Forestry Details

    Our team of forest managers hired by Lumber Incorporated, a saw mill company, planned two different forest harvesting strategies while meeting two main objectives.  The first objective was harvesting enough timber to provide the saw mill with 120,000 cubic meters of timber.  The other goal of this project was leaving enough old, native forest intact to  support the Rainbow Lorikeets, (Trichoglossus haematodus).  In the breeding season, each pair of Lorikeets need 120 hectares of native forest (Mahogany) that is over 75 years old.  Outside the breeding season, this species of parrots needs 80 hectares of 150-year old native forest.  The saw mill had the option of harvesting either the native tree species, Mahogany, the exotic species, Eucalyptus, or some combination of both species.  The Lorikeet, however, can only survive in Mahogany trees. 

Rainbow Lorikeet,(Trichoglossus haematodus)

     A road was plan was constructed for each forest strategy, which could cause problems for the population of lorikeets.  Road placement was an important issue to consider because it would allow access for poachers to possibly threaten the lives of the lorikeets.

    Catastrophic events such as fire was considered while designing both harvesting  strategies.  In order to decrease the effects of a fire breaking out, a low degree of prescribed burning would take place every other year to prevent forest litter (leaves, limbs, ect) from building up.  The prescribed burning process would be monitored very closely, and occur within strict parameters (ie: a certain humidity, temperature, and wind speed).  If a fire were to occur, the forest would stand a better chance of surviving since a build up of forest litter would not fuel the fire or cause it to spread.

    In strategy 2, a surplus of 20,000 cubic meters of timber would be harvested annually.  Some or all of this extra timber would be reserved to help meet the saw mill's annual timber requirement in the event of a natural disaster occurring.  The reserved timber would prevent Lumber Inc. from harvesting a portion of the parrot sanctuary if a fire were to break out.

    Planks of Mahogany

    If our team had to design this project based on an agricultural landscape embedded in a forest, the strategies planned would have been much different.  Placement of the parrot sanctuary would depend on the location of forest.  In order to make sure the Lorikeet population survives, the sanctuary would be attached to the closest old-growth Mahogany forest, and further away from the agricultural area.  An agricultural area might decrease the number of hectares needed for the parrot sanctuary, since the a lot of land would be required to plant crops. 

    One technique our team considered was individual-selection harvesting, or cutting down each individual tree as needed.  We evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of this harvesting technique and decided against it.  Some advantages of individual-selection is the ability of harvesting a tree at a specific age, which would spare the lives of some Lorikeets.  This technique also causes less ecological damage than clear-cutting an area because more of the forest is left intact, which does not disturb as many habitats.

    If our team of forest managers had decided to utilize individual-selection harvesting, removing the timber from the forest would have been more difficult and time consuming.  This technique would have been more costly than clear-cutting a section because more manual labor would have been required.