America’s Private Forests: Status and Stewardship
by Constance Best and Laurie Wayburn

"It is strange that a book like this one hasn’t been written before, but wonderful that it now exists. The systematic inventory of the nature of private forests and threats to their continued well-being presented here would be valuable by itself. But this book also presents a careful inventory of the conservation tool-box available for use to enhance conservation on private forests. The emphasis on financial mechanisms and markets is timely and new. As the limits of top-down regulation become clearer, the need for creative, market-based approaches becomes intense.

"Finally, the book describes what would constitute success in the pursuit of forest conservation, and prescribes strategies to pursue it. Its crowning glory is that the authors clearly see that maintaining forests as forests is the first conservation task with respect to private forests, and, indeed, all forests. If this task is neglected while we argue about precisely what kind of forests we would like to have and keep, society at large will be the loser, because they will lose their forests and the biodiversity, water and wood that they now provide in abundance and at low cost."

Professor John Gordon,
Private forestland owner and Pinchot Professor of Forestry,
Yale University

Professor Gordon is describing America’s Private Forests: Status and Stewardship, an ambitious and informative book by Constance Best and Laurie A. Wayburn, the founders of the Pacific Forest Trust. America's Private Forests is published by Island Press.

Nearly 430 million acres of forests in the United States are privately owned, and the viability, indeed the very existence, of these forests is increasingly threatened by population growth, urbanization, and patchwork development. Scientists, policy-makers, and community leaders have begun to recognize the vital role of private forests in providing essential goods and services, from sustainable timber supplies to clean water.

Yet despite the tremendous economic and ecological importance of private forests, information about their status and strategies for their protection have been in short supply.