Timber Resources Will Always Be Useful Every Day

Forest products have been in the mainstream of human activities for thousands of years and long before Jesus worked as a carpenter. Woodcutters feature in many children’s stories as people who lived secret lives in the shadows and produced charcoal and timber.

In some desert mountains villages have been built on the sides of treeless mountain slopes. They are composed almost entirely of stone but even in the most remote places timber has been used for roof trusses, illustrating the importance of timber in buildings. In well forested countries many houses are of course built entirely of timber.

The north Europeans have always been sea faring nations that made great use of timber for ship building. During the reign of Henry V111 a huge industry revolved around building a navy out of the great oak trees on British forests. Massive trees were selected for the masts of sailing ships. They were hauled by teams of horses to coastal shipyards.

A very important product of natural forests is oxygen which is given out by trees. It is needed by animals and human beings, and helps to maintain the natural balance of gasses on the planet. Some people are very concerned that logging companies cut down trees indiscriminately resulting in deforestation and less oxygen in the environment.

Although logging in natural forests is widely condemned, fewer people are aware of the damage done by artificial forestation. In African countries natural grasslands have been covered by huge man-made forests of pine and eucalypt trees. They are alien to the African biome and grow like weeds in mono-culture systems destroying natural fauna and flora beneath them. A walk through a pine plantation will be silent as death with nothing beneath the trees but a carpet of acidic pine needles.

The manufacture of paper and cardboard from wood pulp is a relatively new industry having begun as late as the 1860s. Previously paper was made on a smaller scale from other materials. In the 1950s it became possible to plant huge areas of grassland to pine and gum trees. The trees grow rapidly in the foreign climate and are ready to be harvested in ten to fifteen years as straight poles of about fifteen centimetres.

When they are fifteen to twenty centimetres in diameter young trees are cut, stripped and cut into poles to be transported by road or rail to pulping factories. They may be exported in chip form or be processed further into various types of paper for local use.

Of all the many forest products wood pulp is perhaps the most important product from artificial forests. In addition to the strong demand from paper manufacturers there is potential for use as a bio-fuel. This would be regarded as a sustainable resource which is environmentally more acceptable and less damaging than fossil fuels. Long straight eucalypt poles have many uses as tall electricity poles and in the building and transportation industries as planks for pallets.

In modern societies forest products are prevalent in almost every aspect of daily life. As new uses are found for them they will continue as essential materials in modern economies. However, sight should not be lost of the importance of oxygen from living trees as a vital ingredient in daily life.

Consumers depend on a large range of forest products for many uses. Pulp and paper products are now produced from managed tree crops in many locations.