Old Growth on a 5 Hour Hike

Another contextual factor we talked about in class was the importance of old growth. While on our five hour hike as a group, we got to see a large amount of old growth. Talking about this in class made me realize there was a lot more to it than I had originally thought and it clicked for me that taking out the old stuff and planting new trees was not doing the same thing as just leaving the old stuff. When people go in and “clean up” all the old and fallen trees, we may think we are doing the forest a favor, but in reality, we just took out an immense amount of important resources for the forest. When we tear out old trees and plant new trees, the new trees have less nutrients and will likely not turn out as healthy and useful as the older trees had been. Another important part of taking out old growth, is that people would say they are planting new trees to make it seem better. It is always great to plant more trees, but unless we are actively maintaining them and giving them the best shot at surviving, they will likely die before they are even as tall as us. In many cases, new trees are planted but not maintained so there is actually no gain as all of the newly planted trees die from lack of care. By leaving old growth, these newly planted trees will likely have better odds of survival because of the rich sources of nutrients found in the old growth. Seeing the amount of old growth on our hike, with the amount of new growth prospering from this old growth was amazing to see.Läs mer