Wild Forests or Silviculture

Abstract

In the forested countries around the Gulf of Guinea, enrichment planting in dense forests with few naturally occurring com- mercial species began in the 1920s. It is clearly necessary to offset forest losses from logging by conducting silvicultural operations to reconstitute a forest’s initial composition using suitable species. Such a strategy, which is sometimes strongly opposed but would convert wild forests into forests with greater potential value, can only be applied with a view to the long term. And this isonlypossible if themeans provided to foresters are guaranteed over the long term. Enrichment planting is jus- tified by the small number of commercial forest species, which will still be the same species in fifty years’ time because they have the best technical properties. A for- est enriched with okoumé, limbo and ni- angon to produce 50 or 60 commercially valuable trees per hectare will therefore always have more value than a wild for- est. Enrichment is also justified by the increasing rarity of the most sought-after species, which cannot regenerate under dense cover. For example, we know that the abundance of okoumé in certain ar- eas is the result of early human settle- ments that have since disappeared. En- richment is also justified as a means of preventing logging from encroaching into the entire forest and gradually destroying it. Sawmills often decimate the forest sur- rounding them, and forest roads contrib- ute to its fragmentation until cropfields take over the soil entirely. With no listing of protected forests and no silviculture, within just a few decades there would be no more economically viable forestry and no more forest industries manufacturing timber products for export.

Abstract adapted by the editorial team