Given last week’s “big” story, it behooves me to cite recent a recent report posted on Two Sides’ site, called Forests of the United States: Understanding Trends and Challenges from Dovetail Partners: “From a national perspective, forest area (forest land)...totals about 751 million acres. This is roughly one-third of the land area in the U.S....[T]otal forest area has been relatively stable for 100 years even though the U.S. population has nearly tripled during this same time period. Between 1953 and 2007, forest area increased slightly, up 3.8 million acres.” Why Should You Care? It’s also worth noting that the years following 1953 also saw dramatic growth in not only the post-War economy but also the U.S. printing industry (until around 1998, as Dr. Joe will quite readily tell you). If the printing industry was supposedly the scourge of the forests and Bringer of Doom to All Trees, we would have seen a corresponding decline in forest cover as the printing industry expanded. We have not seen this; in fact, quite the reverse. But the report points out that there are challenges to maintaining the health and growth of those forests, and primary among them is divestiture of the land for other uses (such as real estate), as well as a decline in intense timber management. Remember, forests that are used as a resource for commercial products—like paper, wood, etc.—have value. When demand for those products declines, those resources are no longer required, ergo divestiture and selling off the land. Something to think about when planning “No Print Days.”