You know, I'm debating whether to post this because I don't think my voice will be heard amidst all the mud-slinging....
The average person who looks on forests as a renewable resources has NO IDEA, NO CONCEPT of what clear-cutting does to the forest ecosystem, especially the soil. While visiting B.C., I saw clear-cutting being done on mountainsides. The next rain that comes along...and B.C. gets LOTS of rain!....is going to wash that soil into the nearest stream, and that will be it as far as forest regerneration goes for a very, very long time. Trees can't grown on bare rock!
Friends of ours live in Lorne Park, just east of Toronto. The forest in their particular subdivision has NEVER been cut. They have trillums popping up out of their lawn!! I asked for permission to take some trilliums home, and our hosts said 'yes'. Well, those trilliums weren't growing in soil so much as they were growing in a natural sponge made up of root fibers. Cutting it with a spade was very, very difficult. I felt like I was cutting a chunk of living flesh out of the forest floor.
After I got that trillium out, and replanted it at home, I had to move it the next spring, because larger plants were crowding it out. That fibrous chunk of roots was still there, providing a framework to help anchor the plant in the soil.
This natural sponge has many crucial functions. The most important is to absorb water, and allow it to percolate slowly through the soil, instead of flowing quickly into the nearest stream. This is vital for many reasons: it prevents erosion, it allows for more constant water levels in the streams, thus improving the environment for fish and for recreational activities. Many large rivers that were once navigable by small watercraft are no longer useable due to the drop in water levels. Some of this is due to removal of water for irrigation, but a lot is due to the rapid runoff that happens after a rainstorm, because so much of the forest has been cut and paved over.
The forest soil does regenerate to a certain extent, aas the new forest grows, but after that experience I had in Lorne Park, I now realize it would take many centuries to return to what it once was.