For generations, Pacific Northwest policymakers understood a simple idea: working forests deliver public benefits everyone depends on — clean water, wildlife habitat, wildfire risk reduction, and wood products — and rural communities closest to those forests must remain part of the system that manages them and keeps them productive. Today, the state of this “social contract” appears to be dangerously fraying, according to researchers at Oregon State University and the US Department of Agriculture.
Read the full blog from Washington Forest Protection Association.