It’s a pleasure to be here today. Ecological restoration is a timely topic, not least for all the economic benefits that flow from it. I hope to learn from our discussion today.

Restoration Partnerships

Since the United States is my “case study,” I’ll start with a general picture of forestry in my country. About a third of the United States is forested, and we have the fourth largest forest estate in the world, with about 300 million hectares of forest. Most forest lands in the United States are in private ownership, including about 7 million hectares owned by indigenous peoples. About a third of our forest lands are managed by the federal government and another tenth by state and local governments.

So right away you see the need for partnerships. Landownership in the United States is generally a patchwork quilt, with most watersheds in multiple ownerships. The challenges we face are cross-jurisdictional, and we work across broad landscapes based on common values and shared goals. We strive to ensure that our citizens get all the values and benefits they need from their forests and grasslands, along with the associated jobs and economic benefits.

Recognizing the need for global partnerships, the United States has long been active in the IUCN, and we joined the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration in 2003. In 2011, we participated in the Bonn Challenge. We pledged to restore 15 million hectares of forest land by 2020.

Challenges

Many of our forests are badly in need of restoration. U.S. forests are some of the most productive in the world, but our forest mortality has been rising. In 2006, forest mortality was roughly 50 percent higher than in it was in 1976. The causes are associated with drought, wildfire, invasive species, and outbreaks of insects and disease—all made worse by climate change.

Much of the United States has been in prolonged drought. Severe drought has resulted in extreme fire weather and very large fires and fire seasons. The United States has had its largest fire seasons and most severe fires since the 1950s. Coupled with climate change, overly dense forests have also created conditions for severe outbreaks of forest pests and disease.

Invasive species are another challenge. In the past, an exotic disease destroyed an entire forest type in the eastern United States, the American chestnut. Other species at risk from invasive species range from white ash, to eastern hemlock, to western white pine, just to name a few.

Other challenges are associated with population growth. Our population is expected to grow to more than 400 million by 2060. A net forest loss of up to 15 million hectares could result, reversing more than a century of net forest stability in the United States. Housing density will also grow, fragmenting forests and further reducing habitat for wildlife. Twenty-seven percent of all forest-associated plants and animals in the United States are now at risk of extinction.

The same developments will adversely affect the ability of U.S. forests to take up and store carbon. Although the U.S. forest carbon sink overall is likely to persist, scientists predict that the rate of carbon sequestration will shrink due to forest loss and increased wildfire activity. As a result, there could be a period when North America’s forests overall are a net source of carbon.

But the greatest challenge could be the impacts of drought and forest loss on water supplies. Over the past hundred years, water use has rapidly grown across the western United States during a period that was much wetter than the long-term average. The region could be entering a much drier period, more in line with the long-term average over the past 1,200 years.

Restoration

Our nation has responded to ecological degradation by focusing on ecological restoration through community-based partnerships. By restoration, we mean restoring the functions and processes characteristic of healthier, more resistant, more resilient ecosystems. We are striving to sustain and restore ecosystems that can deliver all the services that Americans want and need, including resistance to catastrophic wildfire.

We are fortunate in the United States to have a strong framework for collaborative governance. The U.S. Forest Service has one of the largest conservation research organizations in the world. We have a system of 81 experimental forests and ranges and a nationwide Forest Inventory and Analysis program, giving us more than a century of sound data. We also have more than a century of experience in building partnerships for everything from fighting fires, to restoring forests, to managing outbreaks of forest pests and diseases.

We have strong traditions of place-based conservation, building on local resources to meet local needs for clean water, wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation, and other benefits from forests. Based on those traditions, we are building a network of community-based partnerships for ecological restoration across large landscapes. Through our Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, we have initiated 23 of these large-scale long-term projects across the country, and we have dedicated funding to restoring over 20,000 hectares through each project, on average.

We are also building on a century of cooperative wildland fire management. We brought together federal, tribal, state, and other stakeholders to develop a shared national strategy with three main goals: restoring fire-adapted natural communities through ecological restoration, such as the restoration program I just mentioned; creating fire-adapted human communities by adopting planning and building practices that make homes and communities safer from wildfire; and making safe, effective, risk-based fire management decisions, partly by using fire for management purposes where it is safe and beneficial. We are learning to live with fire.

We have also taken a number of other steps to pick up the pace of restoration. For example, the U.S. Forest Service manages about 79 million hectares of national forests and grasslands across the United States, including about 15,000 watersheds. We developed a Watershed Condition Framework to track the condition of those watersheds, and we have chosen 285 watersheds for high-priority restoration work.

Jobs and Economic Benefits

In the United States, restoration ranges from vegetation management, to hazardous fuels reduction, to reforestation, to treatment for invasive species and native pests. By taking such measures, we are well on our way to meeting the Bonn Challenge.

To meet the challenge, we often need to remove biomass and small trees, and we can get more restoration done by expanding markets for these low-value materials. The U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory is working on new uses for low-value wood. For example, we are developing a cost-effective way of converting small-diameter wood into hydrochar pellets, which burn cleaner than coal and at higher energy intensity and can be used in existing coal-fired plants. We are also promoting a new technology called cross-laminated timber. It is lighter and cheaper than steel or concrete and easier to assemble, and it is also far more energy-efficient. Builders can use cross-laminated timber to construct buildings up to 40 stories high.

Opportunities for jobs restoring green infrastructure abound. Take the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, for example—the program I mentioned earlier. In 2012 alone, it generated 4,574 jobs. One study has shown that every million dollars spent on restoration activities generates 12 to 28 jobs, which compares favorably to most other economic activities.

In 2011 alone, the lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service accounted for nearly 450,000 jobs and contributed over $36 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product. The U.S. Department of the Interior includes several other federal agencies that together manage hundreds of millions of hectares of public lands, including our national parks. In 2011, its activities alone supported over 2 million jobs and generated about $385 billion in economic activity.

Valuing Restoration

Why is this so important? Because restoration is needed for sustainable forest management, and to make the case for restoration, we need to show its economic value. The true measure of how clearly our message is understood is not what we tell ourselves in forums like this. It is what society actually pays for in terms of the budgets that are passed and the land use decisions that are made. These policy decisions are largely made outside the forestry community.

So we need better methods of valuing restoration in terms of jobs and economic benefits. That will help our citizens and policymakers better understand the value of forests to our economies and our long-term sustainability. Thank you for contributing to that dialogue today.