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Comment by Daub | Hacker News Reader

Former forester here. Some trees support more biodiversity than others. An oak tree forest is a lively place, full of insects and fungi, plants etc. A commercially planted pine tree forest is pretty much a dead zone: completely quiet, like a graveyard.

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For anyone in the south east of England, I'd recommend a visit to the Knepp rewilding project if you want to experience this effect for yourself (for everyone else there are some interesting YouTube videos). It's an old farm which has mostly been left to fend for itself, except for some carefully managed animal activity.

The minute you walk into the site it's apparent from the dragon flies and insect noises that there is something different about the place. It just feels alive in a way I've rarely come across.

Great tip, I am only 1 hours drive away. Look great - I fancy the walks. Have you done a stay over or a walk or something else (treehouse) ?

We only managed the short walk, with a 2 year old that's about all we can manage. There are some longer walks which I'd like to go back and do. The overnight stays would be amazing, though they were reassuringly expensive when we had a look.

Thank you for giving me a plan on where to visit for the upcoming weekends, it looks like a brilliant way of restoring nature.

There is also the accompanying book called Wilding, by Isabella Tree. Rewilding is the technique that Knepp promotes, and arguably got into popular culture.

This is the sort of tip I've been looking for!

We (NZ) got a gift from the UK of gorse bush which now runs pretty rampant, but interestingly it's now being used as a tool for repopulating native plants, as it's hardy nature means it can work as a shield for vulnerable young native plants (https://www.pressreader.com/new-zealand/the-press/20210605/2... is the best source I could find for this, but I walked through that area about 10 years ago which is how I came to learn about it)

This is a great short film that goes into detail about the project and the challenges faced in getting it off the ground: https://youtu.be/3VZSJKbzyMc

My house is like that. I say "mine" - I'm just the temporary steward.

I have seen insects that I've never seen before.

The tree diversity is not that great - we have stands of plantation Douglas Fir, and "wilder" stands of birch/beech/oak/chestnut. I fully appreciate the diversity that oak supports, though.

My suspicion is that the untamed meadow is a major factor in supporting the diversity. I have more tiny wildflower species than I can keep count of. I mowed a lot of it in this, my first, summer, but I will not be mowing as much of it going forward. I want a little lawn and some walkable paths - the rest I will refrain from taking from nature.

Unfortunately I need to manage the land very intensively or it'll be all bracken in three years. My view on wilderness, in this place, is that it takes a lot of work to make something look like no work has been done.

> My view on wilderness, in this place, is that it takes a lot of work to make something look like no work has been done.

Nicely put.

This is really interesting to hear because it correlates with what I’ve learnt about the mountain area I’ve grew up in, south of Poland. The end of 1800s came with sawmills and extensive deforestation by the then governing Austrian Habsburg dynasty. At the time completely cut down forests were seeded with pines. Fast forward ~150 years, there’s now continuos effort to recreate a former deciduous canopy, due to the pines beeing more susceptible to disease and weak. And its really marvelous to compare old photos of dark green swaths of land during autumn to the yellow gold brown palette of nowadays.

Same thing in Germany, after WW2 and the boom and rebuilding thereafter, a lot of forests are pure pine forests since they grow very quickly and provided the wood for the country.

Sadly, that lead to a lot of forests all over the country losing their beautiful biodiversity that you can e.g. find in the black forest.

Nowadays they're also often diseased, as you said, and you can see whole blocks of forest being torn down to contain the spread.

In some regions - like Saxony - mono-culture reforesting to spruce forests had already started in the 18th century (after the Ore Mountains had been pretty much deforested by centuries of mining operations). Thankfully the forests are now slowly transitioned away from the mono-cultures. But I guess spruce forests are overall better than no forests at all.

The western US and particularly the Pacific NW has the same issue. Widespread clearcutting of mixed forests followed by planting a monoculture of quick-growing conifers. Fast forward 100 to 150 years and some of those conifer crops were cut down for cheap lumber and replanted, again with the same conifers. And then the Dendroctonus spp. showed up.

I visited the center of France recently, and there are a mix of natural and commercial forests. Commercial forests don't look like forests, they look like monocrop fields, that happen to have trees instead of corn or wheat.

I am glad someone raised this issue. I see this problem serious in Malaysia and Indonesia due to palm oil trees. People have cleared pristine forest and replaced it with pine trees.

And now palm is ubiquitous (You generally can't avoid it tbh like sugar) this problem is becoming more and more serious. These pine trees don't support convivial environment. And it impacts many ecosystem mostly orangutans.

What is it about pines that cause that?

It's not the pines themself. It's when its only pines i.e. lack of diversity.

They needle down and kill the surrounding weeds with those needles. The shadow of the canopy is much more interlocked and closed. Its dark, dry and dead down there.

If trees are planted commercially, they’re often planted «too close» since not all of them survive to «old age». This makes them much more dense than what you’ll find in untouched nature. (That’s just one aspect, see other comments etc)

Pines shade the ground throughout the whole year, densely planted ones especially. Leave trees, like beeches and oaks, loose their foliage in autumn, thus in early spring other plants get enough light on the ground to flourish, before the trees produce their leaves again.

It is their acid nature combined with there very high consumption of water, which is a consequence of their very rapid rate of growth. Modern pine trees grow like inflating ballon toys. You can almost watch them grow overnight.

Old-school pine, like scots pine, are not so bad. But these are not grown commercially as much. Pity, it is a nice timber… more red than modern pine.

This is not why pines cause less biodiversity, but there is another reason why you tend to see less biodiversity with pines.

They are more prevalent in colder climates.

That's surprising. I thought stone or white pines were some of the most symbiotic species in old growth forests, what with their nutritious seeds and fungal relationships. Is it specifically the 'commercially planted' aspect that causes that or do I have a misapprehension about pine as a species?

Not an expert, but I would guess the issue is, pines make the most of tough conditions & usually live where other things can’t; however, planting a pine farm in a location that could support oaks is a loss.

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