This timber harvesting system can extract timber from long distances to alanding or mainline road, without having soil disturbances from machinesand with nothing on the ground except men. In Canada alone, out of the2,202,000 square kilometers of forested land, over half should be harvestedthis way. The uniqueness of this system is that it can selectively take out aslittle as 10% of standing timber or be used to reduce the fine fuel contentaccumulations in forests to protect them from wildfires. There is a majorproblem with the conventional methods of harvesting in many of thedifferent climatic zones, due to most of the easier timber in the valleys hasalready been cut. The major problem is soil disturbances. Present logging isbeing done mostly in the winter after freeze-up, but the climates are gettingwarmer and the winters are getting shorter. Using this harvesting methodallows the operator to work most of the year, except for road shut-downduring freeze-up and break-up. Thinning the timber stand of different ages,(juvenile, pole sapling, and commercial thin), increases forest growth by 8%per thin (British Columbia Ministry of Forests). Temperate zone interiorforests will take 3 thins in the age of timber to maturity - (3 times in 80years) x 8% growth = 24 % increase. By using this process, we minimize thedestruction of soil fungi. This takes years to be established and aids theforest in uptake of nutrients and moisture, giving an extremely importantadvantage to this method. These mycorrhizal fungi, if not disturbed, candouble the thinning growth in interior timber (Michael P. Amaranthus, Ph. D.et al: 1999). This can also increase growth in the coastal marine zone by 50--100%,and tropical rainforests - up to 400%. The sequestration of C02 byincreasing forest growth is known by many scientists around the world asthe only practical way of capturing CO2 from the atmosphere, but becauseof economics, selective
