Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability 1

trees no faster than they are replenished, and protectingold-growth and vulnerable areas.Biodiversity researchers and a growing number offoresters call for more sustainable forest management.Figure 11-13 lists ways to do this. Which two of thesesolutions do you believe are most important?Some conservation biologists suggest four ways toestimate how much of the world’s remaining forests toprotect. First, include estimates of the economic valueof their ecological services in all decisions. Second, protectenough forest so that the rate of forest loss anddegradation by human and natural factors in a particulararea is balanced by the rate of forest renewal.Third, identify and protect forest areas that are centersof biodiversity and that are threatened by economicdevelopment. Fourth, establish and use methods toevaluate timber that has been grown sustainably, asdiscussed below.Solutions: How Can We Certify SustainablyGrown Timber? Set Standards and Bringin Outside EvaluatorsOrganizations have developed standards forcertifying that timber has been harvested sustainablyand that wood products have been produced fromsustainably harvested timber.Collins Pine owns and manages a large area of productivetimberland in northeastern California. Since 1940the company has used selective cutting to help maintainecological, economic, and social sustainability ofits timberland.SolutionsSustainable Forestry• Grow more timber on long rotations• Rely more on selective cutting and strip cutting• No clear-cutting, seed-tree, or shelterwood cutting onsteeply sloped land• No fragmentation of remaining large blocks of forest• Sharply reduce road building into uncut forest areas• Leave most standing dead trees and fallen timber forwildlife habitat and nutrient recycling• Certify timber grown by sustainable methods• Include ecological services of trees and forests inestimating economic valueFigure 11-13 Solutions: ways to manage forests moresustainably.Since 1993 Scientific Certification Systems (SCS)has evaluated the company’s timber production. SCSis part of the nonprofit Forest Stewardship Council(FSC). It was formed in 1993 to develop a list of environmentallysound practices for use in certifying timberand products made from such timber.Each year SCS evaluates Collins’s landholdings toensure that cutting has not exceeded long-term forestregeneration, roads and harvesting systems have notcaused unreasonable ecological damage, soils are notdamaged, downed wood (boles) and standing deadtrees (snags) are left to provide wildlife habitat, andthe company is a good employer and a good stewardof its land and water resources.Another successful example of sustainable forestrycertification involves the Menominee nation. Since 1890it has selectively harvested trees of mixed species andages from its tribal reservation land near Green Bay,Wisconsin—the state’s single largest tract of virgin forest.Each year the Rain Forest Alliance’s Smart WoodProgram evaluates whether the Menominee harvestlumber from the tribal forest in an environmentally andsocially responsible manner.In 2001 the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) called onthe world’s five largest companies that harvest andprocess timber and buy wood products to adopt theFSC’s sustainable management principles. Accordingto the WWF, by doing this these five companies couldessentially halt logging of old-growth forests and stillmeet the world’s industrial wood and wood fiberneeds using one-fifth of the world’s forests.Good news. In 2002, Mitsubishi, one of the world’slargest forestry companies, announced that it wouldhave third parties certify its forestry operations usingstandards developed by the Forest Stewardship Council.And Home Depot, Lowes, Andersen, and othermajor sellers of wood products in the United Stateshave agreed to sell only wood certified as being sustainablygrown by independent groups such as theForest Stewardship Council (to the degree that certifiedwood is available).11-5 FOREST RESOURCES ANDMANAGEMENT IN THE UNITEDSTATESWhat Is the Status of Forests in the UnitedStates? Encouraging NewsU.S. forests cover more area than they did in 1920,more wood is grown than cut, and the country has setaside large areas of protected forests.Forests cover about 30% of the U.S. land area, providehabitats for more than 80% of the country’s wildlifespecies, and supply about two-thirds of the nation’stotal surface water.http://biology.brookscole.com/miller14205