What do you understand by scientific forestry ? Many people now, including ecologist,feel that this system is not scientific at all.why?
Answers
Forestry is a delightful blend of many sciences (in no particular order) engineering, farming, geology, politics, economics, surveying, entomology, dendrology, pathology, forest fire science and zoology. These are the major fields. A professional forester must keep almost all of these considerations in mind when making major decisions. When managing many thousands of acres of land for trees, there are so many other considerations to keep in mind. Generally the land is owned by the government and their goals always include "multi-uses" of the land. So how to maximize the return of the lumber (pulp or sawlogs?) there will also be people hunting, fishing, hiking, biking and camping the same land as well as boaters passing through these lands. Many mining companies will want to complete some level of exploration at the same time. Roads will be viewed as both an asset and liability by different special interest groups. Wildlife habitat destruction will have long term consequences for everything in the ecosystem, and so again, decisions will need to be made carefully to ensure the longevity of the forest for all (or most) interested parties.
That's what it is. What are it's functions? Forest sustainability and/or enhancement for certain applications. Industry prefers single use forests with maximum output of biomass and minimum extraction or reforestation cost. Special interest groups often prefer NO logging and leaving everything in it's natural state. Neither of these two extremes present the "best" outcome. The government generally tries to achieve some semblance of a balance, given that they have the power to exert such control, and that's exactly what the Forester (Forestry Science) tries to achieve. Keeping everyone happy. In some countries, and some universities, it is called Forestry Engineering. This is the more of the task, or the person, whereas the over-arching science would be called Forestry Science.
Sadly, in our world we can see a variety of extremes being demonstrated. In Europe, we see some of the very best applications of forest science demonstrated by many hundreds of years of sustained removal of sawlogs, and pulp (See photo above of a well managed forest). In the southern hemisphere we see some of the most devastating destruction of the forests (see chart below). In North America we see a mix of private (US) and government owned (Canada) land being managed in a broad variety of ways but ever-decreasing input of (financial) resources. I believe that we are headed in a bad direction and things will need to change to prevent a serious loss of forested land mass. But as long as there is only very limited tax revenue coming from the forests, they are most likely to remain low on the priority list for the near future as our governments are increasingly finance versus "true value" driven.