St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1912-03-13
VERMONT FORESTS
Allen M. Fletcher Advocates More
Intelligent Care and Develop
ment of Them.

prepared for the Vermont Com
mission on the Conservation of Nat
ural Resources.)
Our forests by reason Of mis-
management are so rapidly disap-
pearing that any estimate of the
wealth we possess in them today
will be valuable tomorrow only as
the record of conditions already
changed. However a comparison of
the condition of our forests to-
day with those Of so years ago,
shows coRclusively that If we con-
tinue our present method or lack of
method of dealing with them we
shall in another so years have few
forests on which to place a value.
Therefore a question of far great
Ter Importance than the value of Yer
mont's forests today is, what her
forests are to be in the future. And
this suggests both the extent and the
quality of our future forests and
whether or not the state and the in
dividual or both are warranted in at
tempting to preserve their present
and to increase their future produc-
tive power.
There are two ways of increasing
production: To increase the forest
area by paintings, and to increase
the output of the original area by
care in management. Now, il a man
has an acre in potatoes and wants a
big crop would it not be better pol
icy for him by careful cultivation to
make sure of good crop on his first
acre rather than to neglect that acre
and plant a second? In other words
it will pay the farmer to resort to
planting only in cases of waste land
which is not producing itself by nat
ural methods.
Some of the benefits to the state
of good forests are: Sources of use
full products, conservation of water,
protection againts erosion, increased
ability of the soil to hold water, and
these benefits have been conceded to
be of sufficient Importance to war
rant the state in adopting an Official
policy of forestry which provides for
acquiring and maintaining state for
ests and for instructing Vermonters
in forest management.
Let us then consider the benefits
of a good forest policy to individual
owners. If every farmer in the
SLdC0 AC4L SdJ1S1O0 that Al AObuAA AOA
proper management his forest would
assure him a early revenue, how
long would it take him to decide on
such a policy? A great majority of
the forests in this state are in farm
woodlots. These woodlots should
supply fire wood for the farm and
timber for repairing the buildings,
furnish wood or lumber to bring In
13&kI0 onnTTo1IU and
give winter work to the farmers
team. Any natural woodlot of aver
age or reasonable size would, under
proper management, and IL not al
ready too badly injured, make this
return to the farmer; for our soil is
one in which the reproduction of
trees is natural and rapid.
The reason so many woodlnts do
not now yield regular dividends is
because they have already been in
jured by indiscriminate and haphaz-
ard cutting. Two instances of ex-
treme abuse have come to my atten-
ton. Ten years ago one lot had
fair growth of maple and beech with
scattering old growth spruce; there
was an underground of suppressed
and scrubby hardwoods we'll sprink-
led with spruce seedlings. The large
and spruce were cut;
some of the small spruce were cut
because they were in the way and
more because the choppers thought
they were in the way, others were
taken for Gushing" roads and the
rest for banking houses. Last year
the farmer wanted cord wood to
sell. He found the scrubs so tang
led in a network of hard wood
sprouts that cutting was not pay
ing proposition. The inevitable
result is that the land will be left
for 10 or Is years while the inferior
trees and the inferior sprouts
battle with each other, and
after a long period without return,
the farmer will have a poor growth
of hardwood. In this case the
much decried "landskiuning" of the
would have been pre-
ferable, for it would have removed
the scrub hardwoods or forest weeds
and given the sprouts a chance.
Suppose the farmer, with an eye
for reproduction, had begun ten
years ago by cutting the scrub un-
dergrowth to market as firewood,
then year by year had felled his
hard and soft wood logs with care
not to disturb the growing spruce,
and sold them for profit; he would
now have left a fair stand of second
growth spruce which if properly
might continue to yield
yearly revenue.
Another instance of mis-manage-
ment; a Christmas tree dealer per-
suaded one farmer to sell all spruce
in two pastures for $500, using the
argument that cutting would clear
and improve his pasture. Now in
the first place the land was too
rough and wild to be fit for pasture,
furthermore the trees were cut so
high that their lower limbs still
cover as much ground as before,
leaving the land uncleared and the
spruce crop ruined. 10000 trees
were shipped from the two lots. A
lumberman who saw them loaded
estimated that in 20 years each tree
would contain 80 feet of lumber, a
total of 100000 feet. 1 think