THE BREAKDOWN OF PRIVATE FOREST LAND OWNERSHIP 1 



By THORNTON T. MUNGER, Director, Pacific Northwest Forest Experiment Station 



CONTENTS 



Page 



The situation 869 



Evidences of the breakdown of private ownership 870 



Extent of tax reversion and delinquency 872 



The causes of forest land abandonment 880 



The reasons why some land is not going delinquent 883 



Factors that deter the conversion from private to public ownership 884 



Present provisions for the disposition of tax-title lands 885 



Possible future trends in tax reversion of forest land 887 



Conclusions 888 



This section shows that private forest land ownership in the 

 United States is very unstable, that in certain parts of the country 

 there is a breaking down of private ownership and the creation of a 

 "new public domain"; it gives the evidences of this situation tax 

 delinquency and reversion, gifts and sales of land to the public at 

 nominal prices; it describes the character of land involved, the causes 

 for land abandonment, the trends and the problems created by this 

 instability of ownership. 



THE SITUATION 



Of the 270 million acres of privately owned forest lands other 

 than farm woodlands in the United States, a majority have no present 

 or prospective commercial value except for timber growing or for the 

 timber upon them. Most of the lands were acquired by their present 

 owners for lumber, pulp, or naval stores operation or for speculation. 

 Only 90 million of these 270 million acres (exclusive of farm wood- 

 lands) carry commercial saw-timber trees. Very little of the re- 

 mainder 180 million acres has been cut with any thought for the 

 continued productivity of the land. On the contrary much of the 

 land has been left without the nucleus either of a second crop or of 

 seed trees, and has been burned and reburned. As a result, its value 

 as a productive property has greatly depreciated and its return to 

 satisfactory productivity is delayed and made more expensive. In 

 some cases, the lumbering process has destroyed its potentialities 

 for profitable timber production. In other cases, where the land 

 might ultimately come into profitable production, the owner is 

 just not interested in the long-time financing for future forest crops, 

 and accordingly such land is considered by the owner as a liability. 



Some cut-over land has been logged selectively, so that it retains 

 its productivity and the prospect of yielding a reasonably early rev- 

 enue; when this is the case there is much more interest on the part 

 of the owner in retaining his title to the land. Some cut-over land 



1 In the compilation of this section an unpublished manuscript by the Forest Taxation Inquiry of the 

 Forest Service, Fred R. Fairchild, Director, has been drawn upon freely and phrases quoted verbatim. 

 Acknowledgment is made to this agency for this valuable material. 



869 



