The Advisory Panel on Timber and the Environment recommends to the President that:

1. The President issue a statement or proclamation to the Nation, emphasizing the unique renewability of the timber resource, and the opportunities to improve substantially the productivity and the value of the Nation's forest resources to meet the multiple demands now being made and likely to be made in the future on these forests; and emphasizing that forest resources are to be cherished, nurtured, and used.

2. The President require the Federal agencies concerned with forests to prepare a comprehensive nationwide program of forest development and timber supply covering the periods 1973-85, 19862000, and 2001-20, which will convert into specific programmatic terms the general proposals of this report. Such comprehensive programs should include: Expansion of recreation and wilderness areas where appropriate; protection of water supplies; protection of fragile soils and erodable steep slopes by their withdrawal from timber harvest; protection of wildlife including rare and endangered species of plants, animals, and birds; improved utilization of wood fiber for all its varied. uses; assistance to owners of private forest lands in the management of their forests for increased output; and harvesting of timber from the national forests on a schedule commensurate with their productive capacity and sufficient to make their proportionate contribution to national timber needs. This comprehensive program should be carefully monitored by the Forest Policy Board, proposed later.

3. The Federal land-administering agencies and

1 Fuller statements of these recommendations and of reasons for them are found throughout the Panel report, as are other recommendations on a number of pertinent subjects.

the Congress accelerate their efforts to complete the National Wilderness Preservation System as rapidly as possible. The Federal land-managing agencies and the Congress should develop a system of quasi-wilderness areas in the Eastern United States, in which low-intensity outdoor recreation will be possible under natural forest conditions.

4. The commercial forest lands not withdrawn for wilderness or other specific uses should be designated for commercial timber production and other compatible uses and be managed in accordance with appropriate national policies.

5. The Federal agencies continue to reserve from timber cutting all lands under their jurisdictions where sites cannot now be logged without causing unacceptable environmental damage; such reservation to continue until the means of timber management and harvest have improved so that such lands can be safely harvested.

6. The Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and all other pertinent Federal agencies, improve the environment on forest lands under their jurisdictions by establishing road building standards and logging practices that minimize site disturbances, while at the same time retaining all proven and efficient methods of timber harvest, including clearcutting, under appropriate conditions. These agencies should skillfully apply the best silvicultural and conservation measures in forest management, particularly in timber harvest and forest regeneration. The need to economically and intensively manage the new forest crop as well as manage the existing timber crop shall receive due consideration.

7. In order to help dampen short-term fluctuations in softwood lumber and plywood supply, interested public agencies and private industry rep

resentatives should make periodic (perhaps monthly) reviews or analyses of the prospective demand and supply situation for the various wood products, in order to discover possible imbalances and warn against them. Such reviews would be similar to those now made in the Department of Agriculture for agricultural commodities, but should involve both suppliers and users of wood products to a major degree for the knowledge such groups can contribute and also as a means of making the projections more widely known and more effectively used.

8. The annual harvest on lands available for commercial timber production on western national forests can be increased substantially. Analyses based upon nationwide forest inventory data indicate possibilities for increasing the old growth cutting rate in the range of 50 to 100 percent. The Panel's consultant believes that on four forests analyzed in his report, the annual harvest rate should average 39 percent more, than is now proposed in recently prepared Forest Service plans. The Panel recommends that the Forest Service promptly review and revise policies for allowable cut determinations including rotation period determinations, stocking objectives, and old growth management policies for the western national forests. The precise revised level of harvest must be worked out for appropriate geographical areas and must consider, for each area, condition of existing timber stands, road accessibility, market demands, impact on non-Federal forests, and future timber supplies and do so within the limits of sustained yield. The Panel recognizes that an accelerated harvest of old growth timber in national forests should be undertaken only provided that adequate provision is made for financing whatever intensified timber management is needed to support the new level of harvest. If harvest on national forests during the 1970's is accelerated, it will tend to reduce pressure for harvest of timber from private forests, thereby tending to increase their growth of timber in this and later decades.

9. The Forest Service carry out an accelerated program of timber growing, stressing immediate regeneration, on national forests, in accordance with the foregoing recommendations and with the funds proposed in later recommendations. The objective of this accelerated program is to increase the growth of wood on national forests for harvest in later decades.

10. The Federal Government maintain incentive programs to encourage private landowners to follow forest management programs which protect the environment and to increase future timber supplies from their forests. Such programs should maintain Federal income tax incentives; should include advice and services to forest owners and their associations; and should include cost-sharing for intensive forest management practices, including provision of seedlings. New programs should be developed on a trial basis by providing financial assistance to lessees of land whose forests are combined by lessors of appropriate types into efficient forest management units.

11. Government and industry should conduct and support research to promote technological innovation in forest management and in wood utilization and help develop less destructive logging equipment. Particular attention should be given to methods of timber harvest on fragile sites and to commercial thinnings.

12. The President require all the Federal agencies having responsibility for management of wilderness areas to develop, in cooperation with wilderness users, democratic and equitable systems of managing use of wilderness areas within their carrying capacities, considering the nature of the wilderness experience as well as the wilderness ecosystem.

13. The President require Federal land managing agencies, especially the Forest Service, to undertake management practices to direct and control all nontimber uses made of the lands; to recognize that the day of unlimited public use of Federal recreation areas is over, and that recreation and other nontimber uses will have to be controlled and managed just as management has been applied over many years to timber growing and harvest and to grazing use.

14. The President require the Federal agencies concerned with the administration of outdoor recreation on Federal lands to devise and apply systems of charges or fees for recreation activity which are administratively feasible, equitable to users, reflect the value of the recreation opportunity, and reflect the costs of providing the recreation area and its facilities.

15. The United States continue to import and export forest products of all kinds when it is in the best long-term interests of the Nation to do so; but that, until some of the recommendations herein for increasing timber supplies can be im