Cutting trees saves forests

Thinning pine forests is an important management tool for healthy forests. Look at the two pictures. The stands are opposite each other and planted in 1996. The difference is that the first one was thinned in 2011. We removed 2/3 of the trees. We left the other stand as a comparison. Already you can see it is less robust.
The trees thinned went to Kapstone in Roanoke Rapids, NC, where they were turned into cardboard. You do NOT save trees when you save paper. They just grow too thickly and in the end you are left with less paper and fewer trees.