From a social and economic perspective, our National Forests are far more valuable standing, growing, dying, and regenerating where they are than cut down and converted into two by fours and paper products. National Forests provide many social and economic contributions to the nation, simply by existing as natural ecosystems.

Ecosystem services include important functions such as flood control, purification of water, recycling of nutrients and wastes, production of soils, carbon sequestering, pollination, and natural control of pests. They also include valuable products such as plants used in manufacturing life-saving medicines, edible mushrooms, and floral greens. Finally, they include a diversity of uses such as recreation, hunting and fishing.

When functioning naturally, National Forests provide services to society at an estimated worth of $4.7 trillion per year. Those benefits include flood control, carbon sequestering, purification of air and water, recreation, hunting and fishing, as well as scenic, aesthetic and cultural values.

Many of these benefits have been inhibited or entirely halted as a result of commercial abuses of our Federal forests. Commodity extraction on our National Forests has proven itself an ecological and economic failure. The Federal government is not only spending over 1 billion taxpayer dollars per year to log public forests, but also precious funds to restore the ensuing degradation. The trend must be reversed.

FOREST FACTS

• National Forests supply clean water each year to municipalities, businesses, and rural residents worth over $3.7 billion per year.
  
  
• Recreation, hunting and fishing on our National Forests contribute at least $111 billion to the gross domestic product and generate 2.9 million jobs each year. These uses contribute 31 times more value to GDP and generate 38 times more jobs than the timber sale program.
  
  
• National Forests provide habitat for tens of thousands of wild pollinators. Researchers have estimated the potential contribution of wild pollinators to the U.S. agricultural economy to be in the order of $4-7 billion per year.
  
  
• The Forest Service has been unable to provide data on the cost of its timber sale program since 1998. At that time,the agency reported a $126 million loss. An independent analysis found losses to be three times that amount.
  
  
• There is a $8.4 billion road maintenance backlog on National Forests and 440,000 miles of logging roads. Despite this,the Bush Administration is aggressively promoting new road construction and increased commercial logging.
  
  
• Taxpayers have provided more than $116 million in direct subsidies to the timber industry for just the construction of logging roads at a cost of nearly $15,000 per mile.