Date sent: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 14:34:42 +1000 From: dargavel@coombs.anu.edu.au (John Dargavel) Subject: OLD-GROWTH FORESTS
Can anyone please tell me anything about the origins of the term 'old-growth'? I guess it originated in the Pacific NorthWest of North America and has become widely adopted in Australia and elsewhere. It does not appear in the indices of European forestry text books nor, surprisingly, in the US forestry text books of the 1930s that I have seen (eg Mathews 5th edn 1935). Any leads would be much appreciated.
John Dargavel
Australian National University
Date sent: Fri, 08 Mar 1996 17:34:01 -0500 (CDT)
From: d107ccm@utarlg.uta.edu
Subject: Re: "Old Growth Forest"
I diary entry I came across, written by a geologist-naturalist in
Mississippi, 1852, refers to "noble forests" and means what we would
call old growth. I have not come across the term old growth in nineteenth
century documents.
Chris Morris
Texas at Arlington
morris@uta.edu
Date sent: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 18:12:50 -0800 (PST) From: Charles Raymond Katz <DWilliam@nov.snu.edu
I have no specific information, just a thought: It seems to me that the term "old growth" would likely have followed as a contrast to the notion of "second growth." So perhaps you need to know more about the whole system of terminologies involved here in order to get at that one answer.
Charles Raymond Katz
c/o History Dept.
UC Berkeley, 94720
ckatz@uclink.berkeley.edu
Date sent: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 23:48:07 -0500 From: sbeyer@hevanet.com Subject: Re: "Old Growth Forest"
John:
I believe the shift to the term 'old-growth occurred in the 1970's because of the sexism of the earlier conventional term 'virgin timber', which was used to mean, of course, untouched. "old-growth still carries the meaning of being untouched, but neutralizes the gender, while 'mature forests' merely denotes harvestable sawmill timber. Many environmentalists further nuance old, untouched forests as 'anchient forests' in order to sacralize their long life.
stan
Stan Beyer sbeyer@hevanet.com American History, UC-Irvine 503-222-2810
2015 N.W. Kearney #305
Portland, Oregon 97209
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 12:19:15 -0600
Subject: Re: "Old Growth Forest" [query]
From: Kagillogly@aol.com
There's another element to this. Seventeen years ago, when I lived in worked in the Solomon Islands, I lived in the midst of tall and apparently 'virgin' forest. And, indeed, that's what the foresty/botany people called it. But the local people knew the history of cutting -- all of these apparently untouched forest had been used in long-cycle swiddening for as far back as local history remembered. Virgin, implying pure and untouched, clearly reflected the 'scientist's' misunderstanding of forest/human interactions there. As a result, the ecologists were busy trying to think of a more appropriate terminology. Guess they're still hunting!
K. Gillogly
U. Michigan
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 10:21:22 -0600
Subject: Re: "Old Growth Forest" [query]
From: dhardin@longwood.lwc.edu (David Hardin)
Ignoring the ramifications of human interaction with "virgin" forests colors our perception of what the "climax" forests of North America looked like. In Virginia, many ecologists and historians have neglected the influence of Native groups on climax communities, so the forest conditions encountered by Europeans after 1607 are generally considered to represent the climax or the true nature of virgin woodlands. Of course, that ignores several thousand years of human modification of Virginia's forests. Europeans who landed on Virginia's shores were encountering anthropogenic forests, not "virgin" woodlands, especially where Native settlement was concentrated. This extends to Braun's classification of inner coastal plain forests as "oak-pine forests." While oak is the dominant tree species, she included pine because it is the predominant _post-disturbance_ successional species. That ignores evidence that pine was exceedingly rare in forests that had lower levels of Native influence, such as in Essex County on the south shore of the Rappahannock River. By looking at early land grant records, it is clear that oak and hickory were the dominant trees and that pine accounted for only about one percent of the forest's composition. Only after 200 years of large-scale planting and farming did pine become a prevalent element of the landscape. What we call an oak-pine forest was probably really an oak-hickory forest, or at the very least, an "oak-hickory-pine" forest.
