The future of the forest management industry: Highly mechanized plantations and reserves or a knowledge-intensive integrated approach?

Intensive forest management has commonly become associated with forest plan tations that have high initial investment costs in stand establishment. The se intensive plantations will probably not produce high quality wood becaus e they will be physically and economically unstable if gown to long rotatio ns, and so will probably need to be harvested when quite young. An alternat ive to intensive plantations is integrated management, where mon understand ing of many ways to grow forests is substituted for the high initial costs of uniform, mechanized treatments used in plantations. This paper is intended to generate a discussion of the economic, social, an d environmental desirability of these, and alternative, management approach es. Forest policy is presently moving in several directions, with some policies encouraging intensive plantations and other policies encouraging integrate d management. All policy directions require government intervention to some degree to deal with the apparent surplus of low quality wood. Either gover nments will prohibit harvest of most of the world's forests and promote int ensive plantations on the remaining area, or they will actively promote int egrated management through various incentives and/or restrictions. Unless a consistent policy emerges, there will continue to be confusion in forest m anagement that could last for decades. This confusion will be to the econom ic, social, and environmental detriment of most of the public and most fore st landowners.