FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


(New Haven, June 7) Speaking at Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in New Haven today, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell stressed the need for conserving forests, especially where forest land is in private ownership and development pressures are increasing.

Tidwell was at Yale to commemorate the centennial of a federal law authored by Massachusetts Congressman John W. Weeks that helped create the Eastern and Southern national forests. Through the Weeks Act of 1911, the Forest Service purchased land that had been stripped of its trees, and restored forests that now protect the watersheds of most eastern U.S. cities. These national forests also provide other important benefits such as wildlife habitat, protection for endangered species, and outdoor recreation opportunities. During the past century, more than 25 million acres of forests have been restored under the Weeks Act, an area more than seven times the size of Connecticut. The Forest Service, founded in 1905 by Simsbury-born Gifford Pinchot, provides conservation stewardship of more than 193 million acres of national forests nationwide, about one-fifth of the nation’s forests.

In the East, 83 percent of forest lands are privately owned. This percentage is even higher in Connecticut, which has no national forests and comparatively few acres designated as state forests, according to Christopher Martin, director of the Connecticut Division of Forestry.

Conservation, noted Tidwell, requires partnerships and collaboration. “Our mixed ownerships in the East lend themselves to landscape-scale conservation, and today we have the collaborative authorities, through the Weeks Act and other measures, to work across borders and boundaries for watershed protection—for the long-term health of the lands we all share.”

Watershed protection and other valuable benefits from forests will increasingly depend on the voluntary efforts of private forest owners, according to Professor Gordon Geballe, Associate Dean at Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. A recent USDA study found that the U.S. has been losing forest and open space to development at an average of 6,000 acres a day—or four acres a minute. “Restoring forests to protect water supplies and to control flooding was a central purpose of the Weeks Act,” said Professor Char Miller, director of the Environmental Analysis Program at California’s Pomona College. “With 85 percent of Americans living in cities today, we can easily lose sight of the continuing importance of forest conservation to meeting what is one of our most basic needs, no matter where we live—abundant supplies of clean water.”

Al Sample, president of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation and organizer of the Yale meeting, sees new challenges ahead. “Federal and state budget deficits are resulting in major cutbacks in land conservation programs nationwide, just when they are needed most,” said Sample, “and this is unlikely to improve much in the near future.We wanted to gather the most innovative thinkers in natural resource conservation today to design approaches that can work in this new budget environment, creative partnerships that enable private forest owners to stay on the land and continue to provide public benefits like watershed protection and wildlife habitat. Yale is the place to do that.” For additional information, see www.pinchot.org/weeksact .

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About the Pinchot Institute for Conservation

The Pinchot Institute for Conservation (http://www.pinchot.org) is to advance conservation and sustainable natural resource management by developing innovative, practical, and broadly-supported solutions to conservation challenges and opportunities. The Pinchot Institute accomplishes this through nonpartisan research, education and technical assistance on key issues influencing the future of conservation and sustainable natural resource development.