Refreshing, and accurate. If you walk through the woods of New England, for example, and chance to look down, you'll see the remains of stone walls that transected the old farms. States like New Hampshire and Vermont [and Mississippi and Alabama] were virtually forest-less 150 years ago. Today, trees cover as much as 75 percent of the state. So much for the fear we're "running out" of forests. From the early 20th century till today, the real threat to forest health hasn't been logging. It's development. In the South, we're losing about 1 million acres a year to shopping malls and subdivisions. Let's worry about that, and stop whining every time somebody cuts a tree they planted a couple of decades ago.

GREAT ARTICLE! ONE ADDITIONAL TIDBIT! THERE IS MORE HARVESTABLE TIMBER TODAY IN AMERICA THAN THERE WAS 200 YEARS AGO. TREES ARE TRULY OUR RENEWABLE RESOURCE!

LEE GROTHE

If only all paper products sold here were made in America by these socially and environmentally conscious souls. But, they aren't.

The article is incorrect and poorly researched.

Whilst some may want to cling to a glimmer of hope that all is well with forestry, trees and products that is far from the case.

1920 was the all time low for tree coverage in USA due to logging and poor environmental practices. It was an opportune date to pick to make comparisons to today.

However today the number are about on par, difference is a lot of natural forest has been replaced with man made monoculture forests for harvest.

These forests simply lack the longivity and do not support the broad range of ecological benefits, there's more to forests than wood!

To validate the line "The amount of trees in this country has tripled since 1920." The author informed me they used a very credible source, Penn and Tellers Bullshit TV show on recycling. Now I wonder if rantings and ravings of some TV show is the future of our trusted information. So I did a quick whip around USA forestry sites and came up with some real valid data.

Here it is.

http://fia.fs.fed.us/slides/major-trends.ppt

http://www.fia.fs.fed.us/library/briefings-summaries-overviews/docs/ForestFactsMetric.pdf

And even a short quiz for some.

http://forestry.about.com/library/weekly/aa071502.htm

And I'm not even a journalist yet I do my homework before spreading more myths that gather support as shown here.