REPORT OF THE FORESTER. 



United States Department of Agriculture, 



Forest Service, 

 Washington^ D. C, October ^, 19^:s. 



Sir : I have the honor to transmit herewith a report of the work in 

 the Forest Service for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1923. 

 Respectfully, 



William B. Greeley, 



Forester. 

 Hon. Henry C Wallace, 



Secretary of Agnculture. 



NATIONAL FOREST POLICY. 



Since last year's report the condition of the country in the matter 

 of its forests has become still clearer. A new study of the whole 

 situation made by the Forest Service revealed more definitely how 

 the public policy should be shaped. Two national problems are 

 involved — land use and timber supply. Down to about 1880 land 

 clearing for agriculture more than kept pace with lumbering, but 

 since that time virgin forests have been cut off under the tremendous 

 demand of a vigorous, growing, and increasingly industrialized 

 Nation much faster than the advance of farming could convert the 

 stump lands into cultivated fields. Except in the South and West, 

 in the last census decade the area of improved farm land was either 

 practically stationary or decreasing. Lumbering adds to the cut- 

 over area at the rate of about 10,000,000 acres a year, but what of 

 this goes into farms is almost offset by abandonment of cultivation 

 elsewhere. Eighty million acres of idle land not in demand for agri- 

 culture have become a dead weight on the regions in which they have 

 accumulated. 



On the other hand, the eastern and most populous part of the 

 country has already begun to suffer the pinch of timber scarcity 

 and high lumber prices in consequence of forest depletion. The re- 

 maining virgin timber in the South and far West still enables us 

 to meet our needs for high-grade lumber, but at a steadily rising 

 cost. Second-growth eastern forests eke out the supply; but we are 

 draining our forests. East and West, of a total of 25,000,000,000 

 cubic feet of wood annually, while growth replaces only 6,000,000,000. 

 Our future needs must be met from our own forests, and substitutes 

 and economies in utilization will only partially offset the normal 

 increase in demand as population increases. We should, if possible, 

 produce permanently as much wood as we now require. The present 



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