PERIODICAL LITERATURE 

 FOREST GEOGRAPHY AND DESCRIPTION 



Of the 186 million acres, which is the ex- 

 Forests tent of Chile, according to the Inspector 



of General of Forests, Hunting and Fisheries, 



Chile Federico Albert, 39 million are woodland, 



but 9 million of this area is only pasture 

 forest, 18.5 million produces only firewood, 6 million furnishes 

 also only poles and stakes, reducing the area of commercial 

 material to only 5 million acres, the remnant of an original forest 

 country of 11.5 million acres. Of the total of woodland 20 mil- 

 lion acres are on agricultural soil, 7.5 million are bearing young 

 growth. Nearly 10 million acres of true forest country are now 

 completely cleared, the greater part eroded and worn into gullies 

 so that it will soon be a desert. Some 150,000 acres of sand 

 dunes have also been created by improper denudation. 



The lack of capital to develop means of transportation has 

 preserved the remaining commercial timber. The present exploi- 

 tation is of the roughest. 



There are only very few softwoods, among them Fitzrohya and 

 Libocedrus, Araucaria and Podocarpus, hence the need of an 

 importation of 1.5 million cubic feet of Douglas fir and pine from 

 the United States ($800,000). There is no substitute for oak, 

 hence $40,000 worth of staves are imported. The export of the 

 hard native woods amounts to only about $120,000. 



Plantations of pine and poplar, sometimes quite extensive, 

 have been made by coal operators and others, and small attempts 

 at recovering sand dunes by the State are recorded with Popidus 

 nigra, Pinus itisignis and Eucalyptus globulus, instead of better 

 ones. 



The woodland is very unevenly distributed, the smallest forest 

 per cent being found in the northern parts, increasing southward. 



The whole country can be divided into six forest regions, rep- 

 resenting as many forest types. The northern region, compris- 

 ing the provinces of Tacna, Tarapaca and Antofagasta, contains 

 only 52,000 acres, composed of Prosopis tainarugo and Cordia 

 decandra (carbon), besides minor species. The second region, 



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