920 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



stand of merchantable timber is but 2,500 billion feet, which, more- 

 over, includes a disproportionately large amount of over-mature tim- 

 ber not growing at all. It is evident that, instead of a surplus, good 

 for 50 years, we have today a tremendous deficit in growing timber, 

 and that this deficit amounts to more than half the forest necessary to 

 grow what -we are using now, to say nothing of the larger needs of 

 the future. 



THE PRESENT NATIONAL AND STATE FORESTS CANNOT MAKE GOOD THE DEFICIT 



The present timber situation has long been foreseen, and the National 

 Forests were created in part to meet it. They are indispensable, and 

 they will be kept continuously productive. Their value, not only for 

 lumber, but also for protecting the water supply of irrigation farmers, 

 for public recreation grounds, and for numerous other uses, is already 

 so extensive as to make them one of the great assets of the Nation. 

 But most of these forests are located in the roughest and most inacces- 

 sible parts of the western mountains, the average quality of their timber 

 is below that of much of the timber we are cutting now, and 

 the cost of logging is so great that only a small part of the National 

 Forest timber is as yet available. 



The National Forests are enormously valuable, and will furnish a 

 rapidly increasing part of our timber supply. But it was known from 

 the first that they can never yield more than a part of what we require. 

 Ultimately they should be able to grow four times as much new timber 

 each year as they are now growing, but even that will represent but 

 one-fourth of the timber we are consuming already. 



A few State Forests have been created, but they include less than one 

 per cent of our forest lands. Most of them were assembled out of lands 

 v/hich had been logged and burned repeatedly. Their present stand of 

 timber is practically unimportant and for many years their yield of 

 merchantable timber will at best be numinal. Many of the forest 

 States have no State Forests whatever. 



State Forests may eventually become important in the national timber 

 situation, but not for many years. The present State Forests can play 

 but little part in meeting the timber shortage which confronts us. 



Occasional privately owned forest estates have been handled with a 

 view to permanent production, but such lands form only a negligible 

 fraction of one per cent in the total of our forests. 



Farm woodlots carry a very large part of all our hardwood timber. 

 With rare exceptions, the woodlots are growing but a tithe of the 



