It’s because you wanted those trees, if it’d be some worthless bush it’d never be touched.

A visiting forest scientist from Sweden was surprised that aspen plays the key role in forest regeneration in old-stand forests in boreal West Siberia which are almost purely coniferous at the peak of their development, when I showed him all the various stages of post-fire succession, and a canopy of tall aspens over young conifer regrowth. In Scandinavia, moose are overabundant and they destroy the majority of aspen root sprouts after fires and clear-cuts, so their forests regenerate via alternative community cycles (in the rare cases where natural regeneration is allowed).

Aspen is the favorite food of beaver, moose and bunnies here. They can switch to birch, willows, or bird cherry but only after they have destroyed all aspens.








As far as I know, it's also the electrolytes which are important to moose in the winter. Aspen bark is rich in minerals compared to most other common trees. Some lichens which normally only grow on calcareous rocks will also grow on aspen bark. But ultimately it just probably tastes good to them.

here we cut one aspen, and 1200 shoots are put off starting new trees. they come up as thick as dog hair.

I was told by a old Indian that cow moose eat the aspen bark to settle their stomachs when in calf. Seems logical to me. It also seems that most of the scrapes I've seen is on the south side of the tree. Elk thrash them just because they're elk and like to sharpen their horns. Won't even get started on a beaver. Lol. Those buggers will take a beautiful poplar bush and ruin it.

That is about right!!! They have absolutely destroyed them. Been seeing some big bulls there now.