History of the global logging industry

• Category: Forest Biomes
• Geographic Location: Global
• Summary: The logging industry, in its intensely mechanized form, is a major human impactor on ecosystems around the world.

Since the rise of civilization, humans have been logging forests, which has affected forest ecosystems. Before Europeans arrived in North America, logging around the world tended to exert a more local effect—although evidence indicates that the downfalls of various earlier dominant civilizations came about in part from the ecological impacts of land-use practices, of which forest extraction and depletion were a component.

With North American logging history as a clean-slate example, during the colonial period, the logging industry began to systematically harvest old-growth forests to supply the settlers with cleared land for agriculture and lumber for construction and their continued expansion by land and sea. The Industrial Revolution brought mechanization to extraction and an increased rate of harvest, which began to allow transnational logging companies to supply the ever-increasing global market demands. This expansion has continued in regions around the world. It has reduced nearly half of the Earth’s original forest cover, with most of the known loss occurring since the late 1970s, mainly in the tropical forests.

The logging industry has become more regulated by governments keen to reduce forest ecosystem degradation and loss. Biotechnology has fueled the development of hybrid tree species grown in plantations in tropical zonesthese have become a vital part of the logging industry’s approach to future harvests. In some cases, harvest approaches have been altered to improve sustainability, with third-party certification as part of the sustainable approach. The attention of governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the industry has turned to the problem of illegal logging, which continues to be an additional factor in deforestation and forest habitat degradation.

To ensure a robust future in the global economy, the logging industry will likely continue to use tropical and temperate forest plantations, selective logging rotations, and commoditize waste as renewable fuel; the sector will also negotiate new pathways for sustainability.

Early Logging

In the earliest human times, forest extractions were minimal, with a small amount used for housing structures and early work implements. Approximately 5,000 years ago, with the rise of cities and states, increased logging delivered needed wood supplies as civilizations grew. Significant ecological effects on local forests were seen due to more concentrated and higher logging rates. Evidence indicates that several earlier civilizations, such as the Mayans, rose and fell partly due to the destructive effects of localized logging.

Until 500 years ago, most logged material was used within the region in which it was logged. This situation changed during the American colonial period when North American settlers began to log the expansive stands of old-growth pine forests. From the 1700s, lumber exports outweighed domestic demand for products, including construction materials, white pine for lumber, masts for shipbuilding, and pulp for paper, all mainly to European markets.

The technology of the logging industry during this period was basic. Axes and the crosscut saw were used to cut trees in the forests. The feller cut down the tree, the bucker cut the log into manageable sizes, and workers with broad axes squared the timber at the stump. Oxen and horses pulled the skid with squared timbers to the water routes, and the water routes floated these squared timbers to ships, which transported them to colonial markets.

By the 1800s, sawmills became commonplace, and logs were no longer squared in the bush but were cut to the length dictated by the market. Waste in the logging industry during this period was high, often with two-thirds of each tree being left behind.

At the beginning of the logging industry, loggers were independent operators who worked under challenging conditions. They lived in remote camps, in small shanties constructed from logs, away from families, friends, and essential services. The hours were long, and the work was dangerous, with few safety measures implemented until the mid-twentieth century.

As capital costs increased, commercial operations moved into the hands of larger companies and out of the hands of individuals. By the late 18th century, the bigger logging companies were purchasing large tracts of land from the government and harvesting the standing timber. The work was carried out mainly by jobbers, or independent operators, on contract to the company. Some of the pioneers in this industry were Weyerhaeuser, Abitibi, McMillian Bloedel, and Domtar.

Industrial Revolution to Today

The Industrial Revolution brought heavier technology and mechanized methods to the logging industry, which were applied to cutting, extraction, skidding, milling, and transportation. By the early twentieth century, railroads improved the flow of products from the bush to sawmills and markets—which increased pressure on the forests. Today, mechanization includes using helicopters, tractors, cables, and specialized equipment such as feller-bunchers and forwarders to remove logs from the forest. Traditional approaches to logging include axes, machetes, or chainsaws, non-mechanized skidding, and water and animal power, making up a tiny percentage of global logging today.

