ABSTRACT
Forestry investment involves the nation's only renewable resource both serving as an industrial raw material that requires enormous sums of capital to replenish and increase, and having an important bearing on the quality of life in this country. This chapter discusses the rationale for intensive forestry investment from the perspective of the 1980s. The forest resource demands of the investor a steady vision of the future and a rare degree of conviction. Investment in forest resources in the United States, and particularly in the western United States, seems to make sense only when the long-term investment view considers demand and future supply in a world context. The United States has significant advantages in terms of stability, accessibility, and productivity. There is one significant difference between forestry in the United States on the one hand and in Canada and the USSR on the other—namely, in the pattern of land ownership.
