978 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



FURTHER MEASURES NECESSARY TO IMPROVE FORESTRY PRACTICE 



While it is probable that considerable additional forest areas will be 

 taken into public ownership in these regions, all observers agree that 

 great areas of forest land will remain in private ownership. The 

 relation of forest taxation to the problems of private forestry is 

 handled elsewhere in this report. Public fire protection is generally 

 effective and only needs strengthening in certain localities. These 

 foundations for private forestry having been laid, the time has 

 arrived when it is possible to press forward to other necessary mea- 

 sures of improvement. 



Of the remaining measures needed to improve the quality and 

 increase the volume of forest production throughout the two regions, 

 the most important is to revise cutting methods, with greater attention 

 to saving the right kind of growing stock. This would mean as com- 

 plete displacement of defective and inferior growing stock as could 

 gradually be brought about. The demand for fuelwood should be met 

 y this material together with otherwise unmerchantable parts of 

 saw-timber trees. There is also need of the development of manu- 

 facturing practices through which inferior trees that should be thinned 

 from the stands could be utilized for many of the products commonly 

 used locally. It has already been mentioned that the older manu- 

 facturing plants are more or less handicapped owing for one thing to 

 lack of local supplies of raw material of the quality they were designed 

 to use. There is good reason to believe that methods can be 

 developed which will obviate this handicap. 



In order to accomplish this, close cooperation between forest 

 owners, manufacturers, and technicians is needed. Any improvement 

 in manufacturing practice which permits the use of small-sized 

 material will damage rather than improve the forest conditions 

 unless the cuttings are rigidly held to the kind of material that should 

 be removed from the stands. The realization of some returns by 

 labor or even some small return from stumpage in premature cuttings 

 can never take the place of the far greater return to all participants in 

 the industry when a reasonable proportion of the stand is left to reach 

 full development before cutting. Once the growing stock is built 

 up it will be a fairly simple matter to maintain it by silvicultural 

 methods. 



The coordinating influence of public agencies will be needed to 

 bring to bear the vast fund of existing technical information applicable 

 to such projects. 



The first attempts at such improvements in manufacturing prac- 

 tice should be centered in communities where the cooperative spirit 

 exists between forest owners and manufacturers and where the 

 manufacturing enterprises are well adapted or can be adapted to 

 utilization of the forest raw material that is available. Further 

 investigation should be carried on in these places at the same time the 

 existing knowledge is put into use. 



The woodworking plants in the regions are widely diversified as to 

 the products they manufacture; in this aspect the situation is excellent. 

 Since many of these plants are old, it is evident that some new plants 

 will be needed as time goes on. These should be located very care- 

 fully with respect to transportation of raw materials to the plants and 

 finished goods to market. Earnest attention should be given to 



