The San Francisco call., 1898-08-12
OUR VANISHING FORESTS.

IT T this season, when we are preparing to elect \ a new Legislature, when progressive men are considering what legislation to ask on behalf of the general welfare next winter and when forest fires are sweeping away thousands of dollars worth of property every week. 1t is pertinent both to the politics and the industrial interests of the State iterate and reterate the importance Of providing pro lection for our woodlands For that reason though we have repeatedly directed attention to the subject of late we return to 1t this morning with new argu- ment
 A few days ago we showed the interest taken by the Eastern States in the problem of forest preserva ton by extracts from a discussion upon the issue at the recent meeting of the wood pulp paper manufac turers To-day direct attention to the same prob lem considered from the point of view of the Eastern lumber industry. In reviewing the growing scarcity of lumber woods and the increasing value of forests as far west as Michigan and Wisconsin in a recent issue the Timberman says:
 The greatest obstacle to proper utilization of forest resources is that there many operating lumbermen who carrying their business solely for the present. with regard for the future They should be brought to appreciation of the fact how ever that twenty years, ten years, IS likely to bring great changes in values of timber resources and therefore that within the life of the ordinary lumber industry of to-day there IS likely to be in creased value to the timber as 1t now stands which
 
 According to that estimate, and there is no reason to doubt its accuracy the cost of forest preservation in the East would be compensated for in twenty years by the increase alone in the value of the timber without counting anything of the gain of saving the trees from destruction. If that IS the condition of affairs in the East that of the Pacific Coast cannot be widely different Tn our indifference forest presr ton we permitting the destruction of that of our natural resources whose comparative value IS rapidly increasing with every year that passes l If in the older States more serious and earnest *hought given this subject than with us, IS not because the conditions there widely different from our own because the problem there IS more i'm portant but solely because they have had longer perience of the evils of forest destruction and suffering acutely from the results of past neg gence.
 ] Not long ago the Philadelphia Record, in com mentng upon the of woods in that part of the Union said: Within the past forty years vast tracts of walnut oak and other valuable forest trees have been ruhlessy destroyed in this country, and some varieties of these woods are now almost extinct A similar waste IS going in the great forests of the Pacific Coast It will not be long before also shall have to bewa past folly in this respect if we do not profit by the experience of the older States and apply at once the remedy of adequate protection to our forests Our woodlands are far-reaching, abundant and prolific, but they are not inexhaustibe and the question of their preservation is one of the most i'm portant economic problems in the whole range of practical legislation.