A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 1279 



facts that a great deal of our land is suitable for timber production, 

 that large areas in the West still have considerable stands of un- 

 touched virgin stumpage, and that some kind of a forest has often 

 followed even where cutting has been heavy, have masked the critical 

 situation of a continually mounting deficit in our forest growing stock. 

 Thus we have the anomaly of great stretches of potentially highly 

 productive forest lands but a dearth of growing stock both in total 

 amount and in regional distribution. 



In the past few years a further factor has operated to create a false 

 confidence in the inexhaustibility of our timber supply. Large 

 blocks of virgin stumpage in the Pacific Northwest have been liqui- 

 dated under apparently uncontrollable economic pressure, which has, 

 much too rapidly, forced timber into an already glutted market. At 

 the same time, second-growth timber in the South, manufactured 

 into lumber at low costs, entered the same competitive market, 

 further depressed prices, created discouragement in the timber holder 

 and lumber manufacturers on the one hand, and gave the public the 

 false hope of unlimited timber supplies. Only where cutting out of a 

 forest has been followed by the inevitable complete breakdown of the 

 dependent industrial life, has there been a full appreciation that forest 

 wealth can be dissipated. Even where this has taken place over a 

 wide region, the local effects only have been recognized, and the 

 national aspects and interests have been largely ignored. 



World-wide economic changes have directed public attention to the 

 need for national planning. How lands and resources are handled, 

 obviously, must be carefully considered in any major national plan- 

 ning scheme. Present and potential forest lands make up between 

 one fourth and one third of our total land area which is capable of 

 producing abundant timber crops if some rational, Nation-wide plan 

 of management were applied. If we are to enjoy the sustained and 

 cheap abundant supplies of raw materials that forests can produce, 

 we must plan for it in a systematic way. 



PRESENT CONDITION OF GROWING STOCK 



The data now available, at best approximate, indicate that a Na- 

 tion-wide plan is needed to insure a continuous supply of timber of 

 at least 17 to 18 billion cubic feet annually, which is about the amount 

 now used in the United States. Our present growing stock is defi- 

 cient in two respects to accomplish this purpose ; it is below the total 

 needed, and its distribution between important forest regions is badly 

 out of adjustment. 



The regional ratios of present timber stand to actual growing stock 

 required to maintain a growth of 17.7 billion cubic feet annually are 

 as follows : 



Decimal ratio 



New England 0.9 



Middle Atlantic . 6 



Lake . 3 



Central . 4 



South .4 



Pacific 1. 9 



North Rocky Mountain 1. 6 



South Rocky Mountain 2. 7 



All regions (weighted) .8 



