Saving Forests at Home

2011 has been deemed the International Year of Forests by The United Nations General Assembly in order to raise awareness on sustainable conservation, development, and management of all types of forests.  Often when people in the U.S.think of saving forests they think of rain forests and jungles half way around the world. In reading the proposed activities planned by the Department of State one gets the sense of it being ambiguous. The lack of sound federal forest management has left our nation’s forests and the rural communities whose livelihoods depend on these forests to die a slow and completely unnecessary death. With each new lawsuit filed blocking sound forest management practices another community is sentenced to poverty, and another forest is destined to destruction by disease, pestilence or fire. In the government’s misguided efforts to do right by our nation’s forests they have ultimately created the very thing they were seeking to prevent, the destruction of our forests healthy ecosystems. While it’s good to be concerned about global deforestation, it is vitally important that we take action to sustain forests and their communities in our own backyard.