AMERICAN FORESTRY 



VOL. XXV 



MAY, 1919 



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NO. 305 



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WAR'S DESTRUCTION OF BRITISH FORESTS 



BY PERCIVAL SHELDON RIDSDALE 



EDITOR OF AMERICAN FORESTRY MAGAZINE 



This is the third of a series of articles on the effect of the Great War on the forests of Europe, articles based on information 

 secured during a tour of Great Britain, France and Belgium in December, 1918, and January and Febuary, 1919, taken for the purpose 

 of investigating war-time forest losses and of ascertaining how best America can aid in restoring the forests of our Allies. Editor. 



London, February 8, 1919. 



THE British navy must have coal. Without coal it is 

 useless. British coal mines must have timber. With- 

 out timber they are useless. British forests and wood- 

 lands cannot provide all the timber needed for British 

 mines. Therefore Great Britain knew early in the war that 

 unless she could get pit tim- 

 ber, or mine timber as it is 

 called in the United States, 

 from nearby countries she 

 could not keep her mines 

 producing coal and without 

 coal her navy was helpless. 

 The problem of obtain- 

 ing pit timber was there- 

 fore the- most serious for- 

 estry problem in Great 

 Britain during the war. She 

 met it by cutting fifty per 

 cent, some 450,000 acres, of 



her productive timber land for pit timber and other war- 

 time needs and by importation, hampered greatly by the 

 submarine menace, from other countries. Furthermore, 

 she would have cut all the trees in the United Kingdom if 

 it had been possible to transport them to the saw mills. 

 Transportation, due to the fact that every horse and every 

 automobile was requisitioned when war broke out, was 

 not to be had except where saw mills were close to forests 

 and woodlands and this alone resulted in Great Britain 

 having left now about half the forest and woodland 



SEED FOR GREAT BRITAIN 



In order to restore her denuded forest lands 

 and to plant waste land Great Britain needs 

 forest tree seed. Douglas fir and Menzies Spruce 

 is desired and as the seed crop in Great Britain 

 is very small the American Forestry Associa- 

 tion has secured a fund which will enable it to 

 present a large quantity of the seed needed for re- 

 planting in the British Isles. 



acreage she had when the war started. The need for 

 timber was so great, and the lack of British lumber 

 workers so pronounced that Great Britain speedily real- 

 ized her deficiencies as a producer of lumber. First she 

 imported Belgian labor. This was not satisfactory. Then 

 she tried Portuguese with better results but she did not 



make real progress either 

 in labor or machinery until 

 she secured forestry and 

 lumber battalions from 

 Canada and the saw mill 

 unit organized and equip- 

 ped in New England and 

 sent over to Scotland for 

 eighteen months' work. 



Big saw mills were 

 erected by the Canadians 

 and the saw mill units 

 took over portable mills. 

 These helped wonderfully 

 to supply some portion of the lumber needs and the 

 remainder was imported. One hundred thousand tons 

 of pit timber a month was demanded by the mines. Ulti- 

 mately Great Britain was able to supply 40,000 tons of 

 this and import from France 60,000 tons. Previous to 

 accomplishing this some pit timber was secured from 

 Sweden by means of a three-cornered agreement between 

 Great Britain, Sweden and Germany. 



The British knew the Swedes needed certain commodi- 

 ties that only they could furnish so they said to Sweden, 



AMOUNT OF CUTTING 



It is roughly estimated that England, Scotland and Wales, cut about 17,000,000 tons of green timber for 

 war purposes in the three years 1916, 1917 and 1918. This amount is about twenty times the average annual 

 pre-war fellings. This however is only part of loss since the woods had to be slaughtered irrespective of 

 the interests of silviculture in order to keep the collieries and national industries supplied with the neces- 

 sary timber. This often entailed cutting out suitable sizes for pit-wood and other requirements and ruining 

 the entire future of the woods. 



