410 JOURNAI, OF FORESTRY 



and control 43 per cent of Italy's forests have done little in the way 

 of scientific management with them. The centralization of interest as 

 well as the central control of education are entirely in the hands of the 

 Italian Forest Service at Rome, under the Ministry of Agriculture, 

 which controls both the Royal Forestry College and the two Ranger 

 Schools. Great reforms were initiated in the forest laws of 1910, 

 1912, and 1913. when the appropriations were raised from $300,000 

 annually to about $1,000,000. 



The war has now given Italian forestry a most serious setback, which 

 is appreciated by no one more keenly than the Italian forestry of- 

 ficials themselves. Italy is normally a country of large importation 

 of forest products, amounting in the rough to about 1,000,000 board 

 feet annually before the war. Its forest area of only 17.64 per cent 

 of the entire country has suffered heavily during the war. The situ- 

 ation may be summarized as follows : 



1. The normal importation of forest products has been heavily 

 ■diminished for a period of over four years. 



2. There has been a heavy over-cutting of the forests in an attempt 

 to compensate for the lack of normal imports, and to supply the 

 extraordinary demands of the war program. 



3. The elimination of the normal importation of coal from England 

 and Germany has had the most serious efTect on the cutting of immature 

 and young forests for fuel wood and charcoal. 



4. The destruction of 1.000,000 acres of forests of all kinds along 

 the front. This was done both by destructive shell fire as well as 

 "by cutting by the warring armies for lumber, timber, fuel wood, 

 camouflage work. etc. 



There are no figures available showing the annual production of 

 lumber and forest products during the past three years, but it is 

 estimated that the normal annual cut for fuel wood and charcoal 

 amounting to about 9,500,000 cubic meters has been increased 100 

 per cent, and the cut of lumber and other forest products, aside from 

 fuel wood, has increased from 175 to 200 per cent during the past 

 three years. Italian War Department officials estimated that over 

 20,000,000 barbed-wire entanglement stakes were required for their 

 army of 5,000,000 men in the year 1917 and probably 25,000,000 to 

 30,000,000 for 1918. It is generally estimated that little lumber pro- 

 duction of any consequence will be possible in Italy for the next ten 

 to fifteen years or more. Before the disaster of Caporetto in October, 

 191 7, the Italian line was longer than the entire western front across 

 France and Belgium. This line was largely in the Julian and Carnic 



