[whoiscroberts]

The planet was covered with forests before humans got involved in forest management. Why is it a bad idea to just leave the forests alone, declare them wilderness, and let the wildlife and ecosystem return to how it was?

[exabrial]

This is a great question and proposal and it's how we got here. It's step 0, but it's not the end-all-be-all; as itself will create problems.

You can let the forests grow, but you then _also_ have to let the other natural processes take place: disease and fire. Finally, you have to deal with something nature isn't good at: invasive species.

So now we're onto steps 1 and 2: how do we protect these forests that we're rebuilding? We don't really want them to burn the ground (excessive fuel build up), we don't want them to be out competed by invasive species, nor succumb to disease. We have to emulate natural processes then to protect old-growth... which is the core of this proposal.

Does that make sense? I too was pretty anti-interference until I attended university in the plains. For fun, I joined an outdoor club and assisted with nature research which studied many things, including fire, and realized that fire is very much a natural process that many species and ecosystems are dependent on.

[whoiscroberts]

Makes sense, but I also get the feeling that most of those points are only concerns because the forests that are left are so small, small enough that it is possible to entirely burn to the ground or be completely over run be invasive species. If there were 100, 1000, 10000 x the forest coverage we have now, would the concerns and land management strategy be the same?