Canadian Forestry Journal, May, 1919 



219 



TRADING TIMBER FOR LOGGED-OFF LAND 



Exchange of merchantable stumpage in 

 United States National Forests for adjacent 

 logged-off lands is a new policy which is being 

 pursued by the Forest Service. A dozen such 

 exchanges have been made in the United 

 States, of which four have been in Oregon. 



The policy, which is still in process of formu- 

 lation, adds to National Forest area land which 

 has been logged and which has little or no 

 agricultural value, but which, if given proper 

 conditions, will produce a new crop of trees. 

 The benefit of bringing the area under govern- 

 ment reservation and care, while the private 

 owner is compensated by new stumpage for his 

 mill, is largely in affording the logged-off area 

 better protection from fire. 



No general congressional action has sanc- 

 tioned the policy. For each transaction or 

 group of transactions the Forest Service has 

 been compelled to get a special bill through 

 Congress. Passage of these bills has been ob- 

 tained with little difficulty, but the memory of 

 the old "lieu land" situation will make difficult 

 any general authorization for exchanges of tim- 



ber and land, on any basis. Forest Service 

 men, nevertheless, hope that such congressional 

 action may be procured within a few years. 



The exchanges are made on a basis of market 

 value for the stumpage and appraised market 

 value for the logged-off lands. The appraisal 

 is ma;'e by Forest Service engineers. 



Communications received by the Swayne 

 Lumber Co., Oroville, Calif., and other timber 

 concerns in the Feather River district of Cali- 

 fornia, indicate that the Forest Service is anxious 

 to apply the new policy there. 



Although some sugar pine trees now being 

 milled show they are 300 years old, timbermen 

 state that approximately only a century is neces- 

 sary to bring newly forested areas to market- 

 able bearing again. 



The Government has a huge timber acreage in 

 the Pacific Coast states which is mature and 

 ready for market. The new policy of exchange 

 will mean that this will be milled and that ad- 

 ditional areas, suitable only for reforestation 

 and not for agriculture, will be added to the 

 acreage of timber growing for the benefit of the 

 future citizens of the United States. 



INSECTS AND FUNGI DAMAGE MORE THAN 



FIRES 



/. M. Sn'aine, Eniomologisl, Otlan^a. 



We are beginning to realize at last that our 

 Canadian forests are disappearing very rapidly, 

 but very few, even among those of us familiar 

 with our woods appreciate how fast this process 

 has actually become. Fires, insects and fungi 

 are the greates enemies we have to deal with. 

 The fire problem is rapidly being solved. The 

 Forest Protection Associations of the provinces 

 are demonstrating how successfully co-operative 

 measures can deal with such problems. The 

 injuries by insects and fungi, on the other hand, 

 have, until, recently, been practically unrecog- 

 nized. The actual conditions, however, indicate 

 that these injuries are annually much greater 

 in our forests than that caused by fires. We 

 have a most disheartening example of combined 



insect and fungous destruction sweeping through 

 the balsam forests of Eastern Canada at the 

 present time. Upon hundreds of square miles 

 of forest the balsam has been very seriously in- 

 jured or killed within the last eight years, and 

 on large areas of this practically all the balsam 

 is already dead. The injury appears to be 

 spreading rapidly in the balsam and a similar 

 trouble is aifectmg the spruce in a much smaller 

 degree. How far this is to spread we do not 

 know, but certainly all balsam in infested forests 

 IS threatened with destruction. This subject is 

 of the utmost importance to the lumbermen and 

 provincial authorities of Eastern Canada and 

 should receive immediate and very serious con- 

 sideration. 



