Healthier Ecosystems
Stewardship Contracting
In 2002, as part of the Healthy Forests Initiative, President Bush
asked Congress to enact long-term stewardship contracting authority
for the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. The Congress
granted this authority, allowing contractors to keep wood products
in exchange for completing forest health restoration work such as thinning trees,
removing brush and dead wood, stabilizing streambanks, and improving wildlife habitat. Long-term
contracts foster a public/private partnership to restore forest and rangeland health by providing an
incentive to private sector investment in equipment and infrastructure needed to productively
use material generated from forest thinning (such as brush and other
woody biomass) to make wood products or to produce biomass energy,
all at tremendous savings to taxpayers. The bureaus will sign about
80 stewardship contracts covering nearly 60,000 acres in FY 2004.
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