Having worked for the UK's environmental protection agency, I was asked to research forestry as a critical and lacking trade – genuinely, I jumped at it ... and I learned:
1. Not all timber is the same. It varies in strength, resilience, appearance, growth rate, its contribution to the environment and biological diversity, and much more.
2. When managing forests, decisions must be made about what timber species to work with and when to work with those species: from when to plant, through to what stage to harvest.
Our science and agricultural course writers developed a remarkable online course in forestry which teaches: