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Show Growth of Timber Nears Balance With Consumption in U. S. Danger of Exhaustion No Longer a Specter FIGURES often quoted, to show that America is using up its timber resources several times as fast as they are being re-grown, were called in question ques-tion by John B. Woods of the Society of American Foresters, in an address before his colleagues col-leagues in Washington, D. C. Changes during very recent years, he declared, have gone far toward bringing timber production into balance bal-ance with timber consumption. The changes involve both an in- crease in tree growth and a sharp decline in timber use, he said. The new approach to a balanced state is of post-depression date. Consumption Declines. "To compare growth and drain on the basis of 1929 and prior years is to cling to the bad old days," Mr. Woods contended. Consumption Consump-tion declined abruptly from a five-year five-year average of 36 billion feet of lumber to 16.4 billion for the next five-year period. "Total forest drain for the period 1929-1934 is estimated by Smith in the N. R. A. report as 9,500,000 cubic feet per year. The same report re-port carries an estimate of growth for the same period of 8,900,000 cubic cu-bic feet. "We recognize that production and loss at the old rate put too great a burden upon our growing capacity. But reduced consumption and increased effectiveness of protective pro-tective measures have put us practically prac-tically in a state of balance. The job now is to complete the extension of management to all our lands both public and private and build up our productive capacity." Re-Growth ic Rapid. The accelerated re-growth of our timber is a tri-regional affair, Mr. Woods states. In the still -unexhausted Northwest, lumbermen have at last learned the lessons of more conservative cutting, better protection against fire and other natural agencies of destruction, and provision for replacement on cut-over cut-over lands. Instead of becoming a barren waste of treeless flats and hills, the South "in two decades has become a potential yellow pine farm, now growing upon half of its pine lands (according to Inman Eldredge) 18,-000,000 18,-000,000 cords of wood each year. As this great plant swings into production, pro-duction, as the small trees become big ones, the annual yield of saw-timber saw-timber and pulpwood may exceed in volume the yearly output of old-growth old-growth pine in the old days." |