Members of the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition have found another way to use stimulus money to help rural America. They "have recommended a $5 billion investment in work that would improve the health and productivity of public forests, provide employment for forest workers who have been displaced by the decline of timbering, and reduce the cost of fighting forest fires in the future," Tim Marema reports in the Daily Yonder.(Photo via Imagery and Our World)
The cost of fighting forest fires has tripled over the last over the last 20 years and now consumes 42 percent of the Forest Service's discretionary budget. "There's plenty of work to be done removing hazardous fuels," writes Marema. "The Forest Service estimates that from 50 to 90 million acres need thinning. In 2007 the service had only enough money to treat 3 million acres."
There would be further benefits to creating healthy forests. Marema adds, "restoring watersheds and streams, removing noxious weeds and other invasive species, maintaining roads and trails, taking inventories of timber, and upgrading public forest facilities to be more energy efficient," would also be possible with stimulus money.
"The forest restoration initiative is a distinctly rural take on economic recovery," writes Marema. "Large scale forests are, by definition, rural, and the rural communities that are part of these forested lands have traditionally built their wealth on trees." (Read more)
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