USING THE FOREST TO
CONSERVE THE FOREST

By Bob Slocum, Executive Vice President of the North Carolina Forestry Association

It’s easy to think that all of our forests are disappearing.  Just drive around Raleigh, NC, Charlotte, NC or travel the highway between the two, and you will see forest and agricultural land being developed to support other public needs.  And it’s no surprise that as our population continues to grow, so does the consumption of wood products.  In fact, each person in the United States uses on average 4.5 pounds of wood each day.  But our forests are not disappearing!  According to a recent multi-agency federal study, the Southern Forest Resource Assessment (SFRA), the South still has 91 percent of the forestland present in 1907. 

However, our state’s growing population is putting tremendous pressure on our forests.  The loss of forestland to non-forest use is projected to increase, and we could lose as much as two million acres of forestland in North Carolina by 2025.  This is a concern for everyone who enjoys the many benefits of forests.  But the way to address this challenge is not to remove the economic value of forests – just the opposite - we must enhance their economic and social value to ensure their future. 

If we want to conserve forestland, we need to use the products of the forest.  This may sound strange to many, particularly to some environmental groups who constantly tell us to stop using paper and wood products to “save trees.”  But if we were to follow these groups’ directives, we would lose much of the forestland we enjoy today.  Here is why.

Almost 90 percent of the forestland in North Carolina and across the South is privately owned by individuals and businesses.  For many, their forestland is an investment in one form or another.  If the forest loses its economic value to the people that own them, then the forest has a greater chance of being converted to some non-forest use.  Utilizing wood and paper products gives economic worth to the forest, providing a critical incentive to landowners to keep growing trees.  Over the past century, this economic reality has produced healthy, diverse and productive forests that benefit all North Carolinians with cleaner air and water. 

The SFRA confirmed this important principle.  Among other things, the study found that forest regeneration and growth have expanded southern timber inventories by 73 percent since the 1950’s, and strong timber markets have encouraged forest landowners to keep land forested, to convert agricultural land to forest uses and to invest in forest management practices. 

Using the forest to conserve it was the founding principle that guided the development of forestry in the United States.  When a German-trained forester named Gifford Pinchot was hired by George Vanderbilt in the late 1800’s to manage his Biltmore Forest in western North Carolina, he wrote, “Biltmore could be made to prove what America did not yet understand – that trees could be cut and the forest preserved.”  In 1898, Dr. Carl Schenck succeeded Pinchot as chief forester and started the first forestry school in America – the Biltmore Forestry School and the science of forestry was born in America.  Schenck understood that for forestry to work, and for forests to be conserved, they had to be profitable.  This basic principle still applies today.

#####