Show CENSUS OF STANDING TIMBERS gret work taken up by the na lional conservation Commis commission alon lV Washl ashington tho national conservation commission has caused tho the first atter attempt at a census of tho the st standing widing timber in tho the united states ever undertaken tho the forest loleat service has for several years been eager to take such bitch a cen census stis and tho the bureau of tho the census lias expressed its willingness to operate cooperate co but funds havo have never been available tho the conservation commission however needs tho the information to help complete its inventory of 0 tho the count rys natural resources which it will include in its report to tho the president and since that report Is to be submitted on the first of next year it needs the information at once in conse quence tho the work on tho the census has been started a rush and Is now under full headway it may bo be a slight exaggeration t to 0 speak of a census of timber for ot of course it Is impossible to count tho individual trees in the for tests exen even tho the most ambitious plans of the forest service agatho and the bureau of bf tire the census did not cun contemplate template that but a trained man can with great accuracy cruise cr ulso a tract of forest and estimate the number of board feet it contains large portions of the forests of the country including all the national forests have been ee mated at various times but these figures have never been brought together and no organized effort has over ever been made to gat gather her them into cne total por cor to supply the dencler des whore h hitherto no estimate havo been made As ii a result the guesses as to the amount of standing timber in the united states range all the way from million to 2000 billion board feet a difference of more than a trillion feet in the estimates of the best qualified authorities in the cou country in the opinion of the forest service the most carefully prepared estimates yet made are those by henry cannett published by the twelfth census in 1900 these placed the total stumpage at 1390 billion board feet sir gannett it so happens has been chosen by the president to compile rill fill the information gathered for the commission and with his previous acquaintance tance with the subject of forestry ho he la Is at work now enlarging tho the knowledge of forest areas at present available tho the importance of this census lies largely in the fact that it will give nn an accurate basis for computing how long our timber supplies will I 1 last as t through the operation cooperation co of the forest service and the census bureau the co count rys annual consumption ot of wood iod Is known with tolerable accuracy although alth bukh even here there are some discrepancies because a large amount of wood Is used for posts fuel and domestic purposes tor for which no satisfactory data have yet been collected but the con consensus census of opinion among those equipped to judge Is that the present annual consumption is about billion board feet or 01 something more than that one leading authority has placed it as high as billion board feet assuming a stumpage pae of 1400 billion bilon on feet an annual use of billion feet land and neglecting growth in the calculation tho the exhausting of our timber supply Is indicated in 14 years assuming the same use and stand stana niall an annual att arn th of 40 billion leet we have a s ply for 23 years assuming an annual use of billion feet tho the first supposition becomes 9 sears and the second 13 years assuming a stand of 2000 billion feet a use of billion feet and neglecting growth wo we have 20 years supply assuming the same conditions with an annual growth of 40 billion billio n feet ive we have 33 years earsl supply witt with an annual use of billion feet these estimates become respectively 1 13 1 and 18 years it Is apparent from these computations why the national conservation commission considers tho the census of I 1 timber so essential to the preparation of it its s inventory |