A FOREST POLICY FOR CALIFORNIA^ 



By D. T. Mason 

 Professor of Forestry, University of California 



I want to talk about, first, the ideal condition of which forestry 

 may be brought in California during the next hundred years ; second, 

 the present condition in California; and finally, the action needed to 

 change the present condition into that ideal future condition. 



In the year 2016 our ideal California is to have a population of 

 25,000,000 people. The State has. the natural resources which will 

 support that number. But to domicile comfortably so large a number 

 there must have been brought about an ideal coordination in useful- 

 ness between the valley lands and the hill lands. The valley lands 

 will be producing their utmost and the hill lands will be doing what- 

 ever it is in their power to do to help the valley lands produce that 

 utmost. There is said to be in California somewhere between 25 and 

 30 million acres which grow, or can grow, forests. A hundred years 

 from now the men in this room will have produced through their 

 personal efforts and enthusiasm, applied directly or transmitted 

 through others, the situation in which all of these forest lands will 

 be in their highest use. Much of the Coast Range country, which is 

 now producing oak and other scrubby trees, will then be producing 

 real forest trees. Much land that is now producing nothing at all, or 

 at most brush, will be green and pleasant to look upon, even if it is 

 not producing very valuable timber. 



Those 25 or 30 million acres will be managed with three great 

 main purposes in view : To produce timber, to regulate streamflow, 

 and to provide recreation. It is hard to tell which of these three 

 purposes will be the most important, but, if forests are as potent in 

 regulating streamflow as we believe they are, that purpose will be the 

 most important. Second in importance I am going to place recrea- 

 tion, although realizing clearly that the commercial value of the forest 

 in producing timber will also be very great. 



It is roughly estimated that these forest lands have an average 

 productive capacity of 150 board feet per acre yearly, which would 

 give an annual product of 3^ billion feet, or over three times the 



' Read before the California Section of the Society of American Foresters. 

 424 



