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Springer Old Growth Forests - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Old-Growth Forests: Function, Fate and Value – an Overview Christian Wirth, Gerd Gleixner, and Martin Heimann Old-Growth Forest Perception Most of us, scientists and laymen alike, are deeply fascinated by old-growth forest. ˇ We travel to places like the Tongass National Forest1 in Alaska or the Biatowieza National Park2 in Poland to enjoy the sight of forests left to their own devices | Chapter 1 Old-Growth Forests Function Fate and Value - an Overview Christian Wirth Gerd Gleixner and Martin Heimann 1.1 Old-Growth Forest Perception Most of us scientists and laymen alike are deeply fascinated by old-growth forest. We travel to places like the Tongass National Forest1 in Alaska or the Biatowieza National Park2 in Poland to enjoy the sight of forests left to their own devices with their majestic trees intriguing structure and rare wildlife. For us the fascination arises from a mixture of interest aesthetic pleasure and maybe a slight alienation. However let us hear a different view on old-growth forests There a desolate tract of land lies a sad and sullen region never used as a man s abode. Its mountains are covered with forests dark and dense. Trees without bark and without tops stand bent or half broken withered by age. Others far more than those first ones lie down full length only to decay on those heaps of wood already rotten and to suffocate the seedlings that were about to come through. Nature seems to be worn out here earth heaped with the ruins of what she brought forth carries piles of debris instead of her flowery green and holds trees loaded with parasitic plants poisonous fungi and mosses those impure fruits of rottenness . The man who wrote these lines in the eighteenth century was the famous French scientist Comte de Buffon author of the multi-volume book Histoire Naturelle Lepenies 1989 . As a naturalist Buffon was certainly susceptible to the beauties of organismic diversity and yet he perceived old-growth forests as ugly and hostile. For it to become beautiful nature had to be tamed and transformed. The French palace gardens with their strictly geometric arrangement of artfully pruned trees perfectly reflect the spirit of Buffon s time Gaier 1989 . Interestingly by that time in the eighteenth century the days where people in Europe had to fear the forests were long over. Wolves and bears had been exterminated and the bands of .