EDITIORIAL

We're the guys in the white hats

fl N THE 22nd of this month, the 20th anniV versary of the first Earth Day is being celebrated. The environmentalists will make the most noise, but the forest products industry will make the most sense. It also marks a real beginning by our industry in shedding its bad guy public image.

By any reasonable measure, we're the good guys. But we must be more effective in telling our story. Certainly the facts are on our side. For example: o About one-third of the U.S. is forestland. Of this total, two-thirds can grow repeated crops of trees. Only about half of these acres are open to logging. o President George Bush has urged the planting of a billion trees. Currently, American lorest landowners plant 2.7 billion trees annually. Not including the countless millions that reseed naturally.

. We have 200/o more trees today than we had on the first Earth Day 20 years ago. More to the point, in every region of the country we're growing trees faster than we're harvesting them.

DAVID CUTLER editor- publisher

o One-third of all U.S. forests are permanently protected in parks, wilderness areas and the like. This protected area is bigger than Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Holland, Switzerland, Israel and Belgium combined.

o The lumber industry is efficiency personified. Typically 98% of every tree is consumed in manufacture. Even the bark ends up as mulch or is burned flor fuel and the trimmings chipped for use in a paper mill.

The truth is America is not running out of trees. We do not need more forests locked up and useless. Periodic harvesting produces products we need and forests that are vigorous and growing; adding far more oxygen to the atmosphere than do old, decaying forests.

The forest products industry is a responsible steward of its lands. The question is whether the ill informed and the extremists can stampede the public and the legislators into flawed regulations that create no benefit and harm our precious national forest resource.