The Abundant Forests Alliance (AFA) recently stood up an interactive website with mapping capability to show the health of forests in the United States. This group is an alliance between private forest owners and wood and paper companies. The flash-based site gives an accounting of the acres of forest in regions and individual states, and plots the gain in forested acreage.
According to this site, there are 12 million more acres of forestland today than 20 years ago. The recent State of America’s Forests report released by the Society of American foresters seconds this assessment, and indicates that the United States is currently covered by more than 750 million acres of forestland, an amount essentially unchanged over the past 100 years.
Some interesting items from this report:
- On average, 11 percent of the world’s forestland benefits from some type of conservation effort. In the United States, 20 percent is protected by conservation initiatives.
- The United States ranks fourth on the list of most forest-rich countries, following the Russian Federation, Brazil, and Canada, with 8 percent of the world’s primary forest.
- In 2006, almost 8 percent of US forests—approximately 58 million acres—were at significant risk from insect and disease mortality.
The Abundant Forests site also includes details on the steps for private forests to become certified as sustainable forests. The site outlines that all of the forest ecosystems must be caefully managed with oversight of scientists and forest experts. The standards encourage biodiversity and take into account soil and water quality.
While both sites are run by organizations with forest harvesting goals in mind, the recent Colorado beetle kill has me more in favor than ever for judicious forest harvesting practices. It’s good to see this state-by-state assessment of forest health.
