Environmental Issues
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Plantation Forestry
The decline of the cane plantations left thousands of acres of rich agricultural land idle. Our research has shown that the growth rates in the current plantations rival the best in the world. Indigenous forests in the Pacific Northwest require 40 years or more to achieve the same volumes as Hawaiian eucalyptus at age seven.
Plantation forestry is a good fit for the Hamakua Coast. Plantations are a more gentle use of the land than sugar, because there is less need for pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Further, harvest will occur every eight to twelve years, as compared to every 12 - 18 months for sugar. This results in fewer entrances on the land and less soil degradation through compaction and erosion.
Using wood from plantation-grown trees allows endangered native forests to regenerate and remain undisturbed. Wood from plantation-grown trees is a tremendous renewable resource. Using this wood for veneer as opposed to dimensional lumber represents another gain. Products made from veneer have greater strength and elasticity than conventional lumber and and offer the the availability to provide in better utilization of each log.
Plantation forestry, and particularly tropical plantation forestry, is a sound and positive environmental practice.
Let's consider a few basics. First, people need wood and wood products. Thousands of products we use in everyday life are made from wood--it is used in everything from clothing to xylophones, from Kleenex to bridge beams. The use of wood is not new to Hawaii. The ancients made canoes, surfboards, weapons, paddles, house frames, tapa beaters, drums and cooking utensils from wood.
Most of us use paper in a dozens of ways dozens of times every day. Our furniture and our homes use wood. Signs that people wave at protests are made of wood products. Nearly half of the raw material used in manufacturing in the United States comes from wood. The United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization estimates that worldwide wood use will continue to increase by about 2.5 % every year.
What is important is not just that we use wood, but that we should use wood. Wood is indefinitely renewable. It is readily recyclable and is biodegradable (particularly in Hawaii). Perhaps more importantly, manufacturing wood products requires only a fraction of the energy necessary to produce alternative materials such as plastic or steel.
Production and consumption of energy in all its forms may well be the world's leading environmental issue. Any one of these reasons should make wood the environmentalist's choice for raw material. The lands in use for plantation forestry in Hawaii are nearly all abandoned or underutilized agriculture lands. Plantation forestry is probably the most benign possible productive use of the land, in terms of frequency of soil disturbance and low rates of pesticide and fertilizer use. People plant trees on private and trust land because there is a market for wood products. Trees absorb carbon and release oxygen, temper the flow of rainwater, build and preserve the soil, and provide habitat for many forest dwelling creatures. Harvesting exotic species from state land creates income, which in turn can be used for conservation projects.
There are two more reasons, from an environmental standpoint, that tree plantations should be maintained on the Island of Hawaii. Both have to do with the almost magical rate of growth. First, these plantations are so effective at producing oxygen and storing carbon that there are companies who will pay growers to get "carbon credits". Second, an acre of tropical trees on the Hamakua Coast grows wood twenty times as fast as the world average for natural forest. This means that harvesting one acre of plantation-grown eucalyptus eliminates the need to harvest twenty acres of natural forest elsewhere.
Noise & Sound | Traffic |Clean Air & Water | Coqui Frogs | Plantation Forestry | Biomass Energy Advantages | Eucalyptus & The Environment