892 



A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



PRESENT AND POTENTIAL EXTENT 



Probably the most enlightening way to approach the problems of 

 private forest ownership is to consider the actual productive status of 

 privately owned forest land in comparison with its reasonable possi- 

 bilities. As a basis for such consideration the total area of privately 

 owned forest lands of different classes and in different regions is shown 

 in table 1. Privately owned forest lands are shown to have a total 

 extent of 396,239,000 acres, and to be widely distributed, the greater 

 part of the total area occurring in the eastern and southern regions. 

 Table 2, showing the character of the forest growth on these lands 

 discloses a distribution of forest supplies that contrasts with the dis- 

 tribution of the land itself; for example, the Pacific coast region, 

 which as table 1 shows contains only about 8.4 percent of the private 

 forest area, has about 60 percent of the privately owned standing 

 timber. 



TABLE 1. Amount and character of privately owned commercial forest areas of the 



United States ' 



Region 



Aggregate 



Total 



Farm 

 wood- 

 land 



Indus- 

 trial 



Saw-timber areas 



Total 



Farm 

 wood- 

 land 



Indus- 

 trial 



Cordwood areas 



Total 



Farm 

 wood- 

 land 



Indus- 

 trial 



New England 



Middle Atlantic... 



Lake 



Central 



South 



Pacific Coast 



North Rocky Mountain- 

 South Rocky Mountain- 

 Total, __ 



Thou- 

 sand 

 acres 

 25, 978 

 24, 931 

 49, 073 

 63, 477 

 187, 264 

 33, 037 

 7,338 

 5,141 



Thou- 

 sand 

 acres 

 6,402 

 9,461 

 14, 281 

 32, 158 

 57, 866 

 5,099 

 1,413 

 43 



Thou- 

 sand 

 acres 

 19, 576 

 15, 470 

 34, 792 

 31,319 

 129, 398 

 27, 938 

 5,925 

 5,098 



Thou- 

 sand 

 acres 

 13, 261 

 7,200 

 4,424 

 20,921 

 55, 220 

 18, 907 

 3,554 

 2,778 



Thou- 

 sand 

 acres 

 2,427 

 3,468 

 1,793 

 12, 158 

 13, 729 

 1,740 

 364 

 34 



Thou- 

 sand 

 acres 



10, 834 

 3,732 

 2,631 

 8,763 



41,491 



17, 167 

 3,190 

 2,744 



Thou- 

 sand 

 acres 

 4,541 

 9,698 

 7,833 

 25, 368 

 52, 013 

 3,098 

 1,025 

 1,686 



Thou- 

 sand 

 acres 

 1,700 

 3,613 

 4,607 

 12, 432 

 19, 789 

 928 

 309 

 3 



Thou- 

 sand 

 acres 

 2,841 

 6,085 

 3,226 

 12, 936 

 32, 224 

 2,170 

 716 

 1,683 



5,239 



126, 723 



J.516 



126, 265 



35, 713 



90, 552 



105, 262 



43, 381 



61, 881 



Region 



Fair to satisfactory restock- 

 ing areas 



Total 



Farm 

 wood- 

 land 



Indus- 

 trial 



Poor to nonrestocking areas 



Total 



Farm 

 wood- 

 land 



Indus- 

 trial 



New England 



Middle Atlantic. 



Lake 



Central 



South 



Pacific Coast 



North Rocky Mountains- 

 South Rocky Mountains. 



Thousand 

 acres 

 5,851 

 5,072 

 24, 683 

 12, 078 

 36, 802 

 4,324 

 1,540 



Thousand 



acres 



1,572 



1,724 



5,399 



5,193 



12, 084 



1,119 



407 



5 



Thousand 



acres 

 4,279 

 3,348 



19, 284 

 6,885 



24, 718 



3,205 



1,133 



11 



Thousand 



acres 



2,325 



2,961 



12, 133 



5,110 



43, 229 



6,708 



1,219 



661 



Thousand 



acres 



703 



656 



2,482 



2,375 



12, 264 



1,312 



333 



1 



Thousand 



acres 



1,622 



2,305 



9,651 



2,735 



30, 965 



5,396 



886 



660 



Total. 



90, 366 



27, 503 



62, 863 



74, 346 



20, 126 



54, 220 



From table 3 of section of this report entitled " Forest Land the Basic Resource' 



In the section of this report entitled, "The Agricultural Land Avail- 

 able for Forestry," the Bureau of Agricultural Economics reports that 

 in eastern forest regions there are now 50 million acres of nonforested 

 farm land either abandoned or no longer required for agricultural use. 



