§620 Findings and Purposes

Summary

Protect and conserve forests and timber because they are essential to the United States. The law notes that millions of acres of harvestable timber in the western U.S. have been set aside, representing well over 100,000,000,000 board feet of timber. More land may be set aside soon under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the National Forest Management Act of 1976, or other government and court actions. There is evidence of a shortfall in the supply of unprocessed timber in the western U.S., and that shortfall could get worse unless action is taken. The law says conservation steps must include how unprocessed timber exports are handled. The law’s goals are to work with State and Federal plans to conserve forest resources; to act to acquire and distribute forest products that are in short supply in the western U.S.; to help meet the goals of Article XI 2(a) of the GATT 1994 (see 19 U.S.C. 3501(1)(B)) so the U.S. has enough essential forest products; to keep and improve the federal policy limiting export of unprocessed timber from Federal lands in the western U.S.; and to carry out these actions in line with U.S. obligations under the WTO Agreement and other multilateral trade agreements (see 19 U.S.C. 3501).