Forest Club model projects and sites

The Industrial Development of the Taiga as a wood Resource

Industrial development of the taiga's forest resources has always been extensive. This general direction has followed the continued exploitation of old-growth areas rather than the development of intensive reforestation management within areas already developed and closer to markets. Forestry in Russia has developed an unsustainable ethos more similar to that of mining than to classical forestry, which is directed towards the utilization of renewable resources.

High grading in various forms has historically been the main form of logging in the taiga, with little or no consideration of long-term consequences. Convenience of location and prevalence of desired species have governed the choice of logging site, on which only the most commercially attractive species and tree individuals have been cut.

The forests of the North have long been regarded as a massive, inexhaustible deposit of wood, the partial destruction of which could easily be compensated by the exploitation of another part. The time period foreseen for exploitation of any particular natural forest area is short in relation to the time required for renewal of the forest in that same area, given the level of silvicultural practice.

The industrial development of the taiga as a forest resource has been characterized by "skimming", also known as "high grading", the exploitation of the most valuable, best located resource, without serious consideration of long-term consequences. Consideration of location and quality have been used for allocation of logging tracts, while selective cuts focus on the best trees in terms of product yield.

Forestry in the taiga shows gradual "logging creep" from the most accessible areas close to consumption points or transport infrastructure to more and more remote areas. Three different time periods can be distinguished within the process of logging creep connected with a gradual increase in logging intensity and a decrease in the quality constraints on the extracted wood. Each period involved logging of increasingly lower quality stands, including stands that had been passed up by previous logging efforts. As a result the creep away from accessible forest was sometimes repeated over the same area.