An official of the Sammu city government in Chiba Prefecture. Although the forest area in Japan hardly changed, the amount of greenhouse gases absorbed by forests fell by as much as 20% in the six years through to fiscal 2020, primarily due to an increase in the proportion of old trees, which photosynthesize less than younger ones, as the country’s forestry industry declines.
© Yomiuri ShimbunVoices
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Since there’s been no thinning, their growth stopped while their trunks were still narrow. It is time for trees to be cut down. But they are left uncared for due to low demand for domestic timber and a shortage of forestry workers.
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Yrral
A machine can cut acres of trees in a day,it take about one minute for a machine to down a tree from it trunk
Hello Kitty 321
@Yrrak
Most forestry in Japan is done on steep mountainsides where that kind of machine cannot be used.
Patricia Yarrow
How about chopping down the cedar trees off of western Tokyo? Replace them with young trees of various sorts to recreate a forest again, instead of a failed industrial tree farm that continues to torment the population of springtime Tokyo?
kiwi07
That precise project was considered. The impetus of course, was political as a election pledge that might resonate with hayfever suffering voters, Tokyo politicians did the following:
The results was:
I didn't quite understand this logic, because the main problem is cedar trees that were planted a long time ago around, and that are economically unproductive to manage or harvest, and so are just left where they are. Gradually clearing them in sections and replacing with a more native balanced type of species forest would benefit both the voters, and the wildlife that would have more diversity. Instead they go for the option of developing new cedar types. But the problem is not that there isn't enough cedar, it's just that most of it isn't needed.
Derek Grebe
Patricia Yarrow
I remember seeing hundreds of posters on my daily commute way back in 2006, featuring our great former governor Shintaro Ishihara (who was not a thief at all, I am informed), right arm raised in a defiant fist, promising to do precisely that. A bold policy of reforestation with superior, native Japanese trees to replace the vulgar, foreign cedar trees which had given him hay fever the year before.
All we needed to do was to watch him take billions of yen from our coffers, and he would rid us of the scourge of cedar-tree-based Kafunsho.
I'm sure such an honourable man wouldn't have just taken our money and not spend it in the way he assured us he would? Surely all the cedar trees have gone now?
Aly Rustom
excellent idea. And if there isn't enough domestic demand for lumber, I'm sure it can be exported.
Derek- I remember that too.
Well, both Shinzo and Shintaro are gone, and so is the money they stole from the public. All I can say is good riddance to them both.
Droll Quarry
No demand for domestic timber? A 4 meter cedar 2x4 cost 1400 yen at the contractor supply store here.