Perspectives on Sustainable Resources in America

CHAPTER 3

Sustainable Forests in America?

Roger A. Sedjo and Douglas MacCleery

MORE THAN 15 YEARS AGO, America’s Renewable Resources (Frederick and Sedjo 1991) examined the historical trends and current challenges then facing U.S. resource managers. The chapter on forests characterized them as “resilient and serviceable.” Despite having been subjected to a wide array of abuses and destructive uses, U.S. forest area had been stable for almost a century. Indeed, the growing stock of American forests expanded for the entire second half of the 1900s, a time during which systematic forest inventories were undertaken, even as these forests provided fully one-quarter of the world’s wood harvested for industrial purposes. And through this period, the ...