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Overcoming America's Wood Deficit: An Overlooked Option

than it produces each year (Haynes et al. 1993), a sobering fact that probably few Americans realize. This shortfall is largely overcome by importing an average of about 30 million cubic meters of softwood lumber annually (WWPA 1998). However, relying on imports to offset the deficit merely shifts the potential impacts of production to other areas of the world. Should Americans care about this deficit? If so, what might be done about it? Dekker-Robertson and Libby (1998) spelled out why the United States, the world’s largest consumer of natural resources, has an ethical responsibility to produce more of the wood products it uses. They presented several options for overcoming the imbalance between wood consumption and production but dismissed three as inadequate: Reduce demand and recycle; substitute other materials, which are less environmentally friendly than wood; or import more wood, commonly from areas where harvesting has greater environmental impacts. To avoid greater dependence on imported wood or more energy-demanding substitutes for wood, DekkerRobertson and Libby offered a fourth option: Grow more timber in the United States. To this end, they recommended establishing intensively managed plantations, primarily on national forestlands. We agree that plantation forestry is one of a number of approaches that would help reduce the nation’s wood production deficit. This approach is likely to be appropriate as a dominant wood-growing strategy on privately owned lands, and it may be suitable for selected sites on national forestlands. However, gaining social acceptance of large tracts of intensively managed plantations in this country’s national forests would be a formidable challenge. Currently, there is no public support, political will, agency funding, or regulatory framework to support this option. Furthermore, even if large areas were planted in the next 5 years, whether on public or private lands, it would be another 5 to 20 years—depending on species and location—before yields from these plantations would begin to supplement domestic wood supplies. Moreover, it is unlikely that any single approach can make up the large shortfall in US production versus consumption of wood products, and efforts to reduce consumption should be part of any overall strategy to shrink the deficit. However, there is another option that not only has the potential to produce millions of cubic meters of wood immediately but also stands a reasonable chance of being implemented. In addition, this option could provide a broad range of environmental, economic, and social benefits. We propose a natural process-based forest management approach for producing timber products. Under this approach, tree cutting and prescribed burning are employed to emulate the scale and intensity of historic disturbances, thereby restoring and sustaining a semblance of natural stand structure and ecological process on millions of hectares of wildland forests. Under natural process-based management (NPM), maintaining forests in sustainable condition and producing timber are complementary goals.The focus of the proposed activity would be on the western national forests, although the concepts and potential benefits of NPM may well apply to many other public and private forestlands. To develop the case for obtaining wood through natural process-based management, we describe wildland forest ecosystems and their extent in the western United States; demonstrate how the proposed approach roughly emulates natural processes; and quantify the contribution that NPM can make to the nation’s wood supply.