The National Forest Management Act: The Twenty Years Behind, the Twenty Years Ahead

OF THE UNITED STATES 10. 54. Compare BUREAU OF CENSUS, U.S. DEPT OF COMMERCE, 1996 STATISTICAL ABSTRACT OF THE UNITED STATES 28 (estimating the population in the 11 western states at 55.8 million for the year 1995) with BUREAU OF CENSUS, U.S. DEP'T OF COMMERCE, CURRENT POPULATION REPORTS: POPULATION PROJECTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES BY AGE, SEX, RACE, AND HISPANIC ORIGIN 1995-2050 at 6 (1996) (estimating the addition of more than 25 million people to the national population during the decade of the 1990s and reporting that the West has the highest growth rates in the country). 55. See FOREST SERV., U.S. DEP'T OF AGRIC., NATIONAL FOREST FIRE REPORT (1977-present) (reporting total wildfires and total acres burned). 56. See generally CHARLES F. WILKINSON, CROSSING THE NEXT MERIDIAN: LAND, WATER, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WEST (1992). 1997] THE NATIONAL FOREST MANAGEMENT ACT 671 that accompanies an exhaustion of the local timber resource. Some of those communities continue to suffer, while others have redirected themselves toward recreation and nonextractive