The logging industry moved into full-scale mass production during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lumber and wood-based pulp and paper production was found in Russia, Scandinavia, Europe, and North America. In the 1950s, the established producer countries’ products were sold in a broader world market, meeting demands for wood products, especially in developing countries in Asia and Latin America. Traditionally, logging has had global markets, but complete globalization of the logging industry was pioneered after World War II by such national economies as Japan, which sought raw materials from around the globe. Today, the logging industry is vital to the national economies in every quarter of the world.

With diminishing northern forests to harvest from and increasing regulations, many large logging companies turned their attention to logging transnationally in the 1950s. This initiative began with a move into Asian countries with lower labor costs. By the late 1990s, these transnationals and many of the large new Asian logging companies had depleted much of the Asian forests’ stock and turned to logging tropical forests in Africa, the Amazon River basin, Burma, and Indonesia, where corruption makes forestry laws nearly unenforceable and a lack of transparency in commercial transactions gives little regard to the environment or local peoples.

The logging industry is a primary global industrial sector; gross production accounted for $160 billion worldwide in 1998. By 2020, the industry had grown to almost $536 billion. Two-thirds of the world’s forests are located in ten countries: the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States, China, Australia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Angola, and Peru. As of 2020, forests covered about 10.03 billion acres (4.06 billion hectares), of which ninety-five percent are natural forests and five percent are forest plantations. Forests cover about thirty percent of the world’s land area. Nearly forty-four percent of forests are located in the tropics, and about one-third are in boreal regions, with temperate forests accounting for thirteen percent and subtropical forests amounting to nine percent.

Ecological Effects and Conservation

While the logging industry is economically important, the ecological effects of logging can be devastating. Almost half of the Earth's original forest cover is gone, and much was destroyed after 1970. Since 1990, about one-third of forests worldwide have been lost, with most of this loss occurring in the tropics. Logging for wood products is responsible for one-third of global deforestation; other factors are land-clearing for agriculture, urban development, and road-building.

The early industrial approach to harvesting forests mainly involved clear-cutting with no reforestation. This practice created ecological devastation, leading to erosion, desertification, local droughts, and forest composition changes, all reducing habitat for many flora and fauna species. It became clear that the forests were worth more than the logging products that could be extracted from them. Stakeholders outside the logging industry began to see the value of forests beyond the extractable forest products.

A deeper understanding of key ecological services forests provide includes carbon storage, regulation of river flows and sedimentation, habitat support, non-timber forest products such as mushrooms, medicinal plants, craft woods, etc., and various aesthetic and cultural benefits. In many counties, logging companies must now follow regulations and management practices that carry out integrated resource management (IRM) plans.

Since the mid to late 1800s, pioneering individuals brought key legislation and approaches to the logging industry to help reduce the industry's devastating effects and aid in sustainability. Before the 1950s, the logging industry was concentrated in temperate and boreal forests, and coping with the impact of unsustainable approaches to logging in these forests was critical to the industry's sustainability and the ecosystem. The earliest adoption of forest regulations and conservation was in California in the 1850s.

Conservation of some forested areas was implemented when sets of protected areas, such as national parks in the United States and Canada, were established. The logging companies began to see that the seemingly vast expanses of forest were not everlasting. They began buying up forested land and used harvest rotations in these temperate northern forests. By the mid-twentieth century, they used reforestation, silviculture, and plantations to ensure that products could be logged in the future.

Unfortunately, strategies such as reforestation and plantations were slow in terms of growth in the north. Northern forests containing jack, pine, and black spruce take eighty to a hundred years to grow to maturity. Thus, some of the largest logging companies focused on tropical areas for harvest and plantation. Plantations in tropical countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia, are likely to become much more prominent, as hardwoods are easier to plant here and grow at rapid rates.

