Housing threatens US forests, says report

Housing development on privately-owned forest land needs to be added to the list of threats to the nation's forests, according to a US Forest Service report.

Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack said he hoped talks held by the Obama administration with landowners would produce recommendations to make preservation of private forest land more profitable, reducing the pressure to sell it for development.

Some small markets pay forest owners to manage their lands to sequester carbon, and for ecosystem services, such as providing shade to keep streams cool for fish, said Mr Vilsack.

"We need to make sure people are aware of the benefits [forests provide], where we need to be protecting these lands and also creating innovative and creative ways through the taxing system, regulations, contracting and ecosystem markets to increase profitability," he said.

The report says 56% of US forests are privately owned, amounting to 420 million acres. Of that number, 57 million acres face a serious threat from housing development in the next 20 years.

In the past decade many large timber companies converted to real estate investment trusts when their land became more valuable for housing development than for producing logs, said Roger Hoesterey, senior vice-president at the Trust for Public Land.

Since the recession, conservation groups like Trust for Public Land and the Nature Conservancy have been buying private land to convert it to public ownership, he said. One such project is the purchase of 320,000 acres in Montana from Plum Creek Timber Co, which will be turned over to the Forest Service and the state.