TBLU - National Forests (Lesson)

National Forests

In the United States, land usage and the goals of land usage have changed, in part, due to human immigration and migration. During westward expansion, people explored and settle new areas, largely in the hope of extracting and profiting from natural resources such as gold, silver, and timber. Laws created during these times including the Homestead Act of 1862 and the General Mining Act of 1872, focused on promoting the expansion and settlement of the country.

The U.S federal government has taken many actions to protect and preserve forest ecosystems. Currently, about 29 percent of the land in the USA is overseen by four federal agencies: the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service in the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the Forest Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1905, the U.S Forest Service was established to manage and conserve the nation's forests, with the goal of managing the timber resources for both use and ecosystem preservations.

In May 2010, at the Oslo Climate and Forest Conference in Norway, approximately 50 countries signed the REDD+ Partnership, aimed at reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

Problems affecting parks run from little/no protection from their governments or being too small to sustain large animal species, to being too popular and, therefore, overused by people. Some methods for managing parks include: limiting the number of visitors, raising entry fees to provide funds for maintenance and management, managing parks in reference to nearby federal lands, discouraging development around already established parks, and providing more volunteers and better-paid employees to maintain the parks.

Only about 7% of the world's terrestrial areas are protected from potentially harmful human activities; these areas need to be expanded throughout the world. In order to adequately conserve biodiversity, at least 20% of the earth's land area should be protected in a global network of reserves.

Wilderness is an amount of land legally set aside to prevent/minimize harm from human activities. This is land where human beings may visit but not remain. Wilderness areas are important for: (1) their natural beauty, (2) their natural biological diversity, (3) their enhancement of mental and physical health of visitors, and (4) their contributions to biodiversity and to evolutionary possibilities.

Ecological restoration is the process of repairing damage caused by humans to the biodiversity and dynamics of natural ecosystems.

Initiatives that would help to sustain the earth's biodiversity include:

• Immediately preserving the world's biological hot spots
• Protecting the remaining old-growth forests
• Mapping the world's terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity
• Identifying and taking action for the world's marine hot spots, just as for the terrestrial hot spots
• Protecting and restoring the world's lakes and river systems
• Developing a global conservation strategy that protects the earth's terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems
• Making conservation profitable
• Initiating ecological restoration projects worldwide

 

RESOURCES IN THIS MODULE ARE OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER) OR CREATED BY GAVS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. SOME IMAGES USED UNDER SUBSCRIPTION.