Few attempts have been made to calculate the full, ecological prices of forest products, but they would undoubtedly be astronomical. Forests' greatest value is probably the diversity of life they contain. Unfortunately, current government policies in both North and South accelerate forest loss by subsidizing sales of timber at fire-sale prices. In the U.S., for example, the Forest Service, which long denied subsidizing logging, proposed in April 1993 that it would stop selling timber from 62 of the 156 national forests it administers because those forests had consistently lost money on timber sales. To establish ecological pricing, Saving the Forests makes clear the goverment's need to stop subsidizing deforestation, and start using taxes, user fees, and tariffs to make ecological costs apparent in the money economy.
Political change is the third priority for creating a permanent forest economy, the report suggests.
To varying degrees, this bond between timber money and political power pervades all the world's major timber economies, Saving the Forests shows.