THE APPROXIMATE COST OF PRIVATE FORESTRY 

 MEASURES IN THE ADIRONDACKS ^ 



By Howard L. Churchill 



Forester, Finch, Pruyn & Cotnpany, Inc. 



Accurate cost figures are today essential in any important line of 

 work. I believe the lack of such figures in connection with logging 

 operations in general and forestry measures in particular has been one 

 of the principal reasons for the slow advance in conservative lumber- 

 ing on private lands. Owners are slow, and perhaps justly so, in 

 undertaking work of which they cannot know within reasonable limits 

 both the cost and the returns. 



It is unquestionably the work of the professional forester to deter- 

 mine what measures, silvicultural and others, are necessary to insure 

 productive forests after lumbering, but it is not less his work to deter- 

 mine the cost of such measures and the returns to be expected and 

 relied upon. 



Evidently costs will vary with the size and location of the tract 

 and the character of ground and timber, as well as with the measures 

 employed. 



Perhaps the most economically handled forest in any particular 

 locality would be one just large enough to require the entire time and 

 energy of a technically trained man, with such assistants as he might 

 find necessary during the cutting season and in making surveys and 

 tests in the woods and at the mills. 



To make cost figures of any practical value or application, it be- 

 comes necessary to know just what work is covered by each cost item 

 and how that work has been done. I have taken all costs from work 

 on the property with which I have been connected for the past nine 

 years, and hope the figures may be of interest and of some practical 

 value. This tract covers about 150,000 acres in the east central Adi- 

 rondacks, and is nearly all mountainous or rolling. In 1910 when pre- 

 liminary work began, one-seventh of this area was first-growth spruce, 

 balsam, fir, hemlock, pine, cedar, maple, birch, and beech, with the 

 conifers largely predominating. Six-sevenths was second-growth 



^ Delivered before the New York Section of the Society of American Fores- 

 ters, at Wanakena, N. Y., July 29-31, 1919. 



