1908 



FOREST SERVICE 



53 



Forest Service, will be the supervisor 

 in charge of the new forest; he has 

 left Washington for Fort Smith, 

 where he will establish headquarters. 

 Mr. Record is a trained forester, and 

 has practical knowledge of the forest 

 conditions in the West by reason of 

 four years' field work in the Ozark 

 region of Missouri, in Montana, 

 Michigan, several States of the mid- 

 dle West, and finally in Arkansas, 

 where he made a working plan in 

 1906, for 70,000 acres of pine forest, 

 and later made examination of the 

 land and recommendation for the 

 withdrawal of the area now included 

 in the new Arkansas forest. 



Arkansas Arkansas has always 



Forest i^ggj^ j-j^.^^ j^^ forest re- 



Resources r\ • • 11 i-u 



sources. Ongmally the 



€ntire State was clothed with forests 

 with the exception of about 900 square 

 miles. The entire area of the State is 

 53,850 square miles. Fully 80 per cent 

 of its area remains in woodland, of 

 which two-thirds are commercial for- 

 est. This places Arkansas among the 

 most heavily timbered vStates, and 

 makes it the center of unusual activ- 

 ity in the lumber business. 



The total amount of standing tim- 

 ber in the State is approximately 100 

 billion feet, of which pine comprises 

 20 billion. The total cut for the year 

 1906 was nearly 2 billion feet, the 

 largest in the history of the State. At 

 this rate fifty years will be required to 

 cut off all the timber, assuming that 

 the factor of growth will be offset by 

 deterioration and waste. In all proba- 

 bility the rate of cutting will increase 

 so materially that the available supply 

 will be largely exhausted in less than 

 twenty years. If present methods are 

 continued, most of this forest land will 

 become barren and unproductive ; if 

 properly managed, it will play an im- 

 portant part in the future prosperity 

 of the State. 



A particularly favorable fact in con- 



nection with the Arkansas National 

 Forest is found in the hearty spirit of 

 co-operation manifested by the Arkan- 

 sas people, who apparently recogniz- 

 ing the immense benefits which are to 

 be conferred in the conservation of the 

 timber supplies there, have accepted 

 the incoming of the Forest Service as 

 a salutary event and assisted the Gov- 

 ernment officials with helpful sugges- 

 tions. 



Mississippi Fires are very common 



y^^^'f.y. throughout the region in 



Conditions i. , , 1. a 1 -r* 



which the Arkansas For- 

 est is located. The forest will be put 

 under administration at once, and with 

 a competent ranger force and proper 

 co-operation on the part of the settlers 

 living within the boundaries of the 

 forest, the fires can be soon be brought 

 under control. In the West, where 

 practically all of the National Forests 

 are located, it has been shown that fire 

 can be reduced to a point where the 

 loss is utterly insignificant, through 

 the system of patrol which is an im- 

 portant part of the forest administra- 

 tion. 



The creation of the Arkansas Na- 

 tional Forest has brought a relatively 

 small area of the immense forest area 

 of the Mississippi Valley under practi- 

 cal forest administration. As an ob- 

 ject-lesson as to what can be done in 

 the way of conservative lumbering, the 

 forest will be of great interest to lum- 

 bermen in the Mississippi Valley, and 

 it is hoped that the large areas in pri- 

 vate hands will be managed on strict 

 forestry principles when the practical 

 results of government administration 

 of this forest are seen. 



The recent additions in California, 

 Arizona, Nevada, and Arkansas bring 

 the total area of the National Forests 

 of the country, including Alaska and 

 Porto Rico, up to about 161,000.000 

 acres. The Alaska forests are over 

 12,000,000, and the one in Porto Rico 

 about 66,000. 





