European colonization of North America coincided with unprecedented, heavy forest removal that by the 1920s had reduced the original forestland by half. Fortunately, by the 1970s that trend had been reversed and forestland area has continued to increase since that time. Nevertheless, the quality of our forests has continued to decline as a result of widespread highgrading.
Highgrading, the harvesting of the largest, healthiest, most valuable trees from a forest, continues to diminish the financial and ecological quality of our forests. More importantly, the genetic quality of the forest is subject to a negative selective pressure that can only further degrade the forest over time.
The conventional response to the problem of how to manage our degraded forests has been and continues to be "clearcut and start over." I reject that solution as overly simplistic, myopic and anthropocentric. The role of forests on the landscape is too complex to permit their reduction to crops for human consumption. I offer a more elegant, long-term solution whose aim is to improve the health and overall quality of our mixed hardwood forests. Combining forest ecosystem science and animal powered extraction, I provide the most responsible forest management to the most enlightened, visionary landowners.