Forest Facts—America’s Deforestation Crisis

History

• Less than 4% or under 40 million acres of America’s original forests remain in existence. According to the World Resources Institute, less than 1% of "Frontier Forests"--large, contiguous virgin forests with all the species intact--still exist in the lower 48 states.
• Of the original 1.04 billion acres of virgin forest in the U.S., over 96% has been cut down.
• Most of these last original forests are found on National Forest land and other public lands.
• Most of these remaining public forests have no legal protection from clearcut logging.
• America’s natural forests were once filled with magnificent trees, up to 400 feet tall—as high as a forty-story building.
• America’s forests used to contain millions trees from 500 to over 2000 years old.
• The U.S. Forest Service continues to log hundreds of thousands of acres of forests per year, including virgin forests.

Current Plans

• Under the current logging plan, many of the last unprotected wild American forests will be cut within decades.

• Camping, fishing, hiking, and other outdoor recreation will be ruined in many areas.

• Each year, hundreds of thousands of logging trucks haul our forests away from our public lands.
• America's leading forest scientists advocate an end to all logging of wild, natural, and ancient old growth forests, and a ban on clearcutting throughout the other forests on our public lands. These provisions are contained in the Act to Save America's Forests.
• Ours may be the last generation of Americans to see large scale, completely ecologically intact virgin forests in the lower 48 states.

• Hundreds of plant and animal species found in the the national forests are listed as endangered or threatened, and may soon be extinct. Extinction is forever.

Economics

• Each new mile of road construction costs taxpayers about $50,000. The Forest Service plans to build 2,000 miles of new roads every year for the next decade.
• There are approximately 400,000 miles of roads on our National Forests, mostly logging roads—about 10 times the road mileage of America's Interstate Highway system. Most of these roads were built as a taxpayer subsidy to giant timber corporations to clearcut our wild and natural forests on public lands.
• Every year, the Forest Service spends over $2 billion on its logging program. This money ends up as profits of giant American and Japanese timber corporations.
• In the 1990’s, the top ten timber corporations together made over $2.5 billion in profits each year.
• Two timber industry executives rank in the top 10 in salaries in the US, each earning over $12 million per year.

Jobs & Fish

• Native salmon stocks are facing extinction due to logging in the Pacific Northwest. In 1994, the $1 billion annual commercial salmon fishing industry was shut down from lack of fish, costing 60,000 jobs.
• In 1991, only 4 adult sockeye salmon (and only one female) made it back to Idaho’s principal salmon spawning ground, Redfish Lake.
• The West’s famous trout fishing is in serious decline from logging erosion that destroys fishing streams. Trophy bull trout are endangered, and native cutthroat and rainbow trout are threatened with extinction in Idaho.

Redwoods

• 97% of America’s giant Redwoods have been cut down. Financier Charles Hurwitz bought the last private stand of Redwoods and is now logging unprotected old Redwoods and other Ancient Forests on his property.

Garbage and Waste

• From 1960 to 1986, the amount of garbage produced by each American per year increased by 80%.
• Every year Americans throw away 391,400,000,000 pounds of trash. Over 45% of this, or 176,130,000,000 pounds, is wood and paper products.
• Using recycled paper or tree-free alternative paper for one print run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees.

Benefits

Natural Forests:

• Provide clean drinking water (over 1/3 of America’s fresh drinking water flows from our National Forests)
• Provide billions of tons of fertile topsoil,
• Offer habitat to 1000’s of species of plants and animals
• Create a buffer against rapid changes in climate
• Absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to protect the earth from the greenhouse effect
• Absorb water to prevent flooding (recent floods in Missouri, Oregon, Holland, and Bangladesh were all exacerbated by deforestation)
• Are the primary source of new medical compounds including cures for cancer
• Provide spawning grounds for ocean and freshwater fish
• Are our last living links with ancient history

Sources:

New York Times, 1994; Forest Statistics of the U.S, USDA Forest Service, 1991;

1990 Resources Planning Act, USDA Forest Service, 1990; TPR01 Report, USDA FS, 1993;

Forbes Magazine, April 1992; Business Week, March 1994

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