America's system of national forests, founded and expanded by Republican presidents, is a priceless heritage that must be conserved for the benefit of today's Americans and future generations. Our 156 national forests include a vast mosaic of ecosystem types, ranging from humid subtropical woodlands of the Southeast to the misty temperate rainforests of Alaska.

Forests provide free ecological services that underpin our civilization and are irreplaceable if destroyed. Those services include fresh water, flood control, soil conservation, air quality protection and carbon dioxide absorption. Forests are a dynamic stage for the life processes of interconnected, interdependent organisms, ranging from microscopic fungi to the largest living things on Earth. The forests' ability to provide free ecological services depends on maintaining their ecological integrity and biological richness.

Unfortunately, our national forests are being degraded by unsustainable, uneconomical roading, logging and other extractive activities, encouraged by perverse financial incentives that reward depletion. Such policies as "purchaser road credits" and other corporate subsidies waste the natural capital of our national forests, rob the taxpayers, impoverish our nation ecologically and shortchange future generations.

1. Maintain forests in healthy condition in perpetuity.
2. End large-scale commercial commodity timber sales and all harvest quotas.
3. Transfer the Forest Service to the Interior Department.
4. Support the Forest Service through appropriations.
5. Abolish Forest Service funding through timber sales and road construction funding through purchaser road credits or other devices.
6. Divide any revenue earned from forest restoration projects and sales to small-scale, independently-owned, community oriented wood products enterprises (see Rural Policies below) between the Treasury and Land/Water Conservation Fund.
7. In areas with large tracts of federal, tax-exempt land, fund payments to counties solely from the general Treasury.
   
   

1. Designate protected reserves, including all roadless areas 1,000 acres in size or larger, all old-growth stands, essential habitat corridors, Eastern forests recovering old-growth characteristics, and areas that provide outstanding recreation opportunities.
   
   
2. Manage protected reserves to provide biological refuges, protect watersheds, store CO2, and provide opportunities for low-impact scientific research and recreation.
   
   
3. Designate as wilderness all protected reserves meeting National Wilderness Preservation System standards.
   
   

1. Restore areas damaged by industrial logging, fire suppression and other intensive human intervention and bring them up to eligibility for protected reserve status by:
   
   A. setting biologically-based road density standards, removing unnecessary roads and managing remaining roads to prevent erosion and mass soil loss,
   
   B. reintroducing fire into fire-dependent ecosystems,
   
   C. thinning overcrowded stands with light-touch methods that fully protect soils, watersheds, fish and wildlife, and
   
   D. replanting restoration areas with native trees and vegetation to ensure re-emergence of healthy, diverse forest stands.
   
   
2. Establish policies giving rural, small-scale, independently-owned, community-oriented wood products enterprises preference for forest restoration project contracts.
   
   

1. Provide for limited access to timber for small-scale, independently-owned, community-oriented wood products enterprises in designated rural zones that are dependent on forest products for employment, geographically isolated, and have no economical access to state or private timberland. Such rural zones should be initially designated, then reviewed every 10 years by independent panels of state foresters, conservation organizations, rural community representatives, and U.S. Forest Service representatives, including conservation biologists and other scientists. Federal timber in designated rural zones should only be available at market prices to small-scale, independently-owned, community-oriented wood products enterprises. Under no circumstances should timber be removed through clear-cutting or similar even-aged methods. Under no circumstances should new roads be built.
   
   
2. Negotiate equitable trades of roaded, second-growth federal land for private lands of high ecological value.
   
   
3. Encourage formation of non-profit community trusts, managed by representative local boards, to manage acquired lands as working forests to support value-added forest products industries, fee-based recreation, and scientific research.
   
   
4. Fund education and retraining, and community grants to diversify local economies. Under today's policies, counties receive 25 percent of the proceeds of timber sales. We should break the link between logging and county payments. It's certainly good public policy to help counties with large amounts of tax-exempt acreage within their boundaries fund schools, roads and other local needs. We just don't need to do it with timber-sale money. Let's not pit the fiscal needs of local schools against the health of our national forests.
   

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This paper was written in 1999 by REP Director Jim DiPeso, with input from other board members.