Maintaining Existing Forests is Important for the Carbon Cycle

There’s currently lots of discussion in climate change and forestry circles about how best to sequester and store carbon in new forests (e.g. pines vs. natives etc). While there's no arguing that's an essential objective, we must remember that our existing forests are an important part of the carbon cycle - serving as carbon reservoirs.

This means if existing forests are not regenerating adequately (such as when grazed by stock or feral herbivores), and they lose biomass - or worse collapse entirely - they move from reservoir to source status - releasing carbon from storage. This is obviously the opposite of what we aim for when managing forests as carbon sinks and is a backwards step in terms of mitigating climate change.

This is front-of-mind having spent the last few days setting up a baseline forest survey for a landowner who recognised their forest was destined to switch from reservior to source status unless both stock and feral animals were excluded.

The simple message is that while additionally is important, managing existing forests to their full ecological potential is critical - not just for climate change mitigation but also for the myriad of positive benefits mature forest provides.