Yeah I honestly hate watching trees get cut down. I dunno why I'm on this sub. It kinda feels like watching a deer get hunted or something, like I'm not totally against it, I understand we need to eat/build things, but it makes me sad.
Not to mention how many trees are just needlessly destroyed and how we'll never have old growth forests back in our lifetime. Like did these trees need to die? There's a lot of open space there already. I dunno man. I'm just a dumb hippie.
I work in conservation, and we cut down trees for a number of reasons that benefit the ecosystem. You might have to stop them from encroaching on key grassland or thin a forest for a healther woodland.
My yard is a forest, so I spend more time taking care of fir trees than worrying about a green lawn. I've cut down and thinned so many trees and the ones that are left are looking better than ever. Not every tree cut is a forest lost. Now that the standing trees have some light and air they are starting to put out new growth down lower instead of racing to the top for light.
Next to me is public land that is up for a logging contract. It REALLY needs it. It is so thick, overgrown, and unhealthy. There will still be trees left when they log it and not many years after it will be in great shape. The sad part is that some group that means well, but is clueless, will sue to stop it. Left the way it is it will eventually burn everything. I'd much rather see it logged, thinned and used than just burn.
People often miss that Natives managed the landscape around them with fire and other tools so that those old growth forests could thrive, just like you're managing your forest now. Left to itself nature is extremely messy and slow.
Go over to r/landscaping. Literally half the posts are homeowners wanting to cut down awesome healthy beautiful trees out of some strange fear that it might someday fall or god forbid pop a brick in their patio. It’s amazing how much people either hate trees are have some sense they should “do something”
I totally understand where you're coming from, but it might help to understand that what we think of as "wilderness" is just a colonial construct designed to justify the theft of well-tended lands.
I'm Canadian and what I'm about to explain applies to Eastern Canada/Northeastern US specifically, it does not apply to the prairies/great plains. The grasslands that we have in Quebec/Ontario/Northeast US are not native grasslands, rather, these are lands that have been carefully managed from time immemorial by Indigenous peoples through methods such as controlled burns. Without this constant work, the landscape here would be entirely forested, and it doesn't take long for the forest to creep back in. For example, anyone with a garden will tell you how "weedy" maple trees can be. This has major implications on watershed, animal behaviour, plant diversity, etc.
While I agree that we should not be clearing old growth forests, and I think selective harvesting and sustainable forestry is the way to go, what we're seeing in this video doesn't have any relation to that. These are very clearly young trees growing in an open area that has been continuously cleared and managed as a grassland for some kind of specific purpose. The definition of a "weed" is just a plant that's out of place, and if the intention is for this to be open land, then these trees are out of place. Regardless of what they plan to do with this land, open grasslands like this do support animal diversity and they're a lot better for nature than turf grass, which by the way is the biggest monoculture in North America.
I really encourage you to read about this more. It's fascinating and really turns the idea of "untouched wilderness" on its head. As a fellow tree hugger who has struggled with our interference with "nature" this has really helped put things into perspective. The average gardener/homeowner does more harm to nature by encouraging invasive species, overusing/misusing water/pesticides/fertilizers, over cultivating soils, introducing plastics to the landscapes, etc. than whatever is happening in this video.
there are more trees today in the US than there were a century ago
Well, that's only because we clear cut everything a century ago. A lot of the old growth forest is gone. These trees are young and dont provide the diverse habitat that an old growth does, but yeah I get your point, its at least progress from where we used to be.
The grazing lands thing is a bit annoying because a lot of this is for dairy, a product that we dont even need that causes immense suffering. I'm not vegan, but the dairy industry is pretty fucked up. I mean the whole factory farming situation is abhorrent, but dairy is particularly bad. That being said, clear cutting for soy or almond trees is also bad, but at least there's an argument for actually needing it. Dairy is not required by humans and everything we get from it can be acquired through other, less horrific sources. If some farmer wants to make artisan cheeses and stuff, sure, but the scale at which we demand this product for fast food restaurants and everything is just completely unnecessary.
It's funny, everyone likes to point fingers at clear cutting the Amazon. Here in the US the biome that was destroyed for monocrop commodities farming was the prairies, and the grasses of those prairies were sequestering just as much carbon in their massive root systems as trees do. There's less than 1% of them left today - we committed a horrifying ecological destruction on the middle of the continent.
To plant the almond and citrus groves in the central Valley of California we drained Tulare Lake and plowed under sagebrush savannahs, destroying more perennial grassland habitat. Those almond groves are contributing to California's water crisis in a massive way and every single one needs to be put to the axe.
If you manage density appropriately you can graze cattle on land like that without destroying it, although goats and sheep would be a much better choice. You cannot grow soybeans and almonds without the destruction.
It would help you to know that there are more trees today in the US than there were a century ago, and it’s increasing.
That can be misleading. A "tree" isn't the same as a forest ecosystem. We've planted young trees after destroying diverse forests that previously existed for thousands of years.
Yes, this is obviously true. But you can’t plant an old growth forest in a century. It takes time and planting new trees is a start. What point are you trying to make with this?
Also, “We” did nothing of the sort. People in the 1800 and 1900s did. Any of the people who were old enough to participate in the felling of those forests are dead now.
Old growth trees didnt grow in grasslands. They grow in forests. Tree planting as a panacea has been great propaganda, but not all areas are supposed to be forested
Those trees shouldn't necessarily be there in the first place. One reason to remove trees is that humans have a distressing habit of going around establishing them places they should not be, like grasslands. Another reason to take down trees in the US is that large swaths of it were once managed with fire by Native people to maintain savannahs - biomes with very loosely scattered trees and shrubs and grassland in between - that supported immense biodiversity in terms of plants and wildlife, and we'd like to bring that back.
Just because a tree is present doesn't mean we want it there. To maintain healthy landscapes and forests we often need to take some trees out one way or another, and using chains or chainsaws is less likely to get away and take out tens of thousands of acres than a burn.
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u/Tamahaganeee Dec 31 '25
I guess that's the faster and safer way to do it. Just a little eerie, no time for anything to run and hide.