By Luo Yang, Guest Blogger

Last week, I mentioned we did four months of classroom work when we arrived in the U.S. We conducted our classroom training in New York, living on Long Island.

There are many oak trees in that area, and the house where we were staying had a large backyard, where I witnessed something unexpected. Just two or three days after we moved into the house, the landowner hired some people to cut down the oak trees in the backyard and left several high stumps. The trees they cut down — more than 15 inches in dbh (diameter breast height — the measurement of the tree trunk’s outside bark diameter at breast height) and more than 50 feet tall — were healthy and were not densely distributed. I checked the surfaces of the roots left and found that most of the trees were more than 50 years old and were in a stable growing stage. These trees were big and strong enough to protect the house from hurricanes and keep it cool in hot summers. We didn’t know why the landowner would cut them down.

What’s more, the landowner turned the trees’ trunks into small pieces, ignoring the fact that the trees would have a greater commercial value if they were cut a certain way and sold to a wood buyer. I asked him about this and got a shocking answer, “They are just trash and are usually thrown away.”

In China, old or big trees like the New York oaks are often found where farmers live, especially in the southern rural areas. These trees are well protected because they have helped to form a pleasant habitat for the farmers. Generally speaking, it is a big decision to cut such trees. Even if it is needed, people will try their best to make full use of the tree. For example, with the permission of the local government, the tree owner may cut down a tree leaving a very short stump in the ground, maximizing the cut timber to convert it into sections of certain length to meet the needs of his own utility or the market.

What is behind this difference in tree cutting on private land in the U.S. versus China? The following may be one of the reasons: the United States has abundant forest resources, holding nearly 10 percent of forestland in the world with only 5 percent of the world’s population. The U.S. provides about 25 percent of the timber production for industrial products for the world. China, with almost the same land area as the U.S., has about 20 percent of the world’s population, but holds only 7 percent of the earth’s forestland. China is also one of the main round wood importers in the world.