Canadian Forestry Journal, June, 1919 



261 



TWO SIDES OF BOUNDARY: IS THERE A PARALLEL? 



Is there danger of timber exhaustion in 

 America ? 



Ten years ago, it was the forester who raised 

 the alarm. He was rated a visionary and a 

 guesser. 



To-day the forester is noticeably conservative 

 in his point of view of timber exhaustion. 



It is the commercial operator, official heads of 

 f^reat lumber associations, oarticularly in the 

 United States, who seem to have taken the ros- 

 trum to rouse the people to a knowledge of 

 dangers ahead. 



Leadmg officials of the southern nine manu- 

 facturers state that the bulk of the original 

 supplies of yellow pine in the South will be ex- 

 hausted in ten years and that within the next 

 five or seven years more than 3,000 manufac- 

 turing plants will go out of existence. 



President Dodge of the International Paper 

 Company, states that east of the Rockies, south 

 of the Canadian border, there are only two 

 stands of spruce that would justify the erection 

 of two fifty-ton pulp mills. 



Now comes further interesting evidence, this 

 time from John H. Kirby, president of the 

 National Lumber Manufacturers' Association of 

 the United States, who makes the remarkable 

 admission that of 202 sawmills in Texas, report- 

 ing to him as lumber administrator for the 

 Shipping Board at New Orleans, ninety per cent 

 had a shorter life than five years. 



Since Mr. Kirby's address was delivered the 

 United States Government has compiled, from 

 the returns of the questionnaires which were 

 sent out to the southern mills, supplemented 

 by information furnished by the Southern Pine 

 Association, data which shows that of the 2,043 

 mills reporting: 538 will cut out in 1 year; 

 539 will cut out in 2 years; 221 will cut out in 

 3 years; 120 will cut out in 4 years; 249 will 

 cut out in 5 years — a total of 1 ,667 mills whose 

 timber holdings will be exhausted within five 

 years, representing eighty-one and six-tenths 

 per cent of the mills reporting and twenty-one 

 and nine-tenth per cent of their timber holdings. 



Of the remaining mills covered by this cen- 

 sus, 280 will have exhausted their timber hold- 

 ings within the next five-year period; of which 

 — 47 will cut out in 6 years; 35 will cut out in 

 7 years; 48 will cut out in 8 years; 17 will cut 

 out in 8 years; 133 will cut out in 10 years — 

 leaving but 96 mills of the 2,043, or four and 



six-tenth per cent of the mills reporting, that 

 have a life of more than ten years, and of 

 these all but four will have exhausted their tim- 

 ber holdings within the next twenty years. 



Canadians Should Heed. 



What meaning has all this for Canadians? 



Exhaustion of southern pine timbers which 

 does not mean the clearance of the last tree, 

 but the reduction of dense stands below the 

 point of profitable operation, will automatically 

 transfer the pressure of public demand to the 

 white and red pine forests of Canada. The 

 latter are supposed, on evidence none too secure, 

 to contain sixty billion feet, board measure, 

 most of which is confined to Quebec and 

 Ontario. 



Some large mills in Ontario, specializing in 

 pine, are already feeling very sharply the cut- 

 ting out of white pine areas and the increasing 

 inaccessibility of fresh supplies of logs. If such 

 is the case to-day, when southern pine mills 

 are yet able to operate and produce cheaply on 

 the last of their forest capital, what will happen 

 to Canada's pine when United States demand 

 begins to bear heavily upon it? Are Canadians 

 free to assume that a candid investigation of 

 their own situation in respect to timber supplies 

 east of the Rockies, would develop a showing 

 much more comforting than what is now repre- 

 sented by American lumbermen? Or is it not 

 nearer the truth to say that we have only the 

 haziest idea of what pine exists in Eastern 

 Canada, and have not taken the trouble to 

 commence a survey or to ask the lumbermen 

 for a frank opinion of the future outlook, and 

 then, on the plain evidence, work out a plan of 

 state investigation and co-operation in order 

 to safeguard the future from calamity? 



U. S. STARTS AIR PATROL 



The air service of the United States army, in 

 co-operation with the Forest Service, is now 

 actively patrolling national forests in California 

 for fires, and plans are in the making for the 

 wide e.xtension of this work as the fire season 

 approaches in other sections of the country. On 

 one patrol no difficulty was experienced in de- 

 tecting fires, both large and small, in the limber 

 at elevations ranging from 6,000 lo 10,000 

 feet. 



