ORIGINAL: bluebird2
If our forests have been over browsed since 1928 ,resulting in inadequate regeneration, how can PA be the leading producer of quality hardwoods.
Pennsylvania Forest Products Association
No matter where you live in Pennsylvania, you aren't far from a beautiful forest. Our forests provide a multitude of products that we use in everyday life, an essential economic benefit to the Commonwealth, recreational and tourism opportunities, as well as providing habitat for wildlife.
Pennsylvania is the largest producer of hardwoods in the country, accounting for 10% of the total hardwood output in the US.
Revenues from Pennsylvania's forest products industry exceed $5.5 billion annually.
Approximately 90,000 Pennsylvanians make a livelihood on the industry. Over 10% of the state's manufacturing workforce is involved in the forest products industry.
There are over 3,000 separate businesses involved in the forest products industry, with a presence in every county of the Commonwealth.
Every dollar paid to a timber owner for trees ultimately generates, through manufacturing, more than $17 worth of economic growth.
More than half of Pennsylvania - about 17 million acres - is forest.
Our forests are increasing in size. The Federal Forest Inventory shows 20% growth in the last decade.
The majority of Pennsylvania's forests, about 70%, are privately owned, including 5% held by forest products companies. Approximately 30% of the forests are government owned.
Because the mature forests of today got there start back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s after the deer had been nearly extirpated from the state.
Pennsylvania had to stock deer after the forests were nearly all clear-cut. But, the forests were well on their way to regenerating to lush new growth because there were no deer to affect the new forests until after 1906 when the first fifty deer were stocked in the state, (Elk and Cameron Counties I believe).
Over the next nineteen years a total of 1,192 were stocked across the northern tier and south central mountains of the state in order to once again have established deer populations.
1906 - Deer first stocked (50 from Michigan). A total 1,192 were purchased and released by the agency from 1906 to 1925.
http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/cwp/view.asp?a=460&Q=174562&
Therefore, the forests that are providing today’s forest resources got established before there were high deer populations or in many cases even low deer populations that could prevent them from regenerating.
That is today’s forest/wildlife history lesson.
R.S. Bodenhorn