Unless policies and practices change, some forest resources could be overwhelmed in coming decades as domestic and international demand swells.

Today, the U.S. forest sector ranks among the most productive, diverse, and well managed in the world. Forest area is stable, productivity has outpaced consumption for decades, nearly two million Americans have jobs in the sector, and a wide range of laws, regulations, and policies intended to sustain the diverse benefits America's forests provide are in place. Still, conflicts over forest-sector activities have grown highly visible and divisive in recent decades. Logging of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest and the release of persistent pollutants in pulp and paper manufacturing have triggered high stakes public struggles over policy and management practices. Disputes over what is not being sustained -- whether timber industry jobs, recreational opportunities, or natural salmon stocks in the Pacific Northwest -- suggests that at least some forest goods and services are reaching finite limits. Unless policies and practices change, some forest resources could be overwhelmed in coming decades as domestic and international demand swells.

Forest Cover in the United States, 1993

 

The U.S. forest sector does face serious sustainability challenges. But it also has the luxury of time, a history of innovation, and recourse to market and policy processes that work better than those of many countries.

Why should Americans -- most of whom live in large metropolitan areas increasingly isolated from natural resource economies -- care about the future of forests? First, the U.S. forest sector generates an enormous volume and range of products and services that Americans use every day -- from lumber, paper, and engineered wood products to wildlife and fisheries, watershed protection, and energy. Second, the forest sector provides jobs, recreation, educational opportunities, and aesthetic benefits. Third, this sector provides valuable unsung assets including growing stores of carbon that offset greenhouse gas emissions and reservoirs of biodiversity that support healthy ecosystems and fuel advances in biotechnology.

Steadily rising demands for both timber and nontimber forest products and benefits will force Americans to make choices about how to use their forests. For example, the average American's appetite for paper products has nearly tripled in three decades to 700 pounds annually. Meanwhile, net annual timber growth is stagnating, and a growing number of forest-dwelling species are showing evidence of population declines due to the cumulative effects of logging, water pollution, and forest fragmentation as housing, infrastructure, and commercial development encroach.

• Indicators of a sustainable U.S. forest sector. The indicators provided here could be used to assess conditions and inform policy and management decisions.