southern forests in the 1970's and 

 1980's. The concept of a national 

 forestry incentives program was 

 greatly encouraged as a result of the 

 report. Subsequent passage of the 

 1973 Federal Forestry Incentives Act 

 resulted in over a million acres of 

 timberland in the South being 

 replanted or timber-stand-improved. 

 Likewise, the revival of the pulp and 

 paper industry's conservation forester 

 program, now including vastly 

 expanded landowner assistance 

 programs, was stimulated by the 

 report. The South's Third Forest also 

 helped encourage amendments 

 providing more equitable treatment of 

 timberlands in the Federal Tax Code 

 in regard to inheritance and estate 

 taxes. It also fostered adoption of 

 reforestation tax credit legislation, 

 which has resulted in substantially 

 more regeneration activity in the 

 South. 



Between 1974 and 1980, the Forest 

 Industries Council, made up of a 

 large number of the major national 

 and regional forestry industry 

 associations, completed a 25-State 

 forest productivity study. In several 

 ways this was similar to the Third 

 Forest analysis but covered additional 

 regions and was more State-intensive. 

 Private industry, alone, contributed 

 nearly $400,000 to this project. Its 

 primary goal was to describe the 

 condition of the forest resource, 

 assess current levels of management, 

 and identify potentials for future 

 investment. Eleven Southern States— 

 Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, 

 Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, 

 North Carolina, South Carolina, 



Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia- 

 were among those studied. 



The principal question addressed was 

 whether the current rate of investment 

 in forest productivity should be 

 increased or decreased or remain 

 unchanged. After the studies were 

 completed, the National Forest 

 Products Association used the data 

 from them, along with the Forest 

 Service's Resources Planning Act 

 (RPA) supply-demand projections, to 

 study the question. Following careful 

 analysis, the forest industry developed 

 a national longrun softwood timber 

 goal with the aim of managing 

 America's commercial forest land to 

 (1) minimize real consumer cost 

 impacts through an adequate domestic 

 supply, and (2) build the potential for 

 an international net trade surplus of 

 forest products. 



The study provided immensely 

 valuable information on the resource 

 and identified two major trends. 

 First, it called for a substantial 

 increase in harvests from the National 

 Forests over the following 20 years, 

 with accompanying investments as 

 necessary. Second, it concluded that 

 private lands would be increasingly 

 relied on for timber, especially after 

 the turn of the century. To achieve 

 these two industry proposals would 

 require an estimated investment rate 

 of 83 percent of the investment 

 opportunities on private ownerships 

 as identified by the Forest 

 Productivity project. This investment 

 rate was viewed simply as a target, to 

 be revised and refined in the years 

 ahead. 



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