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Management of NEFF Community Forests
Forest management concepts
 Aldo
Leopold wrote:
"Conservation is a state of harmony between men and
land. By land is meant all of the things on, over, or in the
earth. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you
cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is
to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot
conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build
the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism. Its
parts, like our own parts, compete with each other and
co-operate with each other. The competitions are as much a
part of the inner workings as the co-operations. You can
regulate them-cautiously-but not abolish them.
The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth
century is not television, or radio, but rather the
complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the
most about it can appreciate how little we know about it.
The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal
or plant: "What good is it?" If the land mechanism
as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we
understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons,
has built something we like but do not understand, then who
but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep
every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent
tinkering."
Forest Management is intelligent tinkering.
Striving to understand all the pieces as well as all the
forces effecting forests. These include economic as well as
environmental. Foresters, by integrating all these factors,
can efficiently deliver the values that people want from
forests.
Forests are simultaneously resilient and fragile.
Trees are tough hardy long lived organisms. Plants and
animals quickly grow and expand to use any available
suitable habitat. But specialized organisms need very
special sites and they must be protected. Plus, it takes
decades to grow a mature forest. Forest management
incorporates all these factors.
More from the Forestry Department
View our complete Regional Forest
Management Plan 
Adobe PDF Document 5.5MB
Using sustainable forest management to acheive conservation goals
Adobe PDF Document 968KB
Clickable Map of our
forests
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