Dr. David S. Hardin
Assistant Professor of Geography
Natural Sciences Department
Longwood College
Farmville, VA 23909
(804) 395-2581
dhardin@longwood.lwc.edu
k. gillogly's note and david hardin's response point to some significant questions regarding the whole classification system re. forests (which itself is in dispute, of course). both allude to a sort of primordial pre-human forest that did or didn't exist -- a sort of ideal type. k. uses "virgin" (pointing to the mythological aspect of our academic understanding) while david refers to a condition of "post-disturbance," presumably implying a pre-disturbance. my concern is, what would such a state look like? would this be a state we would describe in terms of "old-growth," "late succession" or this type of thing? would we define such a landscape (or stand) in terms of function? structure? both? would we concern ourselves with disturbance (as if to overlay it onto our succession model)? perhaps disturbance rather than succession is the fundamental structure around which climax is the exception. (excuse any puns that you may infer unless they apply.) perhaps disequilibria should be a priveleged reference in framing research questions?
rick freeman
missoula montana
nowhere is it written in stone ... that we must speak of the world and manually rearrange it as we do now, or ever have done. over the millennia our ancestors made strategic choices about how they would articulate and manipulate, inspired or driven by their fertile imagination of how the world conducted its business and where the human welfare was situated within that larger commonweal. today we are the heirs of those words and that artifice, those choices and those images -- some of them. and therin lies a powerful and timley story.
calvin luther martin 1992
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1996 11:18:12 -0600
Subject: Re: "Old Growth Forest" [query]
From: "Dennis Williams, Southern Nazarene U." <DWILLIAM@SNU.EDU>
Is it valid to say that there are no non-anthropogenic forests known to historical study (that is we can postulate their existence, but they can't be known to historians through historical evidence)?
If that is valid, is the notion or virgin or climax forest merely a post-enlightenment Eurocentric concept? Perhaps even an Anglo-centric one?
It seems that only if indigenous peoples in regions colonized by Europeans were seen as part of nature by European colonizers, and Europeans because they have viewed themselves as the harbingers of "civilization" and therefore were not a part of nature, can the notion of climax or virgin forest be supported.
Thus, from the world view of Europeans, especially the English who seemed to have a harder time envisioning humanity on the part of indigenous peoples (compare Spanish mission efforts in the Americas with English ones), the term "virgin forest" or even "climax forest" would be considered apropos until the work of geographers, anthropologists, and environmental historians fundamentally altered the perception of indigenous peoples as living in a state of nature and allowed them to be seen as fully human, with all the virtues and vices, opportunities and limitations of humanity. When can we claim this shift in world view to have occured (both in the above-mentioned disciplines and then to have trickled-out to society-at-large)?
Dennis Williams
Department of History
Southern Nazarene University
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1996 16:51:57 -0600
Subject: Re: "Old Growth Forest" [query]
From: Richard Grove <rgrove@uncecs.edu>
When the Dutch arrived at Mauritius in 1599 and the Portuguese on St Helena in 1502, they undoubtedly encountered forests untouched by people previously (altho the Arabs may have gathered a few sticks from Mauritius on occasion). Moreover we know quite a lot about those forests. I think you will find many other comparable island examples. One has to beware of this line of argument I shoudl say, since the foresters (e.g. in Malaysia and Australia) have caught on to the value of saying "Oh that forest is man-disturbed, so we can cut it down". There is all the difference in the world between a forest little touched by people (and highly diverse) and one that has been screwed around by the Sarawak or New South Wales Forest Depts. By the way in New South Wales the Forestry Commission deliberately cuts roads through "old growth forest" (a much more useful term than virgin and that does not exclude human impact) so that they can then deny those forests to conservationists.
Your comments of Spanish treatment of indigenous people in the Americas are simply extraordinary. I don't think human history can show any more murderous and massacre laden a period than the Spanish occupation of the Americas, except possibly for the German treatment of the Jews. The English were relative amateurs at the sport of native-killing except perhaps in Tasmania. The Spanish sport continues apace in Guatemala, Brazil etc. Try reading Las Casas.
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1996 08:44:18 -0600
Subject: Re: "Old Growth Forest" [query]
From: dargavel@coombs.anu.edu.au
(John Dargavel)
Demonising Australian foresters and the NSW State Forests (formerly Forestry Commission) without evidence and by snide assertion does little to advance historical understanding of one of the most highly regulated, publicly planned forest systems. There are substantial public disputes about how the state forests ought to be used, whether old-growth stands should be cut down or not, what the term'old-growth' actually means, where roads ought to be built and so forth.
