ENGLAND'S NEW FOREST POLICY 



BY ARTHUR NEWTON PACK 



(With photographs by the author.) 



This is the first of a series of articles on forestry conditions in Europe, written by Mr. Pack when, as Commissioner for 

 the American Forestry Association, he spent three months in Europe examining forestry conditions and interviewing forestry 

 experts in Great Britain, France, Germany and Belgium. Editor. 



T? NGLAND has commenced in the last two years what 

 ^ France first undertook two or three centuries ago ; 

 what the German states began at almost the same time, 

 and Denmark a little later; what Sweden and Norway 

 faced twenty-five to fifty years ago, and what Canada and 

 the United States must face today. Although, in the cen- 

 turies succeeding its inception, the forest policy of the 



THE FIRST STEP IN AFFORESTATION 



Many thousand spruce seedlings from seed sown last spring 

 under the direction of the Forestry Commission in southern 

 England, the need for regrowth being fully recognized. 



continental European nations has become such a part of 

 their daily life that they are prone to forget it ever had 

 a beginning, we must not forget that, almost without ex- 

 ception, they took up forestry only when the almost com- 

 plete exhaustion of their forest resources showed that 

 their very existence depended upon them. The United 

 States is in urgent need of a forest policy and there are 

 bills now before Congress providing one. Only if we 

 are progressive enough to profit by the lesson of Europe 

 and adopt a forest policy now, can we avoid a similar 

 calamity. (Thus far Sweden has been the only nation 

 to act before her keenest suffering began.) No plan 



taken bodily from any one nation can apply in toto to 

 another. Even Great Britain found that the same 

 rules could not be applied to every district, but she has 

 formulated, adopted, and put into effect a forest policy, 

 and the results show that the organization and method 

 she has worked out is at least fundamentally sound. 



It seems strange, perhaps, that England could so 

 long have avoided the issue, but the circumstances of 

 British colonization in the New World and the facilities 

 for lumber import engendered by her control of the seas, 

 were undoubtedly responsible. Periodically, to be sure, 

 the government took some interest in growing trees, 

 especially in the days of wooden ships, but when steel 

 tonnage drove the old wooden vessels from the seas that 

 interest again flagged, and England found herself at the 

 beginning of the war an importer of 90 per cent of the 

 timber she consumed. 



No event in history has contributed such emphasis to 

 utilization of natural resources as the war with Germany, 

 and in 1916 and 1917, faced with the necessity of allocat- 



REFORESTING THE WAR CUTTINGS 



This plantation of Scotch pine in the New Forest is typical of the 

 work of the F'orestry Commission in replanting the cut-over 

 areas. Thriving young plantations are seen everywhere. 



