FOREST DEVASTATION 921 



timber they might be made to produce. The quantity and quaUty of 

 woodlot -timber is constantly deteriorating. 



The national timber supply cannot be made secure through the exist- 

 ing National Forests, State Forests, farm woodlots, or private forest 

 estates. All these taken together at best can furnish no more than a 

 small part of the timber required. Nothing but the wise handling of 

 our commercial timberlands, by saving or restoring their productive 

 power, will maintain our timber supply at a safe level. 



THE TIMBER SITUATION IS DUE TO FOREST DEVASTATION, NOT TO LUMBERING 



The early settlement of the United States took place mostly in the 

 eastern valleys, where heavy hardwood forests were almost unbroken 

 and where the land could not be farmed till the forests had been re- 

 moved. Since, therefore, the land could be cleared only by destroying 

 the forest, deliberate forest destruction by axe and fire became accepted 

 as normal and necessary. 



As the demand for lumber grew and lumbering became an industry, 

 the enormous extent of our forests easily led to the belief that our 

 forest resources were inexhaustible. The fact that clearing was so 

 widely necessary, and the notion that there was "timber enough to last 

 the world forever" led to a general disregard for the perpetuation of 

 our forests. 



The lumbering practices thus begun still prevail. Forests are bought 

 and sold for the merchantable timber they contain, with little or no 

 regard for the value of the land which produced them. The lumber- 

 man charges his original investment, in both land and timber, against 

 the timber he removes in logging. What may become of the land after 

 logging is of little or no interest, save as the cut-over lands may offer 

 chances for profitable speculation. As it exists in the United States, 

 lumbering is timber mining. 



With rare exceptions, American lumbermen leave the brush and 

 slashings caused by logging in whatever condition best suits their con- 

 venience. Shortly the slashings become dry and inflammable, and fire 

 regularly follows. Season after season fire succeeds fire across the old 

 cuttings. Within a few years, lands once covered with valuable forests, 

 which maintained and renewed themselves for century after century, 

 are changed into stretches of ragged scrub, blackened stumps, and 

 bleaching snags, with here and there unsound or undesirable green 

 trees, or a group of saplings which happened to have escaped both axe 

 and fire. This is the normal course of fore-" "1'^va'^tation. 



