As Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, one of the key responsibilities of my job is to inform the public and policymakers about the value of forests and the contributions they make to the health and well-being of our citizens. I believe one of the most important roles of a forestry agency is to make sure that message is effectively and consistently communicated outside of the forestry community; and that we build support for the sustainable management of forests.
All of us here understand the importance of forests in providing clean, abundant water; high-quality, productive soils; clean air; energy; nontimber forest products; medicines; and economic activity that sustains communities. All this is well understood in the forestry community—indeed, I have heard it throughout my career. No one I know seriously questions it, even outside the forestry community.
However, the true measure of how clearly this 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.
To that end, Forest Service researchers have been working to quantify benefits that people get from forests, grasslands, and other kinds of ecosystems. You can find some of those benefits laid out in our annual budget overview. I will briefly describe them, along with some of the gaps we still need to fill.
Benefits from Forests
Ecosystem services from forests and grasslands include supporting services, such as soil formation and primary production; provisioning services, such as food, water, medicines, and building materials; regulating services, such as flood control and carbon sequestration; and cultural services, such as opportunities for outdoor recreation and spiritual renewal. Many traditional and rural communities rely on forests for part or all of their livelihoods, and all Americans rely on forests for at least some of the values and benefits they provide.
But most ecosystem services from forests have no recognized market value, so they are at risk of being undervalued and lost. To avoid such market failures, researchers have started to measure such values in economic terms. One study was based on energy flows necessary to generate goods and services on the lands the Forest Service manages. We manage 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands, about 8 percent of our national land area. The study estimated the total value of the national forests and grasslands at $24 trillion. Now, I hasten to add that these are not “real” dollars; they are only a rough approximation. Nevertheless, this huge amount does give some idea of the enormous value that Americans get from the ecosystem services they derive from their public lands.
A more classic example of economic valuation is associated with water. More than half of the water Americans get originates on forested landscapes; almost a fifth in the contiguous United States comes from the national forests alone. That is a value estimated at $3.7 billion per year. The national forests and grasslands furnish water for about 60 million Americans living in roughly 3,400 communities across the nation, including such major cities as Atlanta, Denver, and Portland. In a sense, the Forest Service is America’s largest water company, and it is our job to maintain these forested municipal watersheds in a healthy condition. Water is critical to life.
Jobs and Economic Benefits
In these tough economic times, forestry organizations cannot hope to secure resources without making a convincing case about the benefits to people’s livelihoods that result from healthy, resilient forests. This can be in the form of job creation. In 2011 alone, the national forests and grasslands generated nearly 450,000 jobs and contributed over $36 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product. The U.S. Department of the Interior did an even larger scale assessment for the national parks and other public lands. In 2011, activities by the Interior Department supported over 2 million jobs and generated about $385 billion in economic activity.
The opportunities for green jobs abound, because so many of our public lands are degraded and in need of restoration work. A couple of years ago, we estimated that between 65 and 82 million acres on the national forests and grasslands were in need of restoration work. We have been picking up the pace of ecological restoration, treating roughly 4 million acres per year through reforestation, hazardous fuels reduction, and other treatments. 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. Restoration is not only good for the environment, but also good for local communities and economies.
The Value of Urban Forests
Forest Service researchers are also helping homeowners and communities understand the value of urban trees. The United States has about 100 million acres of urban and community forests, an area the size of California. Through our Urban and Community Forestry Program, we have helped to sustain urban trees and forests in communities all over the country, home to over 196 million people.
Our researchers developed i-Tree, an application that communities can use to calculate benefits from urban forests. In Washington, DC, for example, trees on public land save the city about $3.7 million annually in stormwater runoff costs. Mature shade trees can save homeowners up to 30 percent in summer electric cooling costs. Urban trees also help clean the air; Houston’s urban forest, with roughly 663 million trees, removes 60,575 tons of air pollutants each year, saving the city about $300 million each year. The city of Lompoc, California, saves about $100,000 annually in dumping fees by turning wastewood into signs, furniture, and other products. And jobs associated with urban trees—in arboriculture, horticulture, landscaping, and other professions—contribute about $147.8 billion annually to the national economy.
Savings from Ecological Restoration
Wildfires are getting worse, partly due to climate change. Scientists have tied climate change to the drier conditions, longer fire seasons, and greater fire severity we have been seeing, especially in the West. Since 1960, there have been only six years when wildfires burned more than 8 million acres, and all of those years have been since 2004. Some experts predict that fire seasons could return to levels not seen since the 1940s, reaching 12 to 15 million acres.
The average fire season is now 78 days longer than in the mid-1980s, and fires have been getting larger and more dangerous. Since 2000, at least 10 states have had record-breaking fires. Two states, Arizona and New Mexico, had their records broken twice—and a fire in 2012 broke New Mexico’s record for a third time in just 12 years.
Meanwhile, more homes and communities have been springing up in fire-prone forests, especially in the South and West. In the last 10 years, more than 28,000 structures have burned, and about half of those were primary residences. Worse, lives have been lost. Last year alone, 34 wildland firefighters lost their lives, and many residents of homes and communities burned by wildfires in the last 10 to 15 years have also paid the ultimate price.
In response, the Forest Service is working with partners to restore degraded forests and reduce the risk from wildfires. In 2013, for example, we reduced hazardous fuels on 2.4 million acres, mostly near homes and communities. After a wildfire, we routinely study the effects on treated and untreated areas, and we generally find that fire drops to the ground in treated areas. That lets firefighters get in and control a fire before it reaches homes and communities.
The savings are immeasurable in terms of lives, homes, communities, watersheds, wildlife habitat, and other resources that Americans want and need from their forests. Actually, “immeasurable” isn’t the right word; it’s just that the savings have not yet been measured. And they should be; this is an important information gap. If we can get sound quantitative information on savings from fuels and forest health treatments, then a cost/benefit analysis might well show that more investments in our nation’s green infrastructure would generate enormous payoffs for the taxpayer.
Returns that Justify the Costs
And therein lies one of the central challenges for forests and forestry today. It’s the challenge of persuading others that the returns from restoring healthy, resilient forests are worth the cost of investing in them.
Back in 1968, the Director of the National Park Service in the United States, George Hartzog, summed up the challenge in this way:
“We haven’t learned yet to assess accurately the benefits to man of the sight of an alligator sliding into dark waters, or of a horizon free of smokestacks and overpasses, or an evening sky glittering with the flash of white wings catching the last rays of daylight; but our inability to measure them makes those values no less real.”
Those values are real, and we need to find ways to translate them into economic terms, because economics drives so much policymaking in the United States. Especially in these tough economic times, the policymakers who pass budgets and make land use decisions typically base their decisions on whether the returns justify the costs.
And the people we need to persuade are outside the forestry community. They are mainly motivated by a calculus that we ignore at our peril, the calculus of whether the return justifies the cost. So we need to find better ways to make that case. We need to make a compelling case that sustainable forests are a cornerstone of long-term community prosperity, for the benefit of generations to come.