Take a walk through your woods; look at its health, species composition and understory. Is it what you would like it to be? Are the larger trees shading out the understory so that it is mainly shade-tolerant species such as Beech and Maple, and not Oaks and Tulip Tree? Just as a farmer determines what crop he will plant, a wood lot owner can, to a point, determine what trees he will grow and as there are things farmers do to increase their yield per acre, there are things the wood lot owner can do to speed up the maturing process of his woods. With a little T.LC., which in forestry is called T.S.I. (Timber Stand Improvement), the wood lot owner can weed out the unwanted trees and bring the desirable trees to maturity much faster.

Just below the surface a tree seed sprouts, and through the miracle of God and nature it breaks through the earth to begin its new life. If it is not destroyed by weather, fire, disease or animals it grows into a tree. This is what many people feel is their total understanding of how a tree grows and a stand of timber matures, but is it? Most forestry practices are just common sense. There are basic truisms that apply to farm crop production which also apply to growing timber. Just as in farming, there is a time to plant, a time to weed, a time to harvest and through all of these the work of protecting the crop from outside damage.

A proper timber harvest is an essential tool that is used in T.S.I. A harvest that is based only on dollar return today and not proper forestry management can damage a woods to the point where it may take fifty to one-hundred years to recover. As certain species increase in diameter they can increase drastically in value, moving from lumber to veneer grade. This is one of the reasons it is important not to cut immature timber. You may be trading a small profit today for a much larger profit a few years down the road.

The practice of only taking the highest quality trees is also very detrimental. By removing the genetically superior trees we are left with an inferior seed source which will produce an inferior woods.

Not cutting your timber is also harmful. Trees, like all living things, have a life cycle and once they reach their peak they begin to decline. Many people wrongly feel that the cutting of a tree is harmful to the environment because the tree removes pollutants from the air. Nothing could be further from the truth. When trees become old and stagnant or a stand severely overcrowded they slow down their growth and start to be net users of oxygen rather than producers. For every pound of wood which decays, 1.07 pounds of oxygen is used and 1.47 pounds of carbon dioxide is released back into the air.

I recently read an article which stated that 70% of the forest lands here when Columbus landed are still here today. This is a very misleading statement, in that the volume of timber may be here, if you are speaking of biomass, but not the quality. The decline in quality has been caused more by improper management than overcutting and that is why it is very important that we become more informed. Timber in Indiana is a renewable natural resource, just as the bumper stickers say, and if we develop a plan for the future, based on common sense forestry practices and good stewardship of the land, we can increase the productivity of our woods, and at the same time increase the quality and guarantee a sufficient supply of hardwood timber for the future.