John Dargavel * Eden is Urban Research Program * - a garden with two trees, Research School of Social Sciences * - not a wilderness The Australian National University * Tel:06 249 2118 International+61 6 249 2118 * - a town in New South Wales Fax:06 249 0312 +61 6 249 0312 * that chips trees for Japan email John.Dargavel@anu.edu.au *
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1996 08:44:19 -0600
Subject: Re: "Old Growth Forest"AGAIN
From: j.sim@qut.edu.au
SORRY FOLKS!
Simon Schama's "Landscape and MEMORY" (1995) is the title of his excellent text! Good Luck!
Cheers, Jeannie Sim
Lecturer in Conservation Theory and PhD candidate
School of Planning, Landscape Architecture and Surveying
Queensland University of Technology
GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, Qld. 4001 AUSTRALIA.
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1996 13:28:10 -0600
Subject: "Old Growth Forest"AGAIN
From: Richard Grove <rgrove@uncecs.edu>
Re Schama, Landscape and Memory. I would be interested to know what members of the net think of the Schama book. It has in fact been poorly reviewed, e.g By John Barrell in London Review of Books, very ambivently by Keith Thomas in 4 pages in the NYRB (they pay by the inch!); I don't think TLS have touched it yet. I personally find it highly Eurocentric, although entertainingly written. When he goes outside Europe or North America he becomes very confused. I have told students to take the book with a large pinch of salt, particularly as it is based on scarcely any archival research. What do others think, now that the Random House hype is over??
Richard Grove
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 08:20:46 -0600
Subject: Re: "Old Growth Forest"AGAIN
From: "Cynthia Miller" <CMILLER@SOCIOLOGY.Lan.McGill.CA>
About "that book" (Schama's _Landscape and Memory_).... Since I've publically recommended it before, I'll go on record as thinking more highly of it than do various reviewers!
In Schama's defense, I think there's much to be gained by approaching the text as a wonderful illustration of the ways in which landscape can be used to weave the morally-charged stories that work their way into memories, and sometimes, into histories. Eurocentric? For sure (its main flaw being that Schama might claim otherwise). But no more so than many others on landscape. We need only compare Lowenthal's England with, say, Bender's, to find evidence of situated perspectives.
While it's not a bad thing to advise students to look critically at this -- or any other -- writing, it might also be productive to ask them to explore Schama's "confusion", and the role it plays in this and other discourses of memory, history, attachment, belonging, etc..
Cynthia J. Miller
Department of Anthropology
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec
cmiller@sociology.lan.mcgill.ca
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 13:09:02 -0500
Subject: Re: "Old Growth Forest" [query]
From: aholland@unm.edu (Alfred E.
Holland, Jr.)
On Terminology:
This wide-ranging discussion of "cherished," "old-growth," "climax," and "virgin" forests has reversed the old saw on missing the forest for the trees. In the world run by markets, it's the trees rather than the forests that attract all the attention (capital). My first recognition of estimable, and especially calculable, values in mature forests came during my days as a furniture maker. Makers who recognize the coherence of lumber "rising in the stack" (in the order sawn out of the bole) also esteem (revere) old forests as the source of the magnificient sticks their works depend upon. Lumber sawn from the venerable monarchs of the old stands of timber provides both predictability and stability as the raw material for furniture making. Boards sawn from saplings on the other hand are as predictably unreliable and unstable as an infatuated adolescent. Experienced craftspeople recognize the difference. Carpenters, for example, reject "heart center" beams where twisting cannot be tolerated because the center is the sapling, elastic and dynamic for survival. If Jane Goodall's observations of the chimps probing for termites (the woodworker's competitor) is at all indicative, we tool-users got our start with tools made from sticks.
Like a goodly portion of "environmentalists," all the "wise use" wastrels, and MAXXAM, woodworkers are thoroughly elitist; convinced that theirs is the highest appropriate use of the resource.
Alfred E. Holland, Jr.
aholland@unm.edu
aholland@csus.edu
"The river always runs downstream."
[an error occurred while processing this directive]