Forest Land and Timber Resources 



717 



depression and war, is brought into 

 sharp relief by the demands of the 

 present high level of industrial activ- 

 ity. There is a great need for housing 

 that will not be satisfied for many years. 

 Wholesale prices for lumber in 1948 

 were three times as high as in 1940, 

 and they have risen much faster than 

 those of other building materials. Suit- 

 able locations for large-scale logging 

 operations are increasingly hard to find. 



No longer can timber safely be 

 viewed as a reserve to be drawn upon 

 without regard for replacement. Now 

 we must rely more and more on what 

 is grown each year. 



When timber is grown as a crop, the 

 amount that can be regularly harvested 

 year after year depends upon the vol- 

 ume of growing stock or standing tim- 

 ber. Until the productive capacity of 

 the land is reached, the more growing 

 stock or forest capital there is, the 

 greater the crop available for cutting 

 each year. And to maintain an annual 

 crop of merchantable timber, there 

 must be a succession of age classes 

 from seedlings up to full-grown timber 

 so that as mature trees are cut new 

 ones will take their places. Thus to 

 sustain a high output of timber prod- 

 ucts, we must maintain a substantial 

 volume of standing timber as forest 

 capital. If we liquidate our forest capi- 

 tal, we cut down the size of the crop 

 which accrues as interest on it. This 

 does not apply strictly to virgin forests, 

 because in them death and decay usu- 

 ally offset current growth. They do not 

 fully meet the growing-stock concept 

 until they have been converted to a 

 net growing condition by removal of 

 overmature trees. 



Since the timber crop must be har- 

 vested in trees of a size and quality 

 suitable for commercial use, and since 

 about 80 percent of all timber products 

 are cut from trees of saw-timber size, 

 it is important to think of the timber 

 crop primarily in terms of saw timber. 



As of 1945, the stand of saw timber 

 in the United States was estimated at 

 1,601 billion board feet, about half of 

 which is in virgin stands. The volume 



of all timber 5 inches or more in diame- 

 ter breast high was 470 billion cubic 

 feet. Those are large figures. But criti- 

 cal examination shows that the forest 

 capital is by no means satisfactory. 



For one thing, growing stock east of 

 the Great Plains is badly depleted. 

 The land is generally understocked and 

 much of the timber is of small size and 

 inferior quality. Although fully three- 

 fourths of the commercial forest land is 

 in the East, the timber there, 558 bil- 

 lion board feet, is little more than one- 

 third of the national total. 



On the other hand, Washington, 

 Oregon, and California have less than 

 one-seventh of the commercial forest 

 land, but they have more than half the 

 saw timber in the United States. 

 About 80 percent of the 1,043 billion 

 board feet of saw timber in the entire 

 West is in virgin stands. Although the 

 average volume needed as growing 

 stock for future crops will generally be 

 less than in the virgin stands, the back- 

 log of forest capital in those stands is an 

 extremely important part of our timber 

 supply and should be husbanded. 



The occurrence of different species 

 and the replacement of the valuable 

 species by inferior species is another 

 factor. Timber in the West is almost 

 all softwood, the kind that is in great- 

 est demand for the major industrial 

 uses, but in the North just about three- 

 fourths is hardwood. There is now only 

 15 billion board feet of white and red 

 pines, species that once were foremost 

 in our lumber markets. Maine is the 

 only Northern State with more soft- 

 wood than hardwood. Even in the 

 South, noted for its vast pine forests 

 and prolific second growth, 43 percent 

 of the saw timber today is hardwood. 



Despite some significant progress in 

 forestry, the timber situation is, gen- 

 erally speaking, on the down grade. In 

 the 15 States comprising the Pacific 

 Northwest and Lake States regions 

 and most of the South, for which com- 

 parable forest survey data are avail- 

 able, saw-timber volume declined 14 

 percent in a period between surveys 

 averaging 11 years. 



