One such plant is now in the planning stages in Tampa, Florida. According to U.S. Forest Service statistics, the last year we harvested more trees than we planted was 1933. Unlike the politicians and ecoterrorist activists, these experts know forests inside and out. They warn that current policies put the forests at great risk. Failure to cut old or diseased trees, they have testified, results in an unnatural overabundance of fuel, making catastrophic forest fires more likely.
Older trees are also more susceptible to disease and insects.
Millions of acres of Sitka Spruce have been lost to beetle infestation as a direct result of Forest Service policy. The beetle is still active in 23 million acres of Alaskan forests, but the Forest Service has yet to act. The Clinton-Gore administration's new roadless policy also means, the dirt foresters say, that more acres of forest will burn. History bears out their concern. During the active period of forest road-building from the early 1930s to the late 1950s, the number of acres lost to forest fire dropped from an annual average over 50 million to less than 5 million.