Response to “You cannot love hardwood and hate softwood”

The Dr. Roy V Rea gave the presentation “You cannot love hardwood and hate softwood” on Friday.  The main purpose of his speech is to let us know that in order to protect the moose, we need to retain more mature forests for thermal and security cover and promote the growth of mixed hardwood and softwood.

The presentation helped me to learn much new knowledge about the moose and how to protect them. From his presentation I learnt the habitat quantity and quality have a large impact on the population numbers of moose. Moose like the biodiversity of the forest. They like mixed ages trees, mixed hardwoods and softwoods and mixed, burned and unburned forest.  45% of moose winter diet is subalpine fir.

His presentation began with the note from the parliamentary secretary, and followed by the moose food and cover requirements, the guidance from the chief forester and from the ADM and the provincial goals for moose and concluded with a summary.  I enjoyed the style of the presentation since he used numerous pictures to illustrate the point which helps me to understand the content.  Moreover, in order to illustrate the moose food, he also brings a real small tree and passed it around that gives me the tangible impression of the moose’s food. Last but not the least, he used the simple English words to express the opinion that also helps me to understand, since English is my second language.

Regarding to his presentation, there are no applicable or relevant components to my own Master’s research, since my topic is much related to engineering.

I think Dr. Roy V Rea respond well to the questions. When he explained that herbicides kill the entire plant no matter how big the plant is. He drew a big tree on the whiteboard to illustrate for big trees it root extends very deep into the soil. Thus, when you kill it, the entire root dies long with it, the loss is huge. Unlike for some small plants the roots are short and they cannot reach deep into the soil.

In his speech, he illustrated some guidelines to keep biodiversity, such as partial harvesting silviculture systems should be utilized to optimize harvest of attacked trees while retaining healthy trees. If I will have a chance, I would have asked about how well these guidelines are followed in real conditions. Also, if follow these guidelines will cost extra money for harvest, how can we balance the economy and biodiversity.