The past few years have seen a renewed public interest in forests; 1972 was no exception. In some parts of the United States competition for forest land is severe. A great deal of privately owned forest land is held for the personal use of the owner and his family, not for producing wood products for sale. Forest land for such purposes often brings prices too high to permit a reasonable return on investment in commercial forestry. On public lands, various groups or interests have contended for the sole or dominant use of certain forest areas.
A number of conservation groups that had joined forces to sue the Forest Service obtained a temporary federal court injunction early in the year against road building or timber sales in most of the remaining larger roadless areas of the national forests. The argument is that further consideration is necessary before the present more or less wilderness character of each such area is lost. At the end of the year efforts were under way to work out an agreement between the conservation groups, the forest products industry, and the Forest Service, with respect to this suit. The Forest Service is expected to make public in early 1973 its recommendation for or against inclusion of the various areas in the wilderness system; but this is unlikely to end all of the controversy.
Both wilderness areas and developed recreation areas on many kinds of federal and state lands experienced record high use in 1972, although in a few areas, including Yellowstone National Park, total use was lower than in some recent years. Excessive use is threatening physical damage to many areas, and destruction of the solitude and unique qualities of the wilderness.
Other current concerns about forests involve the growth and harvest of trees for various wood products. Achievement of the national housing goals accepted by the Administration and by Congress would require far more wood than has been harvested in recent years, at least as long as present wood-using practices in construction continue. Various metals, concrete, and plastics can replace wood in some uses, but their production requires several times as much energy as does wood product manufacture; they are exhaustible resources while wood is a renewable one, and their environmental impact is far greater than that of wood growth and harvest. Moreover, attainment of the full housing goals is especially important for the lower-income groups; if housing is scarce, it is they who suffer most.
Total wood production today is but a fraction of what the forests of the United States are capable of. Much interest therefore attaches to measures to increase wood growth. In the long run, wood harvest cannot exceed growth, for continuance of such a relationship would in time denude the forests of growing stock. But, also in the long run, wood growth cannot exceed harvest: only as mature trees are cut and removed can there be any net growth of new trees.
One intense controversy, relating to clearcutting of forests, was at least partially defused in 1972. At the beginning of the year, the Council on Environmental Quality proposed an executive order to establish guidelines to govern clearcutting on federal forests. This order, vigorously opposed by the forest products industry, was never issued.
In April the Subcommittee of Public Lands of the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee issued a set of guidelines on clearcutting on federal forest lands. Among other provisions, these guidelines specified that (1) allowable cuts on federal forest land should be reviewed periodically, to ensure that only lands capable of timber harvest be included in the allowable cut and that the effect of improved forestry practices be taken into account only to the extent that continuation of such practices is assured; (2) clearcutting shall be employed only where natural conditions permit, where restocking within five years is assured, and where aesthetic values do not outweigh other considerations; and (3) clearcutting shall be used only where it is silviculturally essential, where clearcut blocks are kept to a minimum size to accomplish silvicultural objectives, and where the clearcut blocks are shaped and blended as much as possible with the natural terrain.
These guidelines were immediately accepted by the Forest Service and by the Department of the Interior. While some conservation groups may not be wholly satisfied with them, the guidelines appear to have taken most of the controversy out of clearcutting.
A version of this article appeared in print in the January 1973 issue of Resources magazine.
