Regulation of private forest practices: What rights, which policies?

In the roughly 30 years since the modern environmental movement started gathering steam in the US, the federal government has implemented a number of laws and regulations aimed at protecting public and private lands from ecological degradation. However, these increasingly strict regulations have caused a recent controversy over the rights of private owners of forest, agricultural, and range lands. Environmentalists believe that current forest policies are excessively destructive and that private land owners cannot be trusted to act in the public interest. Advocates of private property rights believe that individual rights outweigh ecological consideration. An analysis of the regulations pertaining to private forest practices is presented.