Along with the logging industry, commercial banks, the United Nations, and other international bodies have seen plantations as a possible antidote to deforestationthey have primarily supported this approach to a conservation-and-industry partnership. Biotechnology and hybridization have brought diverse commercial species to the logging industry to replace northern pulp and commercial timbers. One example of pulp supply is plantation-grown eucalyptus. Most species take five to seven years to grow to commercial size, and coppiced growth allows three crops from one root. Opponents see plantations as monocultures that provide little habitat support for the high biodiversity found in tropical settings.

Harvesting Approaches

Logging companies, while historically built around clear-cutting, have, to some measure, changed their harvest approaches due to regulations and with an eye toward the sustainability of forests. Harvest prescriptions are now set out to help mimic natural succession in different forest types. In even-aged stands, natural disasters such as fire and wind events are part of ecosystem cycling. After the disaster, most trees were killed off, and grew up as one age class. Newer forms of clear-cutting involve reducing the size of clearcuts, corridors for large terrestrial mammals, reserves on riparian areas, buffers around stick nests, and protection of forest reserves.

Single-tree selective logging can mimic natural gap formation for temperate deciduous and most tropical forest types, which are mosaics of tree ages and species.

Selective logging involves removing only a select proportion of the trees in a stand. Within selective logging, the approach has two main methods. One involves a high-grade or diameter cut. The loggers “take the best and leave the rest,” resulting in poor-genetic-legacy, diseased, and lower-valued trees in the stand. The second approach, known as “best forest management practice,” is the “worst first” approach. It removes lower-quality, diseased, and crooked trees. This method, in combination with attention to buffer zones around waterways and to preserving appropriate representation of all ages and classes of trees, including older trees with cavities for wildlife, allows for a more sustainable approach.

Harvest prescriptions and approaches in tropical forests can be controversial; logging in primary forests precipitates a significant loss of biodiversity. Selective logging is expanding rapidly throughout the tropics. In these settings, while selective logging is better than clear-cutting, selective logging may increase the vulnerability of forests to fire and future deforestation. Also, logging roads cut into remote forest areas typically grant developers, small farmers, hunters, and poachers easy access. Selective logging in tropical forests is seen as degrading the forest, as the felling of a single large tree can bring down dozens of surrounding trees through the network of vines and lianas, creating large canopy openings and precipitating habitat changes by increased sunlight and drying winds. These effects are well-documented in the scientific study of forest fragmentation and edge effects.

Illegal logging is one major problem in regulating or creating sustainability within the industry. Its dramatic effects, especially in developing nations, include taking much-needed revenue away from governments, devastating effects on the livelihoods of forest-dependent people, and furthering corruption and civil conflict. The World Bank estimates that the value of illegal trade is $10 billion to $15 billion per year.

International Initiatives and Future Markets

Following the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, much-needed awareness was brought to the worldwide threats to forests, the implications of deforestation, and changing attitudes among the general public. As a result, attention was turned to furthering sustainability, keeping forests intact, and reducing the effects of climate change—as forests store fifty percent of the world’s terrestrial carbon. Some of the largest companies within the logging industry responded by partnering with various groups, such as publicly recognized nongovernmental organizations, and changing their operations to be more sustainable through volunteer certification regimes.

There are more than fifty certification schemes in which the logging industry can participate, such as the Forest Stewardship Council and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification. These voluntary, third-party certifications are becoming more commonplace—but without criticism, as some environmentalists see them as ways the logging industry can manipulate the public by producing similarly named certifications with diluted standards.

The logging industry is moving into newer markets, such as turning waste into renewable energy. The industry also faces new challenges, such as the effect of invasive species and insects in the temperate forests of North America, urban sprawl, being called upon to mitigate various forms of pollution, and competition for land with mining and fossil-fuel extraction.

The logging industry has, in modern times, turned its attention to the vast northern, or boreal, forests, where it is waging battles with government and environmental groups to obtain cutting rights. While both legal and illegal logging are decreasing forest cover in tropical forest ecosystems, the boreal, temperate, and subtropical forests appear to be increasing in net forest cover due to reforestation, natural forest recovery, and the establishment of forest plantations. The viability of these forest ecosystems remains at the heart of the logging industry’s longevity—and that of forest habitats worldwide—into the twenty-first century and beyond.

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