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Comment by itsoktocry | Hacker News Reader

>Actual, natural forest? There isn't really all that much of it...

Can you quantify "not really much"? Because I don't think you're correct; I think that Canada has tons of natural forest.

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The most specific figures I found for Canada: Of 417.6 million hectares of forest, 234.5 million hectares are "commercial forests", i.e., tree plantations.

There are about 3.47 million km2 of forest and of that 2.06 million km2 are covered by a management plan that includes production, conservation or other uses[1]. That does not mean all 2 million km2 are tree plantations. In fact relatively little will be - there is a ton of natural forest in that area and it's not all for commercial use.

The rest of the 3.47 million km2 is located in more remote and northern areas and often relatively undisturbed by human activity. Accessibility is the distinction, not if it's a plantation or not.

[1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/16-201-x/2018001/sec-2-e...

'Not much' means 180 million hectares? So just an area three times the size of France.

This doesn't imply that the forest remains untouched, unlogged, or unmanaged.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37336122

The way op put it did imply it, but I take your point that it doesn't actually mean it.

Have you never left a city? The idea that half the forests in Canada are plantations should be ridiculous on its face.

A "plantation" in this sense is something that has been planted by man sometime in the last 100 years. Many forests you see which are 40 or 70 years old look like real wild forests, but are in fact planted.

Don't forget that trees in Canada grow slowly compared to for example trees in a jungle.

The entire world deforests around 10m hectares per year commercially[1]. It doesn't follow that the global economy could support 200m+ hectares of plantations, never mind 200m+ in Canada alone.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation

I suspect that 234.5 million just means: crown land permitted for forestry development, not reflecting its actual replanted vs not-replanted status.

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