Have you heard of modern day engineered lumber that does not care about the size of the tree it comes form? Modern structures are built from glulams, osb and lvl beams which the size of the tree dose not matter.
"Have you heard of modern day engineered lumber that does not care about the size of the tree it comes form?"
Yep, that's a significant factor in reducing the demand for trees overall since every bit of each cut tree can used. But big and medium sized trees are still going to be more profitable to cut and with total demand shrinking, you won't get to the small trees even if you have the technology to use them.
The thing is, clear cuts are fire hazards since they allow underbrush to build up. A fire safe approach is clearing undergrowth and leaving large trees. Modest fires do that but there's no free way to do that. You'd need to pay people - that would be a good thing near towns and cities but beyond that, we need controlled burns or we get uncontrolled burns, as we see today.
