I'm currently reading (among other books) Ecoforestry: The
Art and Science of
Sustainable Forest Use. It came out in 1997. Hardly anything has been published on the subject in the last 10 years. I don't consider myself a tree farmer, just trying to be more respectful of Nature's Way. The book is a collection of essays and articles based upon the premise (and cliche) that Nature knows best when it comes to "forest management". I'm definitely an outsider locally, since
trees are dieing of disease before I can harvest them, I'm not replanting the "open spaces", and I am definitely loosing money because I choose to not "harvest" on an economic scale. "The heart of the matter" is everything to me. The book's introduction talks about two forms of sustainability: economic and ecocentric. The first is an anthropomorphic view while the second leans towards deep ecology, animism. Philosophical precepts are in short supply in our culture, unfortunately. We tend to be guided by economic/efficiency logic instead. Wendell Berry talks about the value of the natural history of things, rather than changing a "place" we
should figure out what "belongs" in a place. Modernity is always about advancement. The book Ecoforestry is about how to learn from the natural world, to be guided by it rather than being concerned with improving it.......