The greatest threat to private forests in the United States is not logging or energy development but suburban sprawl, according to a sweeping new report from the Forest Service. But as more trees are removed to make way for housing and associated development, regions risk losing vital 'ecosystem services' that only intact forests can provide. Photo courtesy of USFS/Jeff Kline.

Large swaths of private forest, which account for most of the forested acreage in the United States, could be replaced by housing in the coming decades, potentially compromising water quality, carbon sequestration and other "ecosystem services" that those forests provide, according to a new report from the Forest Service.

About 56 percent of the nation's forests are privately owned, and those forests are key to protecting urban watersheds and wildlife habitat, controlling erosion and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But those forests, about three-quarters of which are found in the East, are also the most at risk, the report concludes.

Between 2000 and 2030, housing density will increase on approximately 89,000 square miles in the United States, or 57 million acres -- an area larger than the state of Idaho, the agency estimates. On top of the development pressure, private forests also face a long list of other threats, including invasive species, heightened risk of catastrophic wildfire, air pollution and climate change impacts.

The transition from forest to housing developments is driven by a number of factors, including the sale of large tracts by timber companies that have found real estate to be more profitable than selling logs for timber and pulp. At the same time, high estate taxes have left forest-owning families little option but to sell land to developers rather than passing landholdings on to the next generation. Go to story #1