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Show DEPLETION OF OUR NAIIONALJORESTS Practice of Forest Devastation Threatens Disaster in the United States. ONLY 40 PER CENT OF CONSUMPTION IS PRODUCED Chairman Pinchot of Society of American Forests Makes Appeal for Conservation of Timber and its Products for the Future. Philadelphia, Pa., Dec. 29, 1919. Mr. Chas. S. Wilkinson, Editor Iron County Record, Cedar City, Utah, My Dear Mr. Wilkinson. When the price of newsprint doubled doub-led it brought forest devastation home to every newspaper office in America. If we had kept the lands that are most useful for growing pulpwood at work producing it, instead in-stead of allowing their productive power to be destroyed, the publishing" publish-ing" industry would have escaped its present burden. More than 100,000,000 acres of forest for-est lands which ought to be growing wood have been devastated, and are nom mere idle wastes. If we had conserved con-served their vast power of produce instead of recklessly destroying it, the price of lumber wiuld have doubled, doub-led, and the consumer would have been spared the corresponding rise in the cost of living. The facts as to forest devastation and the remedy for it are discussed in a report released for January 5 by the Committee for the Application of Forestry For-estry of the Society of American Foresters. For-esters. The report is the most informing inform-ing arid chic I usi live statement yet made about our forests. I take pleasure pleas-ure in enclosing it herewith, and I ask for your co-operation as a matter of public service in bringing this danger dan-ger to the attention of your readers. The report shows that the United States is the greatest timber consumer con-sumer in the world; that we cut two and one half times as much as we grow; that we have less than half as many trees standing as would be required to produce timber at the rate we are using it; that our needs are increasing; that there are no forests in the world from which we can import lumber of suitable kinds at suitable pr'ces to meet our needs; and that on most of our forests we practice not forestry tut forest devastation. de-vastation. Under these conditions a timber shortage was inevitable. As the prices of paper and lumber show, it is already here, and is growing steadily worse. It cut over lands, valuable for forest for-est growth, but now barren and idle, in the East, the lake states, and the south had been wisely handled, they would be growing each year as murh timber as they produced in the year of their greatest yield, and that timber would be available at half the present prices. The difference is what we pay for forest devastation. Most of our timber producing states can no longer supply even their own demands. Lumber must be hauled from constantly increasing distances Within ten years the Pacific Coast will be furnishing the bulk of the nation's lumber. Already our yearly freight bill on lumber amounts to $175,000,000 and even at present rates, will reach $(150,000,000 within twenty years. The consumer pays the freight. Excluding land and timber values three thousand millions of dollars are invested in the forest industries of the United States and those whose raw materials the forest supplies. The annual product of these industries is three and a half billions. Wage earners earn-ers and their families dependent upon them make up one-tenth of our total population. Our forest industries would seem to be worth saving. Destructive lumbering destroys itself it-self and the industries which depend upon it. Forestry is a permanent industry, bringing steady and prolit-kble prolit-kble odd-time ami full work to neigh boring settlements, with secure and reeonable supplies of wood to numberless number-less consumers of forest products. Europe which has one quarter of its (Continued on page three.) DEPLETION OF OUR NATIONAL FORESTS (Continued from ftm page) total area in permanently productive forests, uses but 150 board feet of lumber per capita each year, and yet has to import timber, in considerable part from us. We use more than twice as much wood in proportion to population. pop-ulation. We have less than half as much productive forest in proportion of area. Europe practices forestry. We practice forest devastation. How can we hope to escape the natural result? re-sult? The report shows that out of about 850 billion acres of virgin forests we have not more than 150 million left; that of more than 350 million acres of cut-over land only about 250 million are producing even a little new timber yrowth; that substitutes for wood as a rule means higher prices for less suitable material and give little help toward solving the problem of timber supply; that we are growing but forty billion while cutting cut-ting down a hundred billion feet of timber each year; and that the forest area already devastated and producing produc-ing nothing, if it had been properly handled, would now be yielding wood enough to meet the remaining sixty billion feet of our yearly requirements require-ments nnd cut the price in half. National and state forests can furnish furn-ish at best but a fifth of our supplies Four fifths of our remaining timber is privately owned, and private commercial com-mercial timberlands furnish 97 percent per-cent of our annual timber cut. It is precisely these private forests that are being devastated. The remedy is to keep them at work growing trees. A sawlog takes from sixty to a hundred hun-dred years to grow. Therefore the time to start growing it is not after our forests are gone, but now. There is no reason why we cannot start at once. We have land enough and knowledge know-ledge enough to go ahead. The report suggests a National Commission with authority to make and supply such regulations as may be necessary to prevent forest devastation de-vastation on prifately owned lands. Such regulations would lock up no forest resources, but would Insure that young growth will tage the place of old. Uniform control, National and Nation wide would put the lumbermen of all the states on the same equitable equit-able basis. Protection against fire (except in National Forests) would be left in the hands of the states, with generous financial assistance from the Federal Government. The plan is intended to apply only to commercial forests and not to woodlots on farms. Will it pay the private owner to keep his cut-over lands productive? In general, yes; but that is not the whole issue. It will pay the nation and the States, for forest devastation In the end lends straight to national disaster. Is better protection against fire all that is needed? No, because unless lumbering is so regulated as to leave trees growing on logged -off lands there will be nothing worth while to protect. Should we resort to persuasion rather than compulsion? compul-sion? That has been tried for the past twenty years, and has utterly failed, legislation is the only adequate. Uniform, Nation-wide, compulsory legislation is the only adequate remedy. rem-edy. Sincerely yours, GIFFORD PINCHOT. |