The Setting 
Since the 1979 RPA Assessment, the 
Forest Service has completed new 
analyses of supply and demand for all 
of the renewable resources and the land 
base. The basic data on timber 
inventory have been updated to 1986 
from 1976. The analyses that rely on 
annual time-series data now include 
another decade of observations. During 
this decade, population, incomes, and 
economic activity expanded, leading to 
increased consumption or use of nearly 
all products of forest and range lands 
and the associated inland waters. We 
expect population and the economy to 
continue to grow in the future, which 
will induce greater use and production 
from the renewable forest and 
rangeland resource. More intensive use 
will increase the value of these 
resources. 
Demands and supplies of renewable 
resources are dynamic. Consumers of 
these resources accommodate the 
changing nature of resource supplies in 
various ways, including adoption of 
technologies that change the ways 
renewable resource outputs are used. 
Supplies of renewable resource outputs 
change in response to use, 
management, and withdrawals. 
Resource owners and managers 
respond to the changing demands by 
varying the amount and character of 
resource supplies. For example, over 
the past 3 decades, evolving legislation 
has provided direction to managers of 
national forests and thus influenced 
supplies of renewable resource outputs 
from these lands. Private landowners 
sometimes respond to increased 
demands by charging fees for access to 
renewable resources that they 
traditionally provided for free. In other 
instances, they deny or limit public 
access to the resources. But the record 
of the past decades has demonstrated 
the resiliency of the U.S. renewable 
resource base and documented that it is 
possible to improve the quality and 
quantity of natural resources, even as 
they are put to beneficial uses. In the 
future, as in the past, accommodations 
will be made between demands and 
supplies through policy actions and 
management to influence the amount, 
quality, and value of renewable 
resource Outputs and conditions. 
It is the purpose of this Assessment 
document to summarize the present 
condition and the prospective demand 
and supply outlook for the Nation’s 
renewable resources and to identify the 
implications of these likely future 
trends for renewable resource 
management, production, and 
conditions. 
Some of the key assumptions and 
findings from the 1979 RPA 
Assessment have been updated to 
reflect new data and expectations about 
the future: 
1. Recycling of paper and paperboard 
will become more important as a 
source of fiber in the United States, just 
as it has already in Japan and parts of 
Europe (fig. 1). We currently have a 
recycling rate of 25 percent, compared 
to 51 percent in Japan and 47 percent 
in the European Economic Community. 
In the Assessment, we assume that the 
U.S. recycling rate will reach 31 
percent by 2040. 
2. Consumption of water will lessen as 
irrigation for agriculture is reduced in 
the West, but demands for high-quality 
water, such as for drinking, will 
continue to grow with the western 
population. 
3. Annual per capita consumption of 
beef, veal, lamb, and mutton is 
assumed to remain constant to the year 
2040 at 110 Ib (carcass weight). (In the 
1979 RPA Assessment, it was assumed 
to increase significantly.) Productivity 
of private rangeland is assumed to 
increase because of the consensus view 
that landowners will implement 
currently available technologies. 
4. Demands for outdoor recreation will 
generally continue to grow with 
population growth. An increasing share 
Figure 1—Recycling of paper and paperboard is expected to increase. 
