Regulacje i polityka gospodarcza · 17.09.2008

Forest Certification and Its Implications for America's National Forests

The USDA, Forest Service is seeking comments on forest certification and its implications for America's national forests. This Federal Register notice is to serve as a formal public solicitation of views on the question of National Forest System certification and its implications, if national forest lands were to become certified under one or both of the two major certification systems being used in the United States. The U.S. Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres, or approximately eight percent of the nation's land, believes that it is important to better understand the implications of third- party certification of National Forest System (NFS) lands and, in 2005, began exploring independent, third party certification as a potential option. To this end, the Forest Service initiated the National Forest Certification Study, which resulted in the report, "National Forest Certification Study: An Evaluation of the Application of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) Standards on Five National Forests." This report documents the study in which third-party auditors evaluated current forest management practices on five national forest units us