Deforestation

Tree Terminator

A strange video for a Permaculture site, I know, but I can’t help but marvel at the ingenuity. Imagine if we could harness these smarts for a better cause?

9 Comments

  1. That is shocking. I new the logging industry was automated, but this is incredible. This unit cuts it, strips the bark, measures the log, and sections it. How can the other species stand in the face of this? I guess we have to renew our energy to turn things around.

    Thanks Craig for bringing this to our attention—Chuck

  2. Keep in mind that this (awesome!) machine represents an *increase in efficiency*… Without it, all that processing would have to be done elsewhere, via inefficient transport, adding more CO2 to the atmosphere all the while. So, as long as the logging is done sustainably (re-planting as many trees as you cut down, or more), then this machine won’t be the ‘death of worlds’ that some of you seem to imagine it to be.

    Remember, it’s not what you do…it’s how you do it.

  3. It’s a shame that we’re a planet ruled by an few elite individuals within the corporatocracy. Too bad we don’t use human ingenuity to CREATE anything. Human beings… MURDERERS.

    We obviously didn’t “get it right” this time. Perhaps our next go at it, we’ll destroy the banks and not allow greedy corporations to subdue us into a society of complacent serfs.

    Come on! PARADIGM SHIFT! ~ Twenty-Twelve ~

  4. hi
    This should not shock any one .
    The mashine is by the looks of it workingin’ plantation wood.

    I belive trees should also be seen at some stage of their life for timber and or fule. This is in it self ok.
    In Germany forest industry is culture and reforestation are one( mono cilture for hunderets of years, but now changing to mixed tree types) and has been sustaining local demands for hundert thousands of humans and local animal life. In the beginning by selective clearing with bullog and hourses, ax and handsaw.
    Over there the replanting rate is 5 tree planted ( due to acid rain, storms and enviromental conditions) for each tree logged. But the areas has allways been used over and over again to logg and replant. In this way, there is long term timber logging is possible on fixed areas and what is not.

    May be a worth contemplating, that offten and some how for all of us , trees are seldom planted for one self, but for future generation.

    I agree that to utelise brains for the good beggens to be overdue. this smart xcavator potential could be quickly re-equipped for tree sabling planting.

    The worse I know of, is in Eastern europe where virging forests are raded for hard wood like oak and birch with a couple of maschines checking size and length and quality at order and at the end the finished boards with little spacers in between are loaded onto trucks on site.

    Cooperations bashing, is due where it is due, i agree.

    And changing consumer habits takes just as long as sastainable plantation planting? I know what is easier….

    For uns in Oz, we could look at our the vacant padocks, slobs and open enless space where trees could be plantationed and at the same time make air clean and provide all the soil benefits and (opps)here I say it, grass for our sheep and cattle. So how about it , lets plant trees in rows of 3 or 4 all over our own sancturies, push forward onto our Zone 5 stuff. don’t just take out this zone but put back into it.

    OK, because we have all we need on trees , floorboards, a table a couple of chairs and a roof over our head wecan affort to eyebrow others ( just or not).
    How often do we think about replacing the timber for the chair we sit on by panting a tree. How many trees did it take for you to sit at the table on a chair, above floor boards under a room and in between walls?
    Have i replaced all of the timber with re-growth trees in my garden, my parcel of land or as a volunteer some where else?
    me.. not yet!
    So, if not for us, then lets do it for the generation after us! Grow them strait, tall and close togehter. Even a fruit tree can at the end of his old age be sustaining and providing prolonged livable space for generations to come, if we go about it a little smarter.
    Hey Each gum tree or cedar counts and will make honey, funiture, roof structures, treehouses and swings, shade and air.

    If I can not change the other people, I just have to plant and seed out, even more trees, instead.
    Keep up your pashion for trees.
    Ralph

  5. I’ve seen this before – ouch!

    You know all the previous comments are right even though they differ. However, I think that it’s not so much what we do or even how we do it that is a problem…. it’s the scale of the things we do and how we do them. And the fact that until now we have not had to pay the true price of our insatiable appetites.

    Grateful for organisations such as yours and people who are prepared to consider and act towards a new paradigm. Keep it up.

  6. I think whether the technology is good or not is all a matter of context.
    Imagine that the plantation had been established on badly degraded and marginal land with eroded soil of poor cropping value, which prior to its slash & burn farming history had been native forest.
    Now after 15-20 years of providing some employment for a local community while the wood grew, matured and captured carbon, the trees are being harvested to be sent to the mobile biochar unit where they will be turned into agri-charcoal, gas, fuel and heat, all the outputs being returned to the local community for their use. The area, where the soil is improving year on year, is replanted, and the cycle of soil improvement/ carbon capture/ community benefit continues.
    The problem is the solution…?

    I must admit when I watched the vid my first emotional response was:

    me-wantee-one-now!

    Hamish

  7. i love that it leaves large amounts of the good stuff right where it was grown. much of the “waste” goes right back to the soil.

  8. This technology has been around for years. I first saw the toe-cutting/debarking variety of this machine in the early eighties.

    There are two major issues for permaculturists: One is that it has been developed to save labour; the whole operation would not be as profitable if it had to employ people to do those jobs by other means, so there has been a loss of employment in the whole system.

    The second is the impact of the waste material; if the trees being processed so quickly were bluegums, the high acidity of the bark and leaf matter obviates any speedy breakdown and contribution to soil organic matter build up.

    The simplest design/strategy for the soil damage issue is to interplant varieties of nitrogen fixers, and mulch these with the other material. The next is the Jean Pain system, worked out years ago in France, where with massive additions of water to huge piles of chisel-chipped (so <4mm thick) pieces, good compost is produced in a matter of weeks.

    There is an assumption that is hidden here: Those trees were probably growing in soil that could be hugely productive with a “real” forest – with animals, trees, shrubs, etc etc”- the very origins of Permaculture!!

    Many soils are NOT able to sustain tree systems like this.

  9. Guys guys guys, chill. This is a TREE FARM; land owned by a company to plant trees for the soul purpose of cutting. These aren’t wild trees. The companies grow them, cut them down, then grow them again.

    Although they are probably destroying micro-eco-systems each time, the practice has relatively little impact on the surrounding environment.

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