486 



Canadian Foreslry Journal, December, 1919 



the fact remains that the scarcity of accessible 

 white pine is so marked in Ontario that prices 

 have now risen to $80 to $100 for a thousand 

 feet, board measure, of pine strips, attributable 

 not alone to production cost increases, but lo 

 scarcity of raw materials, not only in Ontario 

 but elsewhere. Many of the large pine manu- 

 facturers in Ontario have placed a limit of three 

 to five years on their pine Ioe; supply. Nearly 

 100 million feet less pine timber was cut from 

 Crown lands in the fiscal year of 1917 than in 

 the year previous. Labor shortage was un- 

 doubtedly a factor in this, but a long series of 

 years presents a sharply decreasing return for 

 the amount of pine timber cut. Ontario Gov- 

 ernment statistics show that the cut of pine 

 irom Crown lands was around 790 million feet 

 in 1907. 630 million in 1908, 383 million in 

 1914, 308 million in 1908, 208 million in 1917, 

 and 223 million in 1918. The year 1916 was 

 the last in which white pine square timber 

 figured in the official returns, when it was but 

 slightly in excess of one million feet, as against 

 over 12'/? niillion feet in 1907. In the early 

 d^ys, square pine timber comprised a high per- 

 centage of the timber cut of the province, and 

 formed the foundation for Ontario's reputation 

 abroad as a great timber-producing region. 

 These figures show a stead ybut rapid dechne m 

 the cut of pine, which can only be accounted for 

 on the whole, by correspondmgly diminishing 

 supplies. This reduction in the cut of pine is, 

 of course, offset by greatly increased cuts of 

 spruce, balsam and jack pine. The change in 

 the character of the operations is significant 

 of the change which is taking place in the 

 character of the forests, the more valuable con- 

 iferous species giving way to the less valuable, 

 and these in turn, in many sections, to the hard- 

 woods. A reduction of nearly two-tnirds in 

 the cut of pine between 1908 and 1918 is so 

 significant of the deterioration in the quality of 

 Ontario's forests that it challenges the most 

 serious consideration. As in New Brunswick, 

 where pine has fallen from absolute monopoly 

 of the annual cut to a poor sixth place in the 

 present-day volume, so in Ontario the elimina- 

 tion of the pine forests and the pine supply that 

 plays a mighty role in provincial commerce may 

 be accomplished within a few years. 



WHERE ONTARIO STANDS. 



As with pine, so with spruce, and other 

 species, the supply can be maintained only by 

 applying the public authority to methods of 

 private exploitation on Crown timber lands. In 

 Ontario at present ,such public authority is 



practically valueless for the reason that the en- 

 tire area of berths, roughly 15 million acres of 

 our finest timber, is subject to only a few 

 regulations which look primarily to the collec- 

 tion of revenue, rather than to the perpetuation 

 of the forest as a source of supply. In only a 

 comparatively limited number of cases is there 

 any restriction as to the size of trees to be cut, 

 and only recently and in a very small number of 

 cases is there any provision for the enforced 

 disposal of logging slash as a fire-preventive 

 measure. Ontario's choicest forest sections are 

 handled by the Department of Lands and For- 

 ests purely as a bit of revenue collecting. (The 

 1917 collections from timber dues and fire tax 

 amounted to over $1,693,000.) In the highly 

 technical department of forest management, On- 

 tario has not yet utilized one technical forest 

 engineer and has attempted no extensive inves- 

 tigations of its forest lands with a view to their 

 productive maintenance and no revision of an- 

 cient regulations along the lines of constructive 

 forestry. The department maintains a forester 

 primarily for fire protection work and tree plant- 

 ing, rigidly excluding specialized forestry know- 

 ledge, or any forest conservation plan from 

 its handling of the timber berths. This plainly 

 ignores the practice of nearly every forest- 

 owning government in the world. It is opposed 

 to the successful examples of New Brunswick, 

 British Columbia and Quebec, where all 

 branches of public management of the forest 

 resources are under the single authority of the 

 Provincial Forester and a staff of technically- 

 trained inspectors. 



The efficient handling of any state-owned 

 property is direct consequence of a well-tested 

 system and a well-skilled staff. The Ontario 

 system of "handling" the fifteen million acres 

 of timber berths under lease at the present time 

 is as follows: 



WHAT A "license" MEANS. 



The berths are under annual lease. The 

 lessee pays direct to the Department of Lands 

 and Forests annual ground rent of $5 per square 

 mile, a fire protection tax of $6.40 a square 

 mile; fixed stumpage dues of so much per thou- 

 sand feet, per cord, or other unit of measure- 

 ment, and a bonus per square mile or per unit 

 of measurement, the amount of which is de- 

 termined by competitive bidding after the limit 

 IS advertised for sale. For example, while the 

 fixed stumpage dues on white pine may be only 

 $2 per thousand feet boadr measure, the bonus 

 offered by the purchaser of the limit has, in 

 some cases, brought the total stumpage pay- 



