Evening star., 1947-12-06
By George A. Macdonald
Service Department Of Agriculture

Damaged ,oooded areas of the Nation
inudeQuately, according to expert stude1
A Midwestern farmer called upon the Forest
Service in the United States Department Of Ag-
riculture the other day, wanting to know If 1t
were true that Americas saw timber Is going
the way of the bison that once swarmed the
great plains and is now found only IN the ZOO,
and if so, What is being done about it?" The
farmer may have been given to hyperbole but
he certainly gave a dramatic twist to an old
national trouble about which, though it becomes
steadily more serious much more is being said
than done.
Whether in another so years pulpwood trees
will be so scarce that paper will be too expensive
for common use recently was said by one inves-
tigator, outside professional conservationist cir
cles, to be "a very real question today" United
States Forest Service findings that we are cut
ting our saw timber so per cent faster than 1t
is growing, and that the Nations forests, esti
mated in 1909 to hold 900 100000 board
feet of standing commercial timber, have now
been reduced to some ,6OO 900 900 900 are reit-
Grated in the newspapers like the fugue in an
opera.
Complacency About Trees Deplored
Yet the full effect of these alarms appears to
be lost upon most persons, chiefly, it appears.
because of curious minor chorus of compla-
cency that doggedly goes hand in hand with
these warnings
Typical of this anomalous optimism in the
face of an increasingly disturbing forest decline
is the following which appeared a short time
ago on Western editorial page: Despite losses
from fire. disease, insects and enormous logging
operations which annually transform hundreds
of thousands of acres of forest into billions of
board feet of lumber the national drain is being
replaced by scientific reforestation. AS we i'm
prove fire prevention operations and the seeding
and care of cut-over areas, we shall steadily
add to reserves and maintain for future genera
tions all the timber needed by growing pop
| ulation"
The unlovely truth however, IS the fact that
only meager fraction of the national drain is
being replaced" by reforestation, and that, ac-
cording to he best available information, if the
present decline in saw timber reserves Is not
checked soon, future generations will have In
evitably and progressively less and less building
lumber, newsprint, rail-tie wood and other
seemingly indispensable forest products.
Realities of Dilemma Set Forth.
What is the actual situation in the forests?
Does it justify honest optimism? Or does It, for
the good OF the country, demand patriotic, Ma
tion-wide public action?
Late last year the American Forestry Asso-
ciaton, a private conservation organization
financed by popular subscription and contribu-
tions, finished an, independent survey of the
countrys forests, while the United States Forest
Service completed field work on reappraisal OF
the forestry situation and has since issued six OF
series Of reports on it. The two surveys agree
on basic facts and figures, that we now have A
per cent less standing saw timber than SO years
ago, and that each year so per cent more is being
cut by loggers and destroyed by fire, bugs, dis
ease, woods and mill waste and storms than is
being grown. They are in harmony on the
extent of forest management, reforestation and
forest fire prevention, the statistics Of which
show how little actually, is being done.
Interest in forest planting, perhaps the most
widely appealing of these activities, is on the
rebound after wartime letdoWn, but what we
are doing by way of reforestation toward put
ting all suitable forest land into reasonable
productivity is like a mole hill on mountain.
Forest Service statistics show that there are
now 81, 900 900 acres of forest land so heavily
cut and burned over, SO denuded by misuse
and neglect, that they are practically un-
productive and should be planted There are
another 100000 virtually treeless openings
in sparse forest stands that could be put
into production by planting. That's 90,0000 900
acres-almost one-fourth of all the basically
commercial forest land in the United States
Against that, the record shows that up to
now all agencies, public and private, have
planted 6.483, ,632 acres and that last year the
total acreage planted with trees was 1894,
ybof firoiSY ipk ffn
facts, be here? Whether we believe all this
land should be planted, or that it all might
just as we'll be left idle and unproductive an
invitation and prey to destructive erosion, the
fact remains that at the rate we are going it
would take 800 years to do the planting job
bequeathed us by our prof1igate forestry past.
Forest Damage Uncorrected.
Even so, great fires like those recently in
New England and the South and continued
needless logging by preponderant percentage
of our timber owners and operators still are
making new, unproductive cutovers in our re-
naming forest reserves The forest manage
ment and cutting practices by means Of which
forests, instead of being reduced to cut-over
or unproductive conditions can be kept grow
! ing on the land and at the same time be made
to yield regular, paying tree crops cannot be
detailed here. State and Federal foresters,
soil conservation service, extension service.
county agents, farm and private foresters stand
ready to dc that by letters, booklets. and, where
possible, in person. In most parts OF the coun-
| try well-managed woods that prove this man
| apement idea to be practicable and profitable
| are to be found on the holdings OF informed
and progressive private owners or on national
| and State forests.
But three-fourthS OF the commercial forest
! land on which we depend for 80 per cent of
the timber cut is privately owned According to
| the surveys cited above, management OF this
| land is, on the whole much below what might
| be expected or what should be- Sixty-four per
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