Excerpt
ON those rare occasions when Mr. and Mrs. Average American reflect on the nation's forestland, they do so with some vague idea that most of it is owned by large corporations or “the government.” The fact is, of course, that more than half (58%) of the 480 million acres of U.S. forestland is held in small, private ownerships.
Foresters are among the handful of people who know this fact, much less care about it. Instead, unfortunately, they do not know what to make of it. In fact, the nation's small woodlands raise a question as old as the trees themselves: What, if anything, should the federal government do to encourage small woodland owners to practice forestry and replenish the nation's capital stock of trees? For every forester who sees a small woodland “problem” because of the lack of regeneration, another denies any problem exists, insisting that it is the foresters who have a problem. What the landowner does or does not do, they say, is his concern.
Meanwhile, hotels across the country do …
Footnotes
Luke Popovich, 1100 17th Street, N.W., Suite 710, Washington, D.C. 20036, writes on forestry and related conservation topics.
- Copyright 1983 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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