Questions and Answers

The videotape in this package is designed to get people thinking. As a result, you probably will find yourself fielding a number of questions from participants after you have finished viewing it. Following are some common questions that arise, along with sample answers.

If we continue cutting trees at the rate we are now, will we run out of forest? If so, when? If current harvest and regeneration rates are maintained, U.S. forests will contain larger volumes of trees in the future than they do today.

Who owns America's forests? Contrary to popular belief, the forest industry owns only a fraction - 15 percent - of this nation's forested land. The bulk - about 57 percent - is in the hands of private landowners. Another 18 percent is in national forests and 10 percent is under other public ownership.

How much wood are we harvesting now? How much can we harvest without surpassing the forests' ability to regenerate? Based on current methods of managing forests and current growth-to-harvest ratios, the harvest could be increased by about one-third without surpassing the forests' productive capacity. Improvement in forest management could increase that figure.

Can we increase forest harvest and still protect biological diversity? Biological diversity is a goal that can be managed for, even with increased harvest levels. In many cases, managed forests can be extremely diverse systems that suppport broad ranges of plant and animal life.

Why not use other fiber crops instead of wood? Even alternative fiber crops need to be grown somewhere. With an increasing population sure to need more food in the future, we probably can't afford to dedicate anywhere near the amount of land that would be needed to grow fiber to massively substitute for wood.

What about endangered species? Isn't even one species too high a price to pay for the production of any material? Big-picture thinking requires that we provide for our growing raw material needs in a way that causes the least possible environmental damage. The key here, once again, is to pick the best among realistic alternatives. While no one can guarantee that no more species will ever go extinct, we can say that, with careful management, using wood may well result in fewer extinctions than using other materials.

Why do we sometimes plant trees that are not native to a particular location? The vast majority of tree planting is done with species that are native to an area. There are occasions, however, where non-native species may be used to provide some benefit that native trees do not. For example, some introduced conifers are used in windbreak plantings.

Why is it environmentally irresponsible to reduce raw materials production without also reducing domestic consumption? Since raw materials must come from somewhere, the effect of reducing domestic production without a corresponding reduction in consumption would simply be to increase U.S. imports. Then we would only be shifting the environmental impacts of gathering and processing raw materials from the United States to some other region of the globe.

In Conclusion

As we make our decisions about materials use, we need to:

	address our most serious problems;
	realistically consider human needs;
	recognize the complexity of our environmental problems;
	pursue recycling technologies while remaining realistic about expectations;
	continue to manage domestic forests for timber production;
	look for realistic, logical solutions based on global thinking.

The bottom line is that, from an environmentally responsible standpoint, careful harvesting and renewal of U.S. forests may be the best choice for obtaining many of the raw materials we need.

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Produced by Communication and Educational Technology Services, University of Minnesota Extension.

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