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Commonwealth
Forests | | |
 Plantations
Plantations or planted (enriched) semi-natural forest, now known collectively as planted
forests, are crucial to the various developments in forest management described above. Most
of the resistance to plantations of fifteen or twenty years ago has been rationalised through
better understanding of the need for planted trees to meet supplies of wood and fibre and to
take pressure off natural forests, and greater sensitivity by plantation managers towards the
rights of local people. The eucalyptus controversy has subsided, through widespread selection
of the species for planting by farmers and communities, and also better understanding by
extension workers of the need to match species to site and to adjacent agricultural practice.
The feared loss of growth and yield of plantation crops grown in succession on the same site
has been investigated in plantations of Pinus patula in Swaziland up to four rotations (Evans,
2005) and no loss of growth or yield has been found. Further research is, however, still needed
into other sites and other species.
Some high-value hardwoods have always been grown in plantation, teak (Tectona grandis)
being the best-known example. But recently possible shortages of luxury hardwoods led to a
UK-funded project to investigate the then current situation in the 1990s and to make
predictions and recommendations for the future (Varmola and Carle 2002). Ghana,
Fiji and the
Solomons are examples of Commonwealth countries growing high-value hardwoods, where fast
growth rates for certain species, such as Terminalia spp. or Swietenia macrophylla, combined
with incentives, make up for the relatively long rotations.
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