SAMUEL T. DANA ON THE FOREST PROBLEM 101 



DANA ON THE FOREST PROBLEM 



The following is an important and significant statement made by 

 Samuel T. Dana, Director of the Northeastern Forest Experiment 

 Station of the United States Forest Service and former Forest Com- 

 missioner of Maine, before the Select Committee on Reforestation 

 of the United States Senate at Boston, Massachusetts, September 22, 

 1923. The statement is reprinted from the records of the Committee, 

 pages 1124 to 1131, and has been checked by Mr. Dana. 



MR. DANA. Mr. Chairman, gentlemen of the committee, you have 

 undoubtedly had pretty thoroughly impressed upon you by this time 

 the fact that we have so far been depending for our wood supply 

 almost wholly upon our original forest capital the slow accumula- 

 tion of centuries. Within another thirty or forty years the forests 

 will be virtually exhausted. We shall then have to grow our wood 

 like any other crop or go without. But growing a crop of timber on 

 anything like the scale required to meet even our present needs is no 

 easy matter, and is possible only by the general application of methods 

 developed by thoroughgoing research. 



I have brought along a few charts that may help to show graphically 

 what we are up against. 



The best available estimates indicate that we are now removing 

 from the forests each year some 25,000,000,000 cubic feet of wood. 

 To produce this amount with our present average annual growth of 

 12.8 cubic feet per acre would require more than the total land area 

 of the United States. The present growth is, however, low in part 

 because of the large area of denuded land and virgin forests, and the 

 inroads of fire, insects and disease. By cutting these latter to a 

 minimum, and by putting into practice simple and inexpensive 

 measures to start regrowth on cut-over lands, it is estimated that by 

 1950 the present annual growth could be increased to 21.6 cubic feet. 

 Even with this growth our present demand for forest products could 

 be met only by utilizing more than the total area suitable for the pro- 

 duction of crops without irrigation, or considerably more than twice 

 the area which the land experts estimate will be available for forests 

 in 1950 after our agricultural needs have been met. More effective 



