Sustainable Forestry: Moving From Concept to Consistent Practice

• Author: Federico Cheever and Ward J. Scott
• Pages: 285-302

Chapter 19

Sustainable Forestry: Moving From Concept

to Consistent Practice

Federico Cheever and Ward J. Scott

Forests cover roughly one-third of the United States. Of the 2.3 bil-

lion acres in the nation (including Alaska),1651 million acres (28.8

percent) are “forest use” lands,2and 98 million acres (4.5 percent) are

forest land in parks and other protective designations.3Any signifi-

cant progress toward sustainable land use will therefore require prog-

ress toward sustainable forest management.

While the population of the United States more than doubled be-

tween 1929 and 2000, the aggregate area of forest land remained rela-

tively stable through that period.4This does not mean that the forest

mosaic of 2008 looks like the forest mosaic of 1929. Dramatic in-

creases in second-growth eastern woodlands in rural areas and south-

eastern pine plantations5have replaced the woodlands destroyed by

the expansion of the nation’s suburbs.6

The nature and the extent of the U.S. forest mosaic will continue to

change in the decades to come, dramatically affecting the nation’s

ability to preserve native ecosystems, soils, and watersheds; to se-

quester carbon from the atmosphere; and to maintain a stable forest

products industry. Sustainable forest management provides the stron-

gest foundation for shaping that future change in positive ways.

For two reasons, it is difficult to gauge the progress in the United

States toward a structure of law that supports (much less requires) sus-

tainable practices in forest management: The notion of sustainability

itself is difficult to define, and the concept has not been incorporated

directly into any significant forestry law. Entities at every level of

government and in the private sector have declared their commitment

to the concept of sustainable forest management. Although encourag-

ing, the full significance of these declarations remains unclear.

This chapter discusses recent developments in sustainable forest

management law in the United States. It begins by discussing the rela-

tively new concept of “sustainable forest management.” The chapter

then examines sustainability practices in the three types of forests that,

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for the most part, make up the nation’s forested areas: private forests,

state forests, and federally controlled forests. These three ownership

regimes are subject to discrete and largely unconnected regulatory

structures. The chapter deals with each ownership regime in turn.

Sustainable Forest Management

Two broad concepts dominate the field of forestry management.

The relatively new concept of sustainable forest management, which

came to the fore at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, exists in an unsettled

relationship with its century-old forebear, sustained yield forestry.

The federal Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960, which still

governs activities on the 192-million-acre National Forest System,7

defines “sustained yield of the several products and services” as “the

achievement and maintenance in perpetuity of a high-level annual or

regular periodic output of the various renewable resources of the

national forests without impairment of the productivity of the

land.”8On the other hand, the influential U.N. Brundtland Com-

mission Report of 1987 observed that sustainable development

“implies meeting the needs of the present without compromising

the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”9The

U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Report on Sustainable

Forests—2003 asserts that “sustainability should be viewed as

more of a journey than a destination.”10

Both sustained yield forestry and sustainable forest management

emphasize the use of resources in a way that preserves their utility for

future generations. Tothe degree that there is a difference between the

two approaches, it is in the range of the resource and outputs that are to

be preserved for future generations. The founding documents of sus-

tained yield forestry in the United States, including the Forest Service

Organic Act of 1897, consider only timber, range, and watershed as

resources to be maintained in perpetuity. The 1960 Multiple Use-Sus-

tained Yield Act intentionally broadens that list of relevant resources

to include “outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife

and fish purposes.”11 The international process initiated at the Rio

Earth Summit in 1992 embraces a much broader set of resources and

resource indicators.

In a presidential directive in November 1993, President William

Clinton committed the United States to the goal of sustainable forest

management.12 While that document shied away from defining “sus-

286 AGENDA FOR A SUSTAINABLE AMERICA