What an amazing world! Forest managers are usually castigated for growing monocultures or not practicing true multiple-use resource management, but this current thread suggests that forest managers are wrong because they dont use a monoculture of hemp (which can have no other use) Natural forests have many uses and can be managed for multiple-use. Even plantations of exotic or natural species have many uses and can be managed to take advantage of them. Eucalypt plantations in Australia, for example, continue to provide unpolluted water, modify water table levels, are used for picnic and recreation sites, provide habitat for many native animals (even koalas are NOT worried by the trees being planted in rows etc), as well as providing fibre for paper production or wood for other potential products. Hemp grown for fibre production for paper, on the other hand, would be largely single use: noone would want to picnic in it; the annual ploughing / planting / harvesting regime would cause potential water runoff degrade; few (if any animals) could find habitat niches in it; and if the paper trade ceased (because evenryone communicated through e-mail and used leaves in the bathroom) there would be no other market (not even recreational smoking!). Do not be mislead by calling both monocultures - plantations support much more biodiversity than agricultural crops. So, even if hemp could produce more fibre than a plantation of trees, it is not necessarily better to plant hemp rather than forests or plantations. Trees are more than fibre! Forests and plantations are managed for more things than fibre. Natural resource managers must consider all the benefits to all the members of society and cannot accept a simple black and white answer than more fibre is better. Incidently, I am on topic, because the compromise between all the different objectives, products and recipients is what forest Decision Support Systems are designed to help with. If all we needed was a simple fibre yield table, this DSS list would disappear. After that little speech, I'll be off. Have fun all. Cris. Cris Brack, Lecturer, Forestry Australian National University, 0200, A.C.T. Australia. Phone : +61 6 249 3535 (work) +61 6 258 7478 (home) FAX : +61 6 249 0746
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