1284 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



States regions, where growing stocks are most seriously depleted. 

 These regions are counted on to contribute ultimately a great share 

 of our timber requirements. 



But even in the Pacific region, showing an abundant surplus of 

 growing stock, failure to treat forests properly, applying at least exten- 

 sive forestry methods, will bring large parts of this region, as the virgin 

 s-tands are cut, into the same critical forest conditions existing in the 

 older regions of the East. This justifies extension of public forests in 

 the West, particularly to protect the present surplus of growing stock, 

 and secondly, because private enterprise on the whole is largely 

 disinterested in a long-term timber management business. 



Public ownership of watershed and recreational areas is an estab- 

 lished procedure for many States and the Federal Government. 

 Public acquisition of forest lands chiefly for timber production has 

 likewise been established as a Federal venture. Heretofore Federal 

 acquisition has been planned to create relatively small and well- 

 managed units to serve as demonstration areas, rather than to handle 

 large areas of forest land chiefly valuable for timber production. The 

 situation now calls for strong emphasis on large-scale timber produc- 

 tion, particularly as the wastage of forest values has been accelerated 

 during the process of private ownership breakdown. Through public 

 ownership existing values can be safeguarded and built up. The 

 ultimate public cost will in the long run be far less if action for public 

 acquisition is initiated at once and on a large scale commensurate 

 with the task ahead. 



FEDERAL ACQUISITION OF PRIVATE STUMPAGE AS A MEANS OF 

 PROLONGING EXISTING TIMBER SUPPLIES 



A section of this report ("Public Acquisition of Private Lands as an 

 Aid to Private Forestry") shows in detail the justification for Federal 

 acquisition of stumpage as a means of stabilizing the timber industries 

 and local communities. 



In the States of the north Rocky Mountain and Pacific regions it 

 was shown that an excessive volume of merchantable stumpage is in 

 private hands, that the accumulated carrying costs on it have forced 

 many properties to go on an operating basis in order to obtain current 

 income, that the installed mill capacity and the annual output of 

 lumber both exceed normal consumptive demands. The excess pro- 

 duction forces drastic cutthroat competition, both within the two 

 regions and with other lumber-producing regions, and compels high 

 grading of the best species, trees and logs. Thus large quantities 

 of intrinsically useful material are necessarily left unused and the total 

 drain on the timber supplies is chronically far in excess of the material 

 needed and used. 



The statement referred to indicated that there still remain in the 

 northern Rockies and Pacific regions a number of nonoperating tim- 

 ber properties, but that the owners are under very heavy financial 

 pressure to liquidate. Additional operations would obviously make 

 an already critical overproduction situation worse, both in terms of 

 industrial and local economic distress, and in wastage of intrinsically 

 useful timber supplies. 



The analysis of available supplies of stumpage and the rate at which 

 new growth is taking place shows clearly the urgent need to husband 

 the stocks of already grown timber that we now have. About 636 



