Logging. The Beginnings of European Timber Use

Early historical evidence of large-scale logging, or timbering, first appears in several early Eastern and Middle-Eastern cultures, including ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and Greece. The Egyptians, for instance, utilized substantial local timber resources for the building of homes, oar-driven boats, and elaborate tombs in the third millennium все. There are accounts of royal family control and overuse of forest resources that document the need to obtain timber from other regions through trade and conquest as local sources became depleted.

Mesopotamian and Middle Eastern cultures also left indications of heavy use of timber during the second millennium все for construction of city walls and warships, with statements of great campaigns to distant lands in search of timber resources once local supply dwindled. Likewise, in China early populations removed forests for the development of agriculture, with much of the wood used for domestic fuel.

Specialists have reported that the longtime scarcity of fuel wood in densely populated areas of China may have shaped traditional cooking practices. For example, vegetables are often cooked just lightly, and a common cooking pot, the round-bottomed wok, requires less fuel for heating food than do other designs.

Ancient Greek records also indicate a heavy reliance on forests for charcoal as well as for shipbuilding and construction of public and private buildings. In fact, discoveries of skillfully made axes and saws at many ancient Greek settlements, in combination with evidence of large buried construction timbers, support the hypothesis that much of present-day Greece was once heavily forested. The resource was eventually depleted, however, and the scarcity—and consequent value—of wood is poignantly illustrated by descriptions of Greek peasants fleeing from invading Persians in the fourth century все, carrying with them the wooden doors of their farmhouses as one of their most valuable possessions.

The Beginnings of European Timber Use. Records of significant timbering exist from early European cultures in present-day Italy, France, Britain, and Germany. In the fifth century ce the Romans are known to have established large areas of European forestlands for harvest, often denying local populations access and requisitioning the resource to reinforce their dwindling supplies near Rome. After the fall of the empire, Christian monastic orders throughout Europe were responsible for the establishment of settlements, the timbering of vast forested areas for wood products, and the clearing of land for agriculture. One estimate holds that during the seventh to fourteenth centuries over half the forestland of France was once owned and timbered by the monastic orders.

As European populations became settled into city- states and kingdoms and timber resources became increasingly scarce, the right to cut a forest was often assigned by chieftains and kings. In Britain and France during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries CE, these assignments were governed by ordinances protecting the largest and best woodlands, often for the preservation of timber for sailing vessels and warships.

Of all industrial requirements for timber cutting, the need to preserve old-growth trees for specific uses influenced early forest conservation the most. However, the increasing need for timber as a fuel for such activities as the smelting of ore, glassmaking, and cooking ensured the rapid decline of unmanaged forest resources. The degree of forest exploitation varied as leadership and the financial situation of the leader changed.

Only the Germanic states were able to maintain adequate longterm forest resources, chiefly due to their lack of a requirement for shipbuilding timber and differing regional forms of government that were more sensitive to local needs as opposed to the more national governance in Britain and France that was slower to adapt and manage resources.

Timber Use in the New World. Evidence of large-scale timbering by North American native cultures is lacking, with most information presenting a picture of land being used mostly for small- scale agriculture and hunting. Undoubtedly native populations used fires to maintain game lands and manage forested areas, but significant logging of the continent was to come later at the hands of European colonists. In fact, less than two himdred years was required to significantly affect the timber resources of the East and Midwest of North America.

As the early settlers moved across the continent, they often viewed the lush, dense forests of the new land as an adversary and sought to clear it quickly for safety, agriculture, and travel. In many instances these populations were accompanied by British commercial interests, which exploited what was considered an almost inexhaustible timber resource, harvesting the biggest and best trees for shipbuilding, and shipping much of the resource back to wood-poor Europe.

This continued until the American War of Independence in the late 1700s, when the colonies of the Americas began independent harvesting of the forests, just as rapaciously as the Europeans. Indeed, as early as the middle 1800s, common scenes of heavily logged land and fire-scarred earth prompted formal forest conservation efforts.

Modern Timber Management. By the time the United States recognized the need for national timber conservation and institutionalized the effort through federal and state forest reserves in 1841, European endeavors already existed that could serve as a model for frugal timber use and management. As early as 1825, schools of forest science and experimentation had been established in Germany and France to serve the growing need for scientific management of reduced timber resources.

These efforts paved the way for what is now recognized as the modern science of forestry, or the management of forestland for the maximum sustained yield of forest resources and benefits. Today many universities throughout the world provide educational programs in forestry, teaching forest ecology, protection, economics, sustainable harvest techniques, and replenishment. Today much of the public timber resources of Western Europe and North America is scientifically managed, with the goal of a perpetual renewable timber resource for future generations.

Tropical Deforestation. Despite advances in technical, sustainable management of timber resources in the Northern Hemisphere, there is global concern for the equatorial tropical forests of developing nations. Many developing areas of the tropics are currently struggling with familiar historic forest conservation issues, such as overharvesting.

At a time when forest cover is increasing in many areas of North America, tropical forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. Although much of Northern Hemisphere forest management can be applied to tropical forests, additional concern is warranted in equatorial areas due to the rapid rate of deforestation and the fragility of the soils.

This photo of Oregon shows clear-cutting in which all timber is taken from a specific area

Tropical forests also contain what many consider a global heritage of species diversity, including many species that have been proven useful for pharmaceuticals and food. Additionally, tropical forests provide an invaluable array of environmental services to larger regions, such as the control of droughts and floods, erosion, and buffering of tropical storm damage. Intact equatorial forests also help reduce global levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas associated with global warming.

With current rates of tropical deforestation many of these benefits are quickly disappearing, and no end to the logging is expected soon. The next phase in the human history of timbering is developing, encouraging our species yet again to adapt and learn.