"Commercially logged forests can help conserve wildlife populations when they are managed responsibly, and it is possible to undertake long- term biodiversity monitoring in an efficient and cost-effective way"
(WWF, 2019)
- Conventional logging stands are especially prone to weed infestations due to excessive damage and lack of pre- or post-logging treatments to discourage weeds and encourage potential crop trees… RIL would be a substantial step in the right direction. Thus, pre-felling vine cutting can substantially reduce post-logging incidence of serious vine infestations and also reduce logging damage where vines tie together tree crowns. RIL thus constitutes a major step forward (Pearce et al., 2003).
- SFM includes the marking of future crop trees and seed trees with the intention to reduce damage to the marked trees during the felling of surrounding trees. Seed trees are important for quick regeneration of the forest after logging (Arets & Veeneklaas, 2014).
- Studies on the floristics and the soil macrofauna showed that reduced-impact logging might have left lighter logging impacts on the forests than conventional methods did. For instance, tree species diversity was equally rich in the old-growth forest and in the forest harvested by reduced-impact logging, where climax and important commercial-timber species of Dipterocarpaceae dominated, but was much lower in the forest harvested by the conventional method, where pioneer species of the genus Macaranga (Euphorbiacea) dominated (Lagan et al., 2007). Moreover, the size structure of canopy-tree populations showed that dipterocarp trees regenerated well in the old-growth forest and the forest harvested by reduced-impact logging. By contrast, the pioneer species demonstrated rigorous regeneration in the forest harvested by the conventional method.
