ROTATION OF CUTTING TO SECURE A SUSTAINED 

 YIELD FROM THE CROWN TIMBER LANDS 

 OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. 



By Leonard S. Higgs. 



British Columbia is to be congratulated upon the fact that un- 

 like many countries in a like stage of civilization it has not as yet 

 mortgaged the future of its forests : and there is little room for 

 doubt, if the Government acts vigorously and at once, that a way 

 of escape may be found from the menace of the permanent timber 

 scarcity that is already felt in so many portions of the earth. The 

 eventual fate of our fifteen or twenty million acres of forest 

 will be of little import to the markets of the world, but to us and 

 our descendants it will be pregnant with the gravest issues, and 

 the responsibility of initiating a thoroughly conservative policy 

 with regard to it rests with the present generation. 



We are still in the enviable position of having used only a small 

 fraction of our forest heritage, for although till the present time 

 logging operations have been carried on with a reckless disregard 

 for the sound business principles of forestry, the area of forest 

 destroyed, and the total amount of timber cut, are still inconsid- 

 erable when compared with the whole area of merchantable tim- 

 ber, and the available stumpage therein contained. 



This may be plainly seen from the following figures : the total 

 cut from the earliest days of lumbering in the Province until 

 1910 has been roughly 5,745,000,000 board feet, representing 

 at an average of 13,000 b. f. per acre, 430,000 acres. A conserva- 

 tive estimate of the entire stand of the Province made by the 

 Forestry Commission in 1910 gives it as 200 billion feet on about 

 15 million acres, excluding the Dominion timberlands in the rail- 

 way belt, and the holdings of the C. P. R. in the Kootenays. 

 That is, the forest has been only depleted to the extent of about 

 one-thirty-fifth of both area and quantity. 



A constant annual yield of timber making possible a sustained 

 rotation of cutting depends in great measure upon the methods 

 used in logging operations now and in the future, and the institu- 

 tion of stringent regulations governing those operations is of the 

 first importance. In this matter we are lucky enough to be in 

 a position to benefit by the collective experience of other countries. 



