I've had a challenge over the years with bears stripping the bark off the trees in the spring. Fir, cedar and maple have all suffered. Odd last spring were a few big leaf maples that had all the bark taken off around the tree, 8" to 12" in diameter, four to eight foot up the tree. I was under the impression that this would act as girdling the tree but stayed green last year and has in full leaf again this year. Often kills a few fir some years, other years just stunts them for a year or two. Does girdling actual cut deeper
Sometimes it takes a while for a tree to succumb from girdling because of stored sugars that the tree has set aside for rough times.
The wound must kill/pass-through the cambium layer to prevent nutrients from going on up the tree. If the cambium survived, so might the tree. Some girdled trees have even been saved by a lucky arborist bridging the gap with grafts of small limbs, etc. It has to be a lucky tree though, to make it through a girdling.
It also needs to be done the full circumference around the tree. Some trees can survive on one, tiny, strip on in tact bark.
KBForester is correct. Just a few thin strips a few cells wide and thick will keep a tree alive. Look close at a girdled tree. Even though all the outside bark might be removed, sometimes tiny thin strips of cambium layer are hard to see because they are the same color as the wood of the trunk.
I've seen western red cedar girdled by wildfire, that was almost dead, but you step around the back side of the tree and there would be a strip of live bark going up the tree 100 feet supporting one live limb. These trees were 12 feet through on the but.
Snowshoe hare girdle the hardwood saplings and moose will strip bark off red maple and break fir tops off and limbs in the winter for a very poor food source, that's in desperate times. They will also mull tamarack to the point they are leaning over and make the tree useless as a log.
I have a problem with Beavers girdling Hemlock trees. They have got 17 so far. Rod
Need to call in the local beaver trappers. ;)
No one much traps them here, fur isn't worth much. I did have one fellow trap some one time because they were damming the bridge. And more than once. They moved up a little feeder creek since and dammed a big area where a stand of young cedar was well established on my cousin's lot next door to mine. Destroyed about 10 acres. Even the otters where hunting them, but they have moved on I think. No more winter tracks for a couple years.
SD,
You could use a few plews :D.
I was surprised to see them chewing on softwood when there is so much hardwood around. Rod
Last week at my camper in the woods, I had a visitor that tried to chew his way into the camper. I first heard him chewing one night and just went out and banged on the side with a broom and he quit. Next night he was back and the broom on the side did not stop him. So I got out the 22 and a flashlight and found the bugger up under the camper on some rails and got him lined up where the bullet would not do any damage to the camper and put an end to the chewing.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11467/Porky.jpg)
Next morning I saw where he had been chewing all the pine boards under the jacks and you can even see the chew marks on the handle of the scoop shovel laying on the ground. I haven't crawled under the camper to see if there is any other damage yet.
I've heard those Porkys can do a lot of wood damage, trees too.
Wife asked if he threw any quills at me, but don't know if that's true they can do that.
And I did give him a proper burial. ;D
Be darn lucky he didn't start at the tires. They'll chew tires that's for certain. I was tenting once and one and her baby came along and thought the graphite poles on the tent would make a meal. One other time I had a crazy hare that would bump into the tent at night. I think it might have been on his trail or something. :D
Yes, they will work over the tires. They are very destructive to any new wood siding. They seem to like the glue in the new plywood. They were very destructive to out new wood campground toilets and road signs so we would put pepper in the wood stain and then go out at night to hunt porkys and dispose of them. The sneezing porkys were easy to locate with a light for "lead" disposal.
Porcupine can not threw quills. They may thump thier tail on the ground to loosen the quills up so they can hit you with thier tail. My dog got one the other day. Does his I got something bark Papa. Thought it was a woodchuck. Soon as I got there the porcupine started to move with Boo Boo right behind it. I hollered at him,did no good,but he never touched it.Shot it and picked it up to get rid of it. He tried to smell it once and I hollered again at him and that was it. A woodchuck in motion he would of jumped on it and killed it. Even when I carry a woodchuck,he likes to jump at it and tug on it.Maybe pulling out 60 quills out of his nose and face at midnight last year smarten him up about them. That's his second one this year. I shot one without him.That's 3 so far.
Brush piles, blow downs, hollow trees, old cars, old abandoned buildings, all porcupine houses. :D