Over the last two decades, public interest in America's forests, their condition and management, has increased dramatically. Much of this attention has focused on specific issues and controversies, such as clearcutting, the reduction in old growth forests on the Pacific Coast, the salvage of fire-killed timber and similar issues. Most media stories tend to focus on the controversies, rather than on the good news. Fortunately, there is considerable good news on America's forests and wildlife, especially when one takes a longer term view.

A long term view is especially appropriate when the issue is forests. The forests surrounding us today reflect decisions and public policies dating back many decades. In order to make wise decisions for the future, we need to seek to understand how existing forests came to be what they are today.

Today's interest is not the first time America's attention has shifted to it's forests. The first national conservation movement was focused largely on the deteriorating forest and wildlife situation in the late 19th century. Many of the public policies that have shaped today's forests have their origins during this period.

In our highly urbanized society, it is easy to overlook the critically important role that forests played in the history and development of the nation. During the colonial period, forests blanketed the landscape of Eastern North America. This was in sharp contrast to Europe where forests had been heavily depleted for fuel and building materials.

The period after 1800 witnessed a substantial increase in human pressures on forests as the U.S. population began to grow at 25 percent or more per decade. Wood was used as fuel for homes and factories, as lumber to build homes and growing cities, to provide countless cross-ties for a rapidly expanding railroad network, and as a myriad of other products used in a growing economy.

Forests were considered inexhaustible and certainly less important than land under cultivation to feed a growing population. Between 1850 and 1910, more forest was cleared for agriculture than during the previous 250 years. Forests were being cleared for agriculture at the rate of 13.5 square miles per day. Forest fires associated with land clearing and logging became particularly destructive in the late 19th century, often scorching 30-50 million acres in a year.

Before the turn of the century, a growing number of people began to be concerned about what was happening to much of the nation's woodlands. Fears about future supplies of timber were mixed with apparent implications of increased flooding and watershed damage, depleted wildlife populations, loss of the beauty of the American landscape, and even concerns about how much forest clearing was affecting the climate itself.

Out of this debate emerged a new idea; conservation - the notion that forests, wildlife, and other renewable resources can be managed under scientific principles on a sustainable basis over the long term. The new conservation policy framework that had emerged emphasized protection of forests from wildfire, wildlife from over harvest, and the management of both forest and wildlife under scientific principles.

It is a measure of both the inherent resilience of our forests, and of the success of the policies that were put in place in response to public concerns in the early decades of this century, that forest conditions over much of the U.S. have improved dramatically since 1900. For example:

While an objective evaluation of the performance of our conservation policies since 1900 suggest some impressive gains, nevertheless, some environmental trends are not positive and much work remains to be done. Of particular concern are rare and unique ecosystem types and species with specialized habitat requirements associated with them.

In the last decade, we have seen the debate between those advocating the utilitarian use and management of forests for commodity products and those wanting to minimize human influences and emphasize amenity values (particularly on public forests) becoming increasingly shrill and divisive. As this century draws to a close, and the nation's population has become increasingly affluent, mobile and urbanized, we have seen increasing interest in the natural process/amenity side of the conservation spectrum.

But as always there are limits to such choices. Society remains dependent upon forests for a wide variety of economic products. Indeed, utilization of forests for products has never been higher than it is today on a wood volume basis.

Today, the U.S. consumes about as much wood on a tonnage basis as the total for most other raw materials combined - steel, plastics, aluminum, other metals, and cements. Any significant substitution of these other materials for wood products, could involve other environmental consequences. Alternatives to wood in most applications are both non-renewable and use considerably more energy per unit of production than does wood.

As human population numbers and resource demands increase, the emerging challenge of society and its land managers is to find ways that both commodity products and amenity values can be realized compatibly over time from the same forest landscape. This must become the challenging new focus for the evolving concept of land stewardship and forest sustainability.