PREVENTION OF FOREST DEVASTATION 

 By Theodore S. Woolsey, Jr. 



Col. Henry S. Graves, the retiring Forester, Forest Service, United 

 States Department of Agriculture, made his greatest contribution to 

 forestry v^hen he began a national campaign against forest devastation. 

 And if State or National legislation, or both, can be secured to control 

 the further destruction of forests, it will be unique in forest history, 

 because usually the evils of forest destruction have been maintained for 

 a longer period than they have in the United States thus far in our 

 history before really effective forest laws could be secured. Let us 

 hope, however, that the United States will excel other great nations 

 in combating the economic influences that tend toward forest destruc- 

 tion, notwithstanding the ultimate cost to the nation. 



As yet, there has been no discussion of what the cost will be to the 

 consumer, if our legislation is secured. Practical forestry will, unques- 

 tionably, increase the cost of stumpage — costs that eventually will have 

 to be paid by the purchaser. Will this cost be less (a) if the public 

 owns a far larger proportion of the forests, as has been proposed, or 

 (b) if it subsidizes or forces the private owner to produce timber? Be- 

 fore answering this question I should like to see a clear-cut business 

 statement of what it now costs to manage the National Forests, ex- 

 clusive of investigative work and other expenditures which may not 

 be chargeable directly to national forest administration, and I should 

 like to see the Forest Service take a lead in condemning instead of coun- 

 tenancing forest destruction. The case I have in mind is the purchase 

 of the Vanderbilt Pisgah Forest, near Asheville, where the National 

 Forest Reservation Commission made arrangements to purchase the 

 soil, after the forest had been denuded, instead of before. What a 

 pity that a splendid forest property, conserved for a number of years 

 under a trained forester, should be sacrificed to devastation just before 

 it was to go into the hands of the Federal Government. This has been 

 the prevailing policy, namely, to buy denuded land and not virgin tim- 

 ber. And if hte Government can not afford to buy fully stocked forest 

 and manage it conservatively, is it fair to ask the private owner to do 

 so? 



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