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damage through ecological restoration. However, the following chal-
lenges remain:
• Climate change has contributed to regional drought while wors-
ening wildfire severity. From 2000 to 2008, at least 10 States
had their largest wildfires on record. With development pushing
homes and communities into fire-prone forests, almost 70,000
communities are now at risk from wildfires, and fewer than 10
per cent have a community wildfire protection plan
• Beetle infestations have proliferated across 16 million hectares
since the late 1990s, leaving entire landscapes full of dead and
dying trees
• Non-native insects and diseases are attacking major forest trees
across the nation, and more than 40 million hectares of range-
land have been degraded by invasive weeds
• Urban growth and development are threatening private forests
with land use conversion and habitat fragmentation. From 2000
to 2030, substantial increases in housing density are predicted
on about 23 million hectares of forest land, threatening rare and
sensitive species
• Food and energy prices are rising around the world,
and biofuels are becoming feasible as an energy source.
Ecological restoration and landscape-scale
conservation of forests
In 2010, in his America’s Great Outdoors initia-
tive, President Barack Obama called for an all-lands
approach to protect working farms, ranches and forests.
The focus is on sustaining and restoring healthy, resil-
ient forest ecosystems. For example:
• In 2009, the US Congress established the
Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration
Program, authorizing the USDA Forest Service to
use up to US$40 million per year to leverage local
resources through 10-year projects to improve
watershed conditions, restore landscape resilience
and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire in high-
priority landscapes. The first projects cover more
than 0.7 million hectares in nine states
• In densely populated New England, the Quabbin-
to-Cardigan partnership is working to protect the
Monadnock Highlands, an area stretching across
160 km in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Twenty-seven private organizations and public agen-
cies are working together to conserve the region’s
largest remaining area of intact, interconnected
habitats. Another goal is to protect the headwaters
of rivers that supply drinking water to almost 200
communities, including the city of Boston
• Ecoregional initiatives include longleaf pine restora-
tion in the South. Fire-adapted longleaf pine, which
once covered more than 36.4 million hectares from
Virginia to Florida and Texas, now occupies less
than 3 per cent of its original area, most of it badly
degraded. As a result, 29 animal species that depend
on it are severely threatened. Private and public
partners are working across the South to restore
longleaf pine to over 9 per cent of its original area
over a 15-year period.
An ecosystem services approach
Restoration treatments typically focus on restoring the
functions and processes of healthy, resilient ecosystems.
Ecosystem services from forests include supporting
services such as soil formation and primary production;
provisioning services such as wood and water delivery;
regulating services such as pollination and carbon seques-
tration; and cultural services such as outdoor recreation.
An ecosystem services approach has multiple advantages:
• It puts people at the centre of conservation.
Management activities are designed to maintain or
enhance services because people want and need them
• It fosters cross-jurisdictional collaboration. Based on
mutual respect, stakeholders work together across
shared landscapes
• It accounts for change. A ‘restored’ ecosystem
might not mirror the original landscape, but it will
continue to provide a broad array of ecosystem
services
Image: USDA Forest Service
Green Mountain National Forest, Vermont