comments because I always crush you instead you act the coward. Cowards don’t engage because they know they can’t win and they can’t take being crushed.
JuanP on Wed, 11th May 2016 7:32 am
Davy, Maybe you don’t drink now, but I have little doubt that you abused alcohol and drugs when you were young, and you are a recovering addict and alcoholic. The signs are all there. How long sober? Congratulations on conquering those demons if you are telling the truth and you are sober now! I fought many addictions in my youth, too, and it takes one to know one.
Davy on Wed, 11th May 2016 8:27 am
Juan, as we get older we chose to lead different lives. I did many things as a youth some good some bad. At least I didn’t turn into a 1%er brat like you and your other South American brats living in Miami Beach playing and living it up while your continent sinks into the abyss. No wonder you won’t go home. Cowards behave like that.
JuanP on Wed, 11th May 2016 9:25 am
Davy, You are like one of those sad clowns who doesn’t know how to make a good joke. I can see how your country is getting so much better every day! LOL! Fucking God, fucking Jesus, and the fucking virgin whore Mary, you are completely fucked up! You, your fucking USA, and your fucking Catholic church are the absolute worst in the whole world. Never met a Latin American, Asian, African, or European spoiled brat that was half the fucking asshole you are, and I’ve met quite a few thousands.
JuanP on Wed, 11th May 2016 9:28 am
I love this shit, Davy! Let’s keep it up. Between you and me we can completely ruin this site for the rest of humanity.
Davy on Wed, 11th May 2016 10:03 am
It’s nice to see your panties in wad Juan. You must like abuse.
GregT on Wed, 11th May 2016 10:35 am
Does your wife read your comments Davy? I’m sure that she would appreciate your chauvinism. Women love that stuff.
Davy on Wed, 11th May 2016 11:04 am
Unlike Canadians Italians have a balanced view of Americans. She knows all the bad things and we talk about it often. She is amazed at how mean and aggressive Canadians are and she now has a new opinion of Canadians and it is not favorable.
My daughter is Spanish. She has lived her whole life there. The Spanish are not pro American and they have many issues with the US. She is also amazed at how poor Cannadian’s manners are and how egressively extreme commenters are on our board. Of course there are many different kinds of people in Canada but you represent a significant ground swell of aggressive hateful people among your population.
Thankfully Canada is not a superpower because the abuses the US has committed would pale in comparison to what your country would do in the name of your extremist agendas.
GregT on Wed, 11th May 2016 11:14 am
I’m sure that your daughter would also appreciate your use of the word ‘panties’ in such a degrading manner Davy, and if your wife holds the same view of Canadians that you do, she is every bit as delusional as you are. If that is indeed the case, neither of you are worthy of consideration.
PracticalMaina on Wed, 11th May 2016 11:35 am
The important thing is we keep putting people in large boxes, like Canadian, American, Immigrant, Muslim, and then make sweeping broad statements about that group, kind of like what got us to where we are with the global proxy wars being fought.
Davy on Wed, 11th May 2016 11:36 am
Juan is a bitch Greg. He attacks me daily just because he doesn’t like me. I never attack him because he is such a pain in the ass stupid. I mean he could argue on the ideas instead he calls people names. He is a loser. In that respect panties fit the subject.
Obviously you don’t know Spanish people. They have a rich vocabulary and panties is low on their list of words to have concerns about. Give it a rest Greg and move on. Your boy toy boat will be at it soon go pick on him.