Kids Help Ecologist Replant In Japan, Turning Away From Monoculture - Asahi Shimbun

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"First of all, I would like you to know the difference between a real forest and a fake forest," Akira Miyawaki tells participants at a tree-planting ceremony at the Masaki dam in Kamikatsu, a mountainous area in Tokushima Prefecture. About 80 locals, including many elementary school children, listen attentively as he speaks.

It's a cold Sunday morning in December. The 78-year-old forestry ecologist, wearing rubber boots and cotton work gloves, continues: "Maybe you've learned at school that about 70 percent of our country is covered with forests. Unfortunately, however, most of our forests are fake or artificial."

What Miyawaki means by a "real" forest is one populated by trees indigenous to the region. Such a forest is often dominated by members of the laurel family including kashi oak, shii or shiinoki castanopsis and tabunoki laurel. A "fake" forest is one overrun by timber-producing cedar or hinoki cypress planted after World War II. Now, indigenous forests account for only 0.06 percent of land once covered by laurel forests, an area where 92 percent of Japanese live, according to Miyawaki.

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Miyawaki is a professor emeritus at Yokohama National University and the director of the Japanese Center for International Studies in Ecology (JISE). He is known for his reforestation activities based on the concept of "potential natural vegetation," or what he calls, "native forests of native trees." He advocates the regeneration of forests of indigenous trees. His method is unique: After collecting acorns from various evergreen broad-leafed trees, he plants them in pots. The saplings grow for one and a half to two years until they develop a firm root system. Miyawaki then replants the 30- to 50-centimeter-high saplings randomly and densely and lets them compete--may the strongest trees survive.

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http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200612300104.html