A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 133 



of forest land, are owned by lumber manufacturers. The special 

 problems of the forest property thus become involved with those of 

 the manufacturing plant. This has both its advantages and dis- 

 advantages, but there is reason to think that in many instances 

 forestry would be facilitated by complete separation of the forest- 

 growing enterprise from the problems peculiar to manufacturing and 

 marketing. 



The generally known fact that industrial forest land ownership is 

 the predominating type of ownership in the eastern regions, whereas 

 public ownership predominates in the three western regions, is shown 

 graphically in figure 6. Of the industrial acreage, 86 percent is in 

 the East as against 14 percent in the West. Even so, the industrial 

 ownership in the Pacific Coast region is very important both because 

 it includes land that potentially is highly productive and also because 

 considerable areas bear virgin stands, which are pressing for liquida- 

 tion. The South includes nearly one half of the industrial lands for 

 the entire country. In the Central region industrial ownership about 

 equals that for farm woodlands, but elsewhere it is much in excess. 



Figure 5 visualizes the distribution of age classes for industrial, 

 farm woodland, and public ownerships, respectively, both on an 

 acreage and on a percentage basis. It is apparent that the propor- 

 tion of saw-timber area for industrial, though slightly more than for 

 farm woodland, is much less than for public ownership. The contrast 

 for industrial and public ownership would be greater if limited to old 

 growth. On the other hand, the proportion of restocking and non- 

 restocking areas is notably larger for industrial, and somewhat larger 

 for farm woodland than for public ownership. Such broad general- 

 izations in themselves, however, may be misleading. The situation 

 must be considered in the light of various influencing circumstances. 

 For example, public ownership, including the extensive western 

 national forests, still holds large areas of virgin timber cut over only 

 in small part because of their inaccessibility and because of conserva- 

 tive selling policies. A more detailed view by regions is afforded 

 by figures 7, 8, and 9. 



The situation in New England in respect to age class areas needs 

 some explanation. Over 50 percent of the area is classed as saw 

 timber. This is because of the large areas of mixed spruce and hard- 

 wood forest in northern New England which have been culled for 

 softwoods alone and now remain as an essentially unbroken old- 

 growth hardwood saw- timber forest. Much of the old-growth 

 hardwood thus classed as saw timber is of poor quality and largely 

 inaccessible because of lack of transportation facilities other than the 

 streams. The situation is in reality therefore not as favorable as 

 appears from the figures; aside from this large area of almost inaccessi- 

 ble hardwood of doubtful quality the area of usable saw timber is 

 relatively small. In the Lake region the situation is extremely acute. 

 Less than 10 percent is saw timber, over 50 percent is fair to sa-tis- 

 factory restocking, and 25 percent is poor to nonrestocking. The 

 significance of this is that forest depletion has gone so far in the Lake 

 region that many years will be required to rehabilitate the growing 

 stock to the point that a sustained yield in keeping with the produc- 

 tive capacity of the land can be attained. Other regions are inter- 

 mediate. Industrial ownership in the South, for example, is charac- 

 terized by a relatively large area in the restocking and nonrestocking 

 classes. 



