The Forestry Forum

I have been reading about pruning, and I know that it is good to remove dead , diseased or damaged but I also read that we are supposed to remove suckers ,water sprouts and epicormic shoots. Is the removal of suckers ,water sprouts and epicormic shoots just for appearances sake to give us a tree with an "attractive form" or does it actually help the health of the tree?

If you are talking fruit trees, then removing suckers should improve the "health" of the fruit. 

What trees are you asking about?

What do you want from these trees?

All native trees I find in my 8 acre southern Indiana woods.   Just interested in promoting wildlife. ⁹

With local natural forest it's likely better to mostly just leave things alone. 

Maybe put your effort into invasive species and weed control? That seems to be an issue in most places. 

Even than sometime the local wildlife often adapts to introduced species. Right now the native honeyeater birds (Tui) are camped out in my backyard because there is a big flowering camellia tree there, and flowers are scarce in Autumn. They will hang around town for most of the winter feeding on the exotic trees that flower late winter / early spring. (Banksia / dogwood / cherry etc) . When the native species start to flower, they all head back up into the native forest to breed. 

There are all sorts of reasons you may want to prune trees. Timber quality, access, ease of fruit picking, utility clearance, aesthetics etc. But generally the trees don't "need" it. It's more to suit OUR goals, and the art is to do the least harm to the tree.  Lopping off some lower dying branches so they don't poke you in the eye is "access", and does little harm to the tree, possibly helps it if done right because the dead limb scars over faster, reducing the chances of rot. 

Ianab, that answers my question. Thank you.