A forester very proudly displayed his first attempt at group selection to a group of colleagues. The pre-harvest stand was a mixture of immature trees with clumps of moderate-volume mature timber. As the group walked the rough skid trails from one first-pass opening to another, an observant young student asked if the skid trails and openings were mapped. The forester stared blankly at the student saying, "No, that would be a lot of work!" "Well, how will you be able to keep track of your openings and trails over time?" asked the student. "Why would we need to do that?" asked the forester. "We will just come back in a few years and put in some new trails to whatever good timber we can find at the time."

Clearly, what is being called group selection here is actually "grope selection." Group selection is a silvicultural system that plans and integrates all harvesting passes and stand treatments over time to gain predictable outcomes over the long term. Grope selection is just an exercise to find and harvest mature timber whenever any is available.

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