In the boreal region, the major cause of old growth forest destruction and secondary forest degradation, is the increasing industrial extraction of timber for human consumption.
 The northern boreal forests provide 60 % of the worlds supply of industrial roundwood. Some northern forests are among the most threatened habitats in the world, in terms of loss of old growth or primary woodland. In Scandinavia, the large scale commercial exploitation of the forests began more than 100 years ago. Today, virtually all forest land has been transformed into intensively managed secondary forests ( less than five percent of the old growth forests remain). In the interior and remote parts of Alaska, Canada andSiberia most of the primary forests still remain intact , but on the other hand we find all the characteristics of the first phase of industrial forest exploitation; the resource is still considered unlimited , reforestation is close  to non-existent and nature consideration is minimal. The "timber frontier" is continuously moving into new areas of primary forests, and the speed of forest destruction is enormous.
(From the TRN report The Taiga - a Treasure - or Timber and Trash?, June 1994) |
