AMERICAN FORESTRY 



635 



CANADIAN DEPARTMENT 



By ELLWOOD WILSON 



There is much interest in the Ontario 

 situation in regard to an appointee as 

 Commissioner of Conservation, the Pre- 

 mier having decided to put the care of all 

 forest lands under this Commission. The 

 position was ofTered to Dr. Judson Clark 

 at $10,000 per year, but he declined it. He 

 has made several important recommenda- 

 tions, among them being that a technical 

 forester should be the head of the com- 

 mission, and that the logging scale should 

 be changed from the Doyle rule and all 

 wood sold by the Government on cubic 

 measure. The timber resources of On- 

 tario are so important that it is hoped that 

 it may be possible to obtain a good prac- 

 tical forester to handle the job. No one 

 can have any success unless it is possible to 

 make a^ppointments free from political in- 

 fluence and unless politics can be elimi- 

 . nated in the management of the Depart- 

 ment. It is regrettable that Doctor Clark 

 could not see his way to accept this po- 

 sition, as he would have been an ideal 

 man, having already been in the Depart- 

 ment of Lands & Forests of Ontario, be- 

 fore going to the West. 



Mr. R. G. Broadwood, late of the In- 

 dian Forest Service, and now attached to 

 the Forestry Stafif of the University of 

 Edinburgh, is making a trip through Can- 

 ada and the United States to study condi- 

 tions here. .He has been very much inter- 

 ested in our problems, especially along the 

 lines of utilization, but he feels that we 

 need to pay a great deal more attention to 

 silviculture and to getting our forests on 

 a sustained yield basis than we have ever 

 done previously. 



The Barnjum $5,000 prize for the best 

 essay on the Control of **-- Spruce Bud 

 Worm is about to be awarded ; 2'!'> essays 

 were submitted, only four of which were 

 good enough to even consider for the prize. 

 Of these four, one stood out very much 

 ahead of the others in a great many re- 

 spects, and to this the prize will be award- 

 ed. The methods of control suggested are 

 all very interesting and will prove of a 

 great deal of value to the forestry depart- 

 ments of large limit holders and the Gov- 

 ernments. Practically nothing new was 

 brought out, although one new method 

 which has been used for the control of 

 other insect pests was suggested for the 

 bud worm. The prize essay will be pub- 

 lished as soon as possible, and will be of 

 great practical interest. 



Mr. Barnjum's work for the iperpetua- 

 tion and management on a sustained yield 

 basis of our forests is beginning to bear 

 fruit, and the public of Canada are be- 

 coming aroused to the necessity of taking 

 immediate steps to stop forest fires and to 



cut our timber in a more sensible and 

 scientific way. 



Mr. Barnjum is determined that his 

 work for conservation shall not cease in 

 his own lifetime, and is training his son 

 in proper methods of propaganda to as- 

 sist him and to carry on his work in the 

 future. Mr. Barnjum is continually trav- 

 eling through the forests of Canada in an 

 efltort to get first hand information and 

 he has offered to take a committee of 

 members of Parliament for a two months' 

 trip in the woods at his own expense, so 

 that they may decide for themselves as to 

 the reasonableness of his fears for the 

 future. The Government has, however, 

 unfortunately declined his offer. 



."Vll of the conifers are seeding heavily 

 in Eastern Canada this fall, and an effort 

 is being made to collect sufficient seed to 

 carry over until the next seed year shall 

 arrive. The Laurentide Company will col- 

 lect from 2,000 to 3,000 ipounds of white 

 spruce seed, together with small amounts 

 of white and red pine. 



Generally speaking, seed years occur 

 periodically, the white spruce seeding about 

 every three years. In certain sections, 

 however, trees have been known to seed 

 annually, and one white spruce tree has 

 been steadily growing on the bank of a 

 small river, which has seeded continually 

 every year for five years. It might be 

 possible, by seed selection, to develop a 

 strain in which the seeding will be annual. 



At the request of the Quebec Forest 

 Protective .\ssociation, the Quebec Gov- 

 ernment has decided to extend the time 

 during which permits to travel in the 

 woods will be required, from the isth of 

 August to the iSth of November. This 

 is a step in the right direction, and al- 

 ready the value of the permit system has 

 been shown during the ipresent season. 



The Ontario Government is doing splen- 

 did work in the reconnaissance of the 

 timber areas in Northern Ontario. Two 

 hundred hours of flying and sketching 

 have already been used and large areas 

 covered. Recently the Laurentide Air 

 Service has taken a strip of photographs 

 from Remi Lake, Ontario, to Moose Fac- 

 tory, for engineers of the Temiskaming & 

 Northern Ontario Railway. The distance 

 to Hudson Bay has now shrunk very con- 

 siderably, as planes are traveling back and 

 forth, taking only about 2.^/2 to three hours 

 for the trip, and a knowledge of this 

 vast and hitherto unexplored northern 

 country is being increased by leaps and 

 bounds, and one of the most important 

 steps in the management of its forests 

 will have been taken, and Ontario knows 



just where its timber is located and how 

 much there is. 



Another very interesting piece of work 

 has been done by the Fairchild Aerial 

 Surveys Comipany (of Canada) Limited, in 

 connection with the Laurentide Air Serv- 

 ice, in photographing and making a com- 

 plete report on a pulp mill plant and 450 

 square miles of timber limits. It was 

 found that estimates made from the air 

 by observation checked up within half a 

 cord to the acre with those carefully made 

 on the ground. The field work in com- 

 piling this report has taken six weeks ; 

 the field work alone by the old method" 

 would have taken six to eight months, and 

 the information obtained would not have 

 been anything like so complete or accu- 

 rate. The Ontario Government, in their 

 operations last year, found that in every 

 case estimates made from the air checked 

 up very closely for amounts per acre and 

 character of timber with those made on 

 the ground. 



A Bad Fire Season 



That after much anxiety until the end 

 of August the backbone of one of the 

 West's most dangerous fire seasons was 

 broken, is the consensus of the reports 

 received by the Western Forestry and 

 Conservation Association from public and 

 private fire-fighting agencies throughout 

 the five Pacific Coast states. Except in a 

 few localities the season was one of tre- 

 mendous expense and taxed all protective 

 organizations to their utmost to prevent 

 sweeping loss of life and property. 



Although light rains relieved the tension 

 in many places early in August, there were 

 2000 fires during the month. The dam- 

 age has not yet been accurately reported 

 but is comparatively small, considering the 

 great number of fires handled, because of 

 the prompt action and extensive forces 

 employed by the several protective agen- 

 cies. Prosecutions for carelessness and 

 incendiarism were numerous, over 50 con- 

 victions being secured during August. 

 Lightning was also a prolific cause of 

 fires, while in no previous season has there 

 been so much complaint of those caused 

 by cigarettes. In a number of instances 

 moonshiners have added to the troubles of 

 patrolmen and lookouts who have investi- 

 gated distant smokes to find them arising 

 from concealed stills. 



