Woodworker's Journal 1994-18-5, страница 26

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We take an insightful look at the current trends shaping the factors that will affect how you'll be doing your woodworking in the next century.

Over the years, we've all heard and read predictions of how life will be in the 21st century. In my youih. 1 conjured up visions of interplanetary space travel and colonies on the moon. Later, while in college, I listened in rapt attention to the environmental doomsday prophets warning of w idespread natural disasters, resulting from global warming, acid rain, diminishing forests, and gaping holes in the ozone layer.

Today, those prediction don't seem so fantastic nor catastrophic. After all. we're less than 6 years away from the year 2000. and we still exist on this relatively hospitable planet. So. I wasn't too surprised when Woodworker's Journal asked mc to pull out my crystal ball and take a look at what the world of woodworking might look like by the year 2000. In researching for this article. 1 focused on three basic areas of woodworking: wood, tools, and finishes. What 1 discovered encourages and also discourages me.

Wood: More Precious Than Gold?

Maybe not quite, but don't look for it to get cheaper in the future. Some of us would like to point the finger at the spotted owl and various environmental activist groups for increasing wood prices and the dwindling supplies of high-quality timber. But I found the problem much more complex. involving a w ide range of environmental, socioeconomic, and political issues.

Decades of poor or inadequate forest management practices have taken their toll on our old-growth forests. Ongoing "slash and bum" agriculture practices in tropical rain forests in the Amazon, Central America, and Indonesia, and clear-cutting timber extraction in the softwood forests of the Pacific Northwest, deplete our virgin timber stands at an alarming rate.

The U.S. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the world loses almost 42 million acres of tropical rain forests this way each year—up 50 percent from a decade ago. Unfortunately, after harvesting the relatively few marketable

by Jim Barren

timber species that exist there, settlers mov e in and bum off the remaining forest to creatc farmland. This land, only marginally capable of sustaining crops or cattle for a few years, will soon be abandoned and another section of forest cleared.

Already the supply of two tropical species. Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) and Cuban mahogany (Swietenia mahagoni), have been depleted to the point that they'll be prohibitively expensive if not virtually unobtainable in the next few years. International trade agreements now ban exports of newly cut rosewood, and strict controls have been placed on the trading of old rosewood (existing stockpiles cut before a certain date.) We'll likely see similar trade bans and restrictions placcd on other tropical woods as their supplies dwindle.

Weaknesses Inherent In Current Forestry Practices

In the Pacific Northwest, single-species tree plantations have replaced most of the native or old-growth forests on privately owned land. Timber companies claim that their monoculture reforestation programs of planting three or four trees for every

one cut will maintain a sustainable inventory for future use. Unfortunately, seedlings planted today won't produce the quantity (or quality) of wood contained in one old-growth behemoth until well into the next century. Much of our current reforestation inventory won't mature for another 20 to 50 years.

Environmentalists criticize monoculture reforestation programs because single-species forests lack the biological diversity of a "healthy" natural forest. This, they say. makes the forests more susceptible to disease and insect infestations.

Environmental groups continue to pressure the government to enact protection for the few remaining stands of old-growth trees in our national forests. The forest-products industry currently relies on these forests for about one-fourth of the nation's timber supplies. As time goes on. we'll likely see

26 ScptcniK-r/Ociober 1994

Woodworker's Journal