914 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



now. State Forests are insignificant in area, and their yield of timber 

 is practically nothing. 



We cannot keep on forever cutting timber faster than we grow it. 

 We know already our present cut, our present stand of timber, and how 

 fast timber may be made to grow. How much growing forest is 

 necessary to produce, year after year, any required amount of timber 

 can readily be found. We find, in fact, that twice as much standing 

 timber as we now have is necessary to maintain our present yearly rate 

 of consumption. 



Nothing yet done or heretofore proposed will keep our timber supply 

 at a safe level. And whatever is done needs to be begun at once. 



A shortage in most staple crops can be made good in one year, but 

 timber is a long-time crop. To mature a timber crop requires from 50 

 to 100 years, or more, and no urgency of need nor amount of money 

 and efifort can shorten the period. Within less than fifty years, our 

 present timber shortage will have become a blighting timber famine. 



The present situation has developed out of the existing practice of 

 lumbering, which is based on the careless assumption that "we have 

 timber enough to last us." Under past and present lumbering practice, 

 mature crops of native timber have been harvested wholly without 

 regard to succeeding crops. No provision has been made for the 

 starting of new forest growth, for protecting it from the fires which 

 follow lumbering, or for the care of young timber. No effort has been 

 made to keep forest lands growing timber. As a result, lands which 

 have been at work, century after century, producing forests which 

 have maintained and renewed themselves without care or cost, are 

 transformed by the lumbering into non-productive wastes of blackened 

 stumps and bleaching snags. This is forest devastation. 



Within the United States, forests having more than three times the 

 area of Pennsylvania, or five times that of Iowa, have already been 

 devastated ; and the total thus made waste is fast increasing. 



The utilization of ripe timber is proper and necessary ; forest devas- 

 tation is an unmitigated evil which threatens the safety and prosperity 

 of the Nation. Forest devastation is wholly unnecessary, for it is 

 entirely practicable to harvest the mature timber of a forest without 

 forcing the land into indefinite years of utter idleness. Lumbering 

 must continue ; forest devastation must stop. 



Privately owned forests contain four-fifths of the timber now 

 standing in the United States. They yield 97 per cent of our annual 

 timber cut. By reason of their size, quality, and location, they must 



