Selection silviculture or high-grading?

High-grading is a harvest that removes only high quality and high value hardwood trees while leaving lower quality stems to occupy valuable growing space. This practice is still prevalent due to economic reasons. High-grading practice has several detrimental effects. First, it removes the better quality stems, leaving growing space to be occupied by poorly formed trees or species of low timber value. Second, it limits the amount of sunlight reaching the forest floor, resulting in the long-term development of regeneration from shade tolerant species. A third problem results from the perpetuation of small but old trees. To break the cycle of repeated high-grading, one obvious remedy is to use a type of even-age silvicultural system, such as clearcutting.