Dear Jerome: Thanks for your comments. Here are my replies. >Any island where the population continues to double >will eventually be in trouble... (South replies) My point exactly!!!! >Don't assume that relying on native forest for wood/timber >automatically means that they will be converted to other uses. >The converse may be true! (South replies) I did not make this assumption. I just reported the trends for the past decade. I would gladly post data for a developing country where the population rate doubles (every 10-45 years) and the native forests have expanded over the past decade. Do such examples exist? >And not all plantations are successful; on some islands >the area planted may be much larger than the area established. (South replies) A failure rate of 50% or greater shows a either a lack of research in species selection or a lack of research/technology transfer in the area of artificial regeneration (or both). One reason why we plant more than 1 billion pine seedlings/yr in the southern United States is that we moved away from species that had a high rate of plantation failure. In addition to seeing plantations fail due to selecting the wrong species or provenance, some plantations fail due to poor nursery management practices or poor planting techniques (sometimes both). In fact, species selection is sometimes based on ease of nursery propagation. One sure way to ensure continued plantation failures is to reduce funding for APPLIED research in artificial regeneration. David South School of Forestry Auburn University, AL 36849-5418 dsouth@forestry.auburn.edu 205-844-1022 205-844-1084 (FAX)
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