Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

daveon.design

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 113 posts

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#61

Post by margalabargala »

tokai wrote: post #36
kristjank wrote: post #23

The paragraph about wood pellet exports really makes me mad. I have always harbored some disdain for "green" policies in well-developed countries, because they always seem to simply move the "filth" into another, poorer country and make it their problem. If the wood were burned locally (and without the additional expenditure of pellet-making), I could see a sustainability argument in there and support it. The place I…

Wood burning is never sustainable, 'green', nor healthy. It boggles the mind that it is not normal to outlaw it.

It is sustainable if the amount of biomass taken is less than the amount of biomass generated per area.

It is green in the sense that logging a forest net sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. Yes, even if you burn the wood. There's still carbon left in the ash and from discarded branches, and forests are most productive when regrowing.

You are right they are not healthy. The air pollution generated is nasty and even with a good catalyst stove cannot be reduced very much.

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#62

Post by ftrobro »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #37
vintagedave wrote: post #6

Hello everyone -- what a lovely surprise to see this posted! This is my article. Happy to answer questions :)

does the article cover what is happening to the land afterwards? Is it felled for more farming, will it be replanted, will there be building and development? I find it quite an important aspect of the issue of land use the article covers but little detail is given.

Indeed, not many facts in that article. For example it claims that "Estonia is unique in the amount of land still covered in trees" (50%), and yet that is only 5th highest in Europe [1]. Finland has a tree coverage of 73% [2]. A hundred years ago Estonia had a tree coverage of only 30%, so forests have expanded a lot in Estonia since then [1].

Sure it looks ugly when a forest is cut down, but some types of plants are waiting for just that chance to sprout (adapted for forest fires), and in western countries forests normally grow up again after being cut down.

[1] https://www.eramets.ee/forests-in-estonia/

[2] https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7750867ad5cf467998492fc...

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#63

Post by marttt »

vintagedave wrote: post #44
marttt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, no grids or fences in Estonia, at least not in typical state-managed forests. These just get replanted in furrows or on "turfs" (not sure about the correct English term). Newly planted seedlings can appear really tiny at first, though -- so tiny that even seasoned forestry workers who are later mowing grass around them occasionally fail to spot all the plants in the grass. Source: have manually planted maybe ~30…

> a small society like Estonia could maybe place its focus on heavily developing mixed forests instead, for a start Thinking aloud here, but I like this idea. It could also be signposted: one of the things that "feels" awful is just the constant gaps in forest: forest, clear, forest forest forest, clear, forest, clear. Or walking to areas you know and love and one day they're just gone. There seems no oversight and l…

"Suppose you entered a region that was labeled: "In the next 10km, you will see managed forestry""

Really like this idea. In reality, though, the Estonian state forest management council seems to put more PR-efforts in showing how they also preserve wilderness, build camping trails etc. They don't seem very confident in showing "actual forestry" to the general public -- but, it is, obviously, also not an easy task these days, especially considering that e.g. clear cutting and usage of harvesters is ethically questionable to many people.

I think for these "In the next 10km, you will see managed forestry" signs, the whole society would need to become more mature at first. As in, foresters should have more acceptance for wilderness preservation, and the general public should have more acceptance for the forest industry.

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#64

Post by allumik »

jFriedensreich wrote: post #45

The foresting practices were among the first things i noticed flying to Tallinn. Instead of carefully picking trees to harvest selectively from a wider forest area as i am used to in most of Germany, there seems to be whole football fields of forest just cut down completely and then regrown as a whole in a plantation like fashion similar to how crops are grown. I am not an expert by any means but i thought this pract…

I agree that there's a lot room for improvement when it comes to forest management practices in Estonia. However, just to add to the OP's article, there is another reason for the recent forest clearings. Last year, I faced this issue with my own small patch of forest in Estonia, where had to do almost total clearing. There was no other option to extract /some/ value from the situation and save surrounding forests. It was heartbreaking to witness.

The reason for this was pest infestation caused by the warming climate, which severely impacts large coniferous monoculture forests (also in some regions of Germany, it seems so [1]). Estonia, with its predominantly coniferous forests, is particularly affected. These forests, once considered a future investment, are now being devastated by beetles. My great-grandfather would likely be turning in his grave right now.

Luckily we knew a local harvester pilot, who agreed to leave some birch and maple trees for seeding in the "wild" part of the forest, so we should have a more diverse set of trees going forward. Hopefully for my children to harvest/manage. But leaving them standing as one of the few "ripe" trees cut into our profits, and with the average salary as it is, it is no wonder that many are forced to leave no trees behind.

You'd think that destroying nature just to make ends meet is something you'd hear about the Amazon rainforest, but no, this is happening here in Europe.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9UprJXSVSg

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#65

Post by goatlover »

immibis wrote: post #31
kristjank wrote: post #23

The paragraph about wood pellet exports really makes me mad. I have always harbored some disdain for "green" policies in well-developed countries, because they always seem to simply move the "filth" into another, poorer country and make it their problem. If the wood were burned locally (and without the additional expenditure of pellet-making), I could see a sustainability argument in there and support it. The place I…

Most political institutions exist to funnel wealth from poorer people to richer people.

Sounds rather simplistic.

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#66

Post by treprinum »

The whole Eastern Europe is getting raped by wood-hungry companies - look at Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia etc. and compare satellite photos from 2015 with those from 2024 - truly Brazil-level deforestation but in the EU, often with the pseudo-justification of saving forests from certain insects... Even Germany is going through that.

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#67

Post by treprinum »

jFriedensreich wrote: post #45

The foresting practices were among the first things i noticed flying to Tallinn. Instead of carefully picking trees to harvest selectively from a wider forest area as i am used to in most of Germany, there seems to be whole football fields of forest just cut down completely and then regrown as a whole in a plantation like fashion similar to how crops are grown. I am not an expert by any means but i thought this pract…

You should revisit your knowledge of how things are done in Germany and see the clear cuts popping up everywhere, even in Taunus mountains next to some of the richest parts of the country.

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#68

Post by RGamma »

tokai wrote: post #36
kristjank wrote: post #23

The paragraph about wood pellet exports really makes me mad. I have always harbored some disdain for "green" policies in well-developed countries, because they always seem to simply move the "filth" into another, poorer country and make it their problem. If the wood were burned locally (and without the additional expenditure of pellet-making), I could see a sustainability argument in there and support it. The place I…

Wood burning is never sustainable, 'green', nor healthy. It boggles the mind that it is not normal to outlaw it.

It can be sustainable... at 5% of the population.

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#69

Post by Towaway69 »

vintagedave wrote: post #25
teractiveodular wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it's quite broken on vertical mobile, none of the "Drag" animations work and the footnotes are oddly mashed into the left side, forcing text to flow around it on the right.

Oh no! I will look into this. Can you share a phone model / screensize please? It is "okay" in the ones I test with. On my todo is to make footnotes collapsed by default on mobile, so you tap to display them. Right now they are always present and so interrupt the paragraphs. I don't like this, and it may be what you're seeing.

My iPhone SE using Firefox is showing the same problems…

Re: The War on Estonian Forests (2022)

#70

Post by indoordin0saur »

It's wild to me that in Europe "National Parks" will have people living in them, forestry plantations and even clearcutting. In North America National Parks are entirely kept as wilderness with no use or development of the land allowed except for tourist infrastructure built and managed by the park administrations themselves.
Post reply on HN