A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



1499 



cubic foot growth and increasing by five times the board-foot growth 

 if future timber requirements are to be met. In order to do this the 

 entire acreage of commercial timberland will have to be given ade- 

 quate fire protection, losses from insects and diseases will have to be 

 reduced, the acreage under intensive forest management will have to 

 increase more than 1 million acres a 3 7 ear, and about 25 million 

 acres will have to be planted in the next 20 or 30 years. The likeli- 

 hood of meeting all of these objectives in full is remote. Certainly 

 the full effects will not be felt before the end of the century. If by 

 any chance the wood produced under this plan should exceed the 

 national requirements the trends in world wood consumption indicate 

 that such a surplus would be absorbed by the export market. 



The extent to which reforestation is required to meet the most 

 critical erosion and streamflow situations has been discussed in the 

 section of this report entitled " Watershed and Related Forest 

 Influences." The necessity for planting 10 or 11 million acres for 

 this purpose alone has been shown. It should be stated that this 

 includes only the most critical areas and in no sense indicates the 

 area on which such action would be desirable. Fortunately most of 

 the land which may be planted for watershed protection will, under 

 proper management, be fully usable for timber production. 



That idle land is an economic liability has been discussed in detail 

 in the section of this report entitled "Is Forestry Justified" and else- 

 where. Granting that this is true we have the problem of putting 

 to work more than 70 million acres of land which will not in 40 years 

 restock naturally (table 6). 



TABLE 6. Estimate of unsatisfactorily stocked land available for forestry at 



various periods 



' See table 1. 



In considering the extent to which reforestation of submarginal. 

 agricultural land is justified the fact that this land may again be 

 needed by agriculture is too often overlooked. Present trends in the 

 production of agricultural crops and in population indicate a need 

 for maintaining or slightly increasing the present acreage in agricul- 

 ture. The fact that some land now in agricultural use (estimated 

 to be 20 or 25 million acres) will probably become submarginal makes 

 the rehabilitation of this land very desirable. It may again be 

 needed. Its future suitability for such use will depend on the degree 



