VOLUME 25 



SEPTEMBER, 1919 



NUMBER 309 



For 



ubi TOui^inti/K 



'^'^rrS HE United States must decide upon a national forest policy 

 I in order to perpetuate its timber supply. We have no adequate 

 forest policy now. We are far behind France, Great Britain, 

 Germany, Japan and other nations in this respect." 



HE United States has only about one-fourth of its original 

 forest and this is now disappearing three times faster than 

 it is being reproduced. We must, before it is all gone, provide 

 for a timber supply for our future needs and we can do so if foresters 

 get together with the lumbermen and timberland owners and agreei 

 upon a practical, workable forest policy. The coimtry is grateful to 

 Colonel Henry S. Graves, United States Forester, for demanding a 

 national forest policy at this time, and the foresters are the men 

 whom the country expects to formulate this forest policy. It is 

 their business to do it and to do it well." 



' / HE national and state governments hold only some three 

 per cent of merchantable timber. Therefore, the majority 

 of the owners of the timber must be in accord with any policy 

 dictating the management, the protection, and the reforestation of 

 their land before it can be successful. You cannot compel an owner 

 to develop and perpetuate his timberland at a financial loss; if you' 

 wish him to reforest his land, you must make it pay him, as other 

 countries do." 



<r^y^NE most important feature of a national forest policy on' 

 ■ I which agreement is possible is fire protection. Forest fires 

 ^^ have this year caused millions of dollars of damage in the 

 northwest. The United States Forest Service spent more than a 

 million dollars fighting these fires in July alone. Private agencies' 

 spent lavishly in protecting their lands but the fire protection 

 measures in neither national, state or private forests are sufficient 

 to properly protect them. Get together then on a national, state and 

 private forest fire protection program. It is the need of the hour 

 and when this has been done the first step toward a mutually satis- 

 factory national forest policy will have been made. Other features 

 of this policy are certain to follow in due course." 



CHARLES LATHROP PACK, 

 President, American Forestry Association. 





