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A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Theoretically there are vast quantities of pulpwood available in 

 this country. Actually drain has proceeded so nearly to the point of 

 exhaustion of the economically accessible and suitable local supplies, 

 when compared with the cost of foreign supplies, that more than half 

 of the pulpwood, wood pulp, and paper supplies of the country are at 

 present obtained from other countries. The pulpwood drain and its 

 relation to the forest supplies of the United States, in short, consti- 

 tutes a highly complicated and important subject, aspects of which 

 are treated elsewhere in this section and in the section on Our National 

 Timber Requirements. 



TIMBER LOSSES 



Forest losses resulting from forest fires, insects, disease, naval- 

 stores operations, drought, and wind amount to about 1,800 million 

 cubic feet per year, or about 4% billion board feet in saw- timber trees 

 and about 11 million cords in cordwood trees. (Table 10.) Much of 

 this loss is caused by fires that might have been prevented or checked, 

 and by epidemics of insects and disease, the ravages of which in many 

 instances could have been greatly modified under a more effective 

 system of forest management. 



FIRE LOSSES 



Timber killed annually by fire and not utilized during the years 

 1925 to 1929, inclusive, is estimated at over 870 million cubic feet, 

 about a third of which is in saw-timber trees. (Table 15.) Fire 

 losses in trees of saw-timber size amount to nearly 1,400 million board 

 feet, and in trees of cordwood size to nearly 7 million cords. 



TABLE 15. Timber killed each year by fire and not utilized (fire loss) in the com- 

 mercial forests of the United States, by character of growth and region 1 



1 Based upon the quantity of timber killed and not utilized, 1925 to 1929, inclusive. 



These losses do not include the damage done to the trees that sur- 

 vive. Nor do they include the destruction of young growing stock 

 below cordwood size, which is a far more formidable loss and one which 

 is largely responsible for the very unsatisfactory regrowth conditions, 

 especially in the poor and nonrestpcking areas. Fire, which accom- 

 panies destructive methods of logging, has, through repeated burning 

 of young trees and complete destruction of saplings and seedlings, been 

 responsible primarily for the deterioration or devastation of immense 



