Yukon bison herd makes a big dent in snow pack while grazing grass along bottom valleys that are too wet in the summer to graze. The stomp and rub smaller spruce trees, and add significantly more manure and nutrients to the system, changing grass into higher density fertilizer.

A grizzly bear versus a short faced bear, both bones found in the Yukon. Crazy to think our landscape supported 1000kg bears until very recently. As per Wikipedia dense forests occurred at the same time as these omnivores went extinct.

First thing to do is to switch forestry practice away from mimicking large fires to mimicking mega herbivory. A mastodon maybe 30 years away but a change in forestry starts in the morning. Check out moose pellet density in 4 types of forest.

Bison latifrons, priscus and bison bison athabaskae are all the same species if a species is when animals can have young. The best news is the Yukon herd is now 250 percent over target and growing rapdily! Here is some winter grazing.

Here is 3 summers of growth after thinning a very dense 55 year old stand east of Prince George. The original stand was about 5000sph and had moss only as understorey with odd cornus canadensis.

And here is after 7.5 years, oldest site we have. Best guess is depending on how much removed and site index 10 years would be required with maybe 25 years on most open sites. Likely the residual woody debris lifespan would determine reintervals as well. So 10 to 15 good rule of thumb.

Here is 4 years after thinning.

Here is 5 years after. City of Quesnel turned it into a park.

Here is a moose pellet count vs old growth "primary" young plantation, clearcut and partial harvest

Here is a control area not thinned and the thinned portion.

Most forests have grown too thick for optimum biodiversity. This is what we should do to fix that, balancing fire hazard, biodiversity, human needs and a climate resilient forest. Mimicking mastodons is much more appropriate than mimicking large fires which are unnatural in evolutionary time scale