Comment by lotharcable2

In the USA, at least, most the lumber for home construction is farmed. We don't rely on "old growth" for much anymore.

Meaning the forests are kept forests and new trees are planted to replace the ones that are cut down. The land the trees are farmed from is kept forested because it provides a income source for the owners. Also the trees tend to grow much faster then they do in natural forests because things like spacing out trees is optimized.

This is a big complaint for wood working folks, ironically. Because natural grown trees grow slower the wood grain is much tighter and ends up being generally higher quality. Where as modern farmed wood has huge rings.

Although it isn't too bad because you don't use soft woods much for things like furniture making. Where as construction lumber is almost all soft wood.

So at least in the USA the ratio of grown-to-cut wood is about 1.92. So we plant trees nearly 2 to 1 versus what we cut down.