Comment by vintagedave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vintagedave | Hacker News Reader

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Author here. I'm actually sitting in a cafe in a town close to the village this is about right now.

I've visited many of the spots mentioned in this article. I haven't checked all of them, but all the ones I have checked have _no_ manual replanting to date, that I can see. (I'd expect a grid, with trees with those little fences protecting them, etc.)

What I do see is just natural growth of various plant species taking advantage of open ground, a mix of grasses, shrubs, birches, and others. There is no sign, that I have personally seen, of the ground being restored, or of systematic replanting. I write this noting I have not been to every site, so I can't definitely state there's been zero replanting. Some places were so lovely I just don't want to revisit :(

I picked a lot of wild strawberries on one of these plots of land just a couple of weeks ago. It used to be damp soil even in summer, lots of moss, mist commonly held between the trees (there's a photo.) Now it was baking hot with deep trenches from the machines. But hey. Hiding among the undergrowth there were strawberry plants.

_Something_ will grow back. Often in these things the replacement ecosystem is very different.

Where are these grids and fences used, and why?

What you will see in Estonia - forest is cut down and then some kind of plow makes lines in the forest to prepare the ground for planting trees. The trees are planted and in the next few years there will be lots of new growth, bushes and small trees that have grown from seeds or didn't get any sun below the old trees. The newly planted trees are sometimes hidden betwen the bushes and grass etc, but they are there.

Source: I go orienteering and have had to search for checkpoints on these former clearings or have made the mistake of trying to run through them.

> I'd expect a grid, with trees with those little fences protecting them, etc.

That is not how forest replanting works. That is how you do a garden.

> (I'd expect a grid, with trees with those little fences protecting them, etc.)

That says a lot. You have zero experience in forestry :)

Yes :) What should I be looking for?

As noted -- I see what appears to be natural regrowth. That expectation (lots of trees with little fences) comes from what I've seen in other places, where I have seen huge areas of clearfelled land with systematic gridded replanting. You are right I am not a forestry expert. I'm only writing what I observe as best as I can.

It would be good to have forestry experience before writing articles.

I guess one day of planting a forest is already a lot of help. Planting apple tree in garden is not forestry.

I wouldn't write an article about how doctors treat cancer wrong if my only experience is my dead grandmother.

You had a chance to educate a genuinely curious fellow human. And you blew it by being overly negative.

He has no forestry experience and many of the things he considers bad are actually additional costs to the landowner to make the forest grow back faster.

I kinda feel like writing about how someone does nothing when they actually do things, you just did not bothered to actually investigate how what you write about works is being overly negative in the first place.

Yep, no grids or fences in Estonia, at least not in typical state-managed forests. These just get replanted in furrows or on "turfs" (not sure about the correct English term). Newly planted seedlings can appear really tiny at first, though -- so tiny that even seasoned forestry workers who are later mowing grass around them occasionally fail to spot all the plants in the grass.

Source: have manually planted maybe ~300 000 trees in Estonia over the years, and also done the brush cutting work afterwards. I don't think clear cutting could be avoided entirely (among other things, we're maybe too spoiled as timber consumers for that), but it does feel way too extensive over here (emphasis on the word "feel" here -- as, despite some hands-on experience, my analytical understanding of the forestry ecosystem is very superficial). In place of confier monocultures, a small society like Estonia could maybe place its focus on heavily developing mixed forests instead, for a start. Abrupt forestry policy changes would likely backfire socio-economically (e.g. unemployment rise in rural areas). But those spruce-only or pine-only forests everywhere do look kind of... sad.

> a small society like Estonia could maybe place its focus on heavily developing mixed forests instead, for a start

Thinking aloud here, but I like this idea. It could also be signposted: one of the things that "feels" awful is just the constant gaps in forest: forest, clear, forest forest forest, clear, forest, clear. Or walking to areas you know and love and one day they're just gone. There seems no oversight and little protection.

Suppose you entered a region that was labeled: "In the next 10km, you will see managed forestry", at least you'd know it was deliberate, a large specific region designated for this work, rather than just a bunch of spots where someone who owned a plot of land decided to clearfell it and take the cash.

Because the corollary of that is areas that are _not_ managed (and not cut) and where, hopefully, forest would be allowed to grow into century-or-more old genuine wildforest. And you'd see that signposted too. Or you could plan to buy a house in the middle of that kind of land, if you valued it.

"Suppose you entered a region that was labeled: "In the next 10km, you will see managed forestry""

Really like this idea. In reality, though, the Estonian state forest management council seems to put more PR-efforts in showing how they also preserve wilderness, build camping trails etc. They don't seem very confident in showing "actual forestry" to the general public -- but, it is, obviously, also not an easy task these days, especially considering that e.g. clear cutting and usage of harvesters is ethically questionable to many people.

I think for these "In the next 10km, you will see managed forestry" signs, the whole society would need to become more mature at first. As in, foresters should have more acceptance for wilderness preservation, and the general public should have more acceptance for the forest industry.

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