Industrial forestland, Astoria, Oregon
Gary Braasch

Forestlands

Percentage of Earth's original forest covering remaining: about 50% with greatest losses occurring within the past 3 decades.

Percentage of the Earth's remaining original forest entirely within the temperate zone
(regions characterized by moderate climate, including much of the U.S. and Europe): 3%

Percentage of U.S. original forest cover remaining: 3-4% in the contiguous 48 states.

Total U.S. forestland: 737 million acres, 33% of the U.S. land area. Two-thirds of the
total that existed in the year 1600, the lost third has been converted to agriculture or other
uses.

U.S. forestland acreage protected as wilderness, National Parks, or other classifications:
47 million acres, or 6%.

Total “commercial timberland”: 490 million acres, or 66% of all U.S. forest. Commercial
timberlands are all forestlands outside of protected areas capable of growing 20 cubic feet per acre per year.

National Forest acreage: 191 million acres.

Commercial timberlands ownership in the U.S.:
private - 73%
public - 27%
states - 7%
federal government - 20 %
National Forests - 17%
National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and lands managed by the Bureau of Land
Management - 3%

Total annual U.S. wood consumption: 100.3 billion board feet.

Timber volume cut from National Forests in fiscal year 1996: 3.87 billion board feet, 3.9%
of the nation’s total yearly timber consumption.

When the National Forests were established, much of the more accessible highly
productive forest in the U.S. was not included. As a consequence, National Forest
timberland is, on average, of lower productivity, and on steeper, higher elevation terrain
than are private timberlands. In the Northwest, for example, only 22% of the most
productive timberland is found on National Forests. In the eastern United States, steep
mountainous areas also predominate of federal forestlands. Their terrain makes National
forests especially important for managing water flows and protecting and maintaining
watershed conditions, and much less valuable for producing wood products.

Congress has mandated that the Forest Service and BLM maintain the underlying principle
of forest productivity and not allow the value of the forest resource to diminish. In the
terminology of the law, the forests were to be managed to insure “sustained yield” of all
resources on the public's forest trust. However, since this law passed in 1960, over three
million acres of old growth timber have been clearcut in the public forests of the Pacific
Northwest and California alone. A study on Forest Service planning (House Committee
on Interior Affairs, “Management of Federal Timber Resources: The Loss of
Accountability,” June 15, 1992) found that the agency has sold timber with no means of
ensuring that the fundamental requirements of the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act have
been met, because it does not have auditing systems adequate to verify that cut levels can
be sustained or that the use of clearcutting and other techniques have not damaged the
productivity of the land.

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