FOREST CONSERVATION BY BETTER UTILIZATION 



BY OVID M. BUTLER. 



ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, UNITED STATES FOREST PRODUCTS LABORATORY 



STRIPPED of ramifying and controversial details, the 

 forest problem comes down to the need of providing 

 timber to meet the forthcoming requirements of the 

 wood-using industries of the country. There are two 

 main lines along which that problem is to be met. One 

 is by protecting the remaining forests and forest lands 

 from fire and other natural destroying agencies and by 

 bringing back to timber production cut-over forest land 

 suitable chiefly for timber production. The other is by 

 the conservation of the merchantable timber now stand- 

 ing by better utilization of the natural cut, or expressed 

 in a different way, the curtailment of the annual drain 

 upon the forests by more complete and scientific use of 

 the trees cut. Concerted action in both directions is 

 essential. Much has been written within the past twelve 

 months about the ways and means of procedure under the 

 first method and it has been the storm center of advocates 

 of different forest policies. The second course has not 

 been given as prominent mention or consideration as its 

 remedial possibilities merit. 



It is in connection with this latter phase of the subject 

 that this statement has to do. But there is one point 

 applying with equal force to forest production and forest 

 conservation, which should first be mentioned because 

 men whose business and financial interests are tied up in 

 wood-using industries can well give it thought. A com- 

 mon reaction of the business man to the forest problem 

 is that it is essentially a piece of uplift work for the 

 benefit of future generations. That is not the case, 

 especially if you will consider immediate benefits to be 

 derived from possible accomplishments in the field of 

 lumber conservation and utilization. Nor is it true of 

 timber production. Great scarcity of timber supplies 

 reacts upon the value of the established wood-using plants 

 dependent upon those supplies. As the forest becomes 

 more and more distant from the factory, there is a 

 potential force at work pressing down the value of the 

 plant and when the time arrives when it is necessary to 

 depend upon the Pacific slope for timber to keep the 

 factory in Pennsylvania or Indiana running, that force 

 is going to register with somewhat of a shock. 



Merely as an example, let us take the furniture indus- 

 try at Grand Rapids established at a time when the for- 

 ests were almost on the outskirts of the city. It has be- 

 come the greatest furniture manufacturing point in the 

 country but instead of millions of acres of forests im- 

 mediately tributary, the State of Michigan today is prac- 

 tically cut out and one-third of its land is unproductive 

 and a waste. The industries established when forests 

 were close at hand are now drawing upon forests border- 

 ing the Gulf of Mexico. There are in the State of 



* Presented at the organization meeting of the Association of 

 Wood-Using Industries, held at Chicago, September 28, 1920. 



Michigan today ten million acres of unproductive forest 

 land, which once bore the finest forests of the country. 

 These lands are reverting to the State, for non-payment 

 of taxes, at the rate of 3000 acres a month. Already 

 over two million acres have thus gone into bankruptcy. 

 I submit for your thought whether or not the value of 

 those great furniture plants in and around Grand Rapids 

 would be enhanced today by a good crop of merchantable 

 timber growing on those lands. 



But the timber is not there and it will be said the 

 planting of those lands with young trees will be of 

 benefit only to future generations. I believe that if all 

 or a part of those lands were planted and were today 

 supporting a young stand of thrifty trees, a potential 

 forest instead of a waste of brush and weeds it would 

 at once add stability to every plant investment originally 

 underwritten by a once strong forest reserve insurance, 

 which is now rapidly going into the hands of a receiver. 

 It would enhance the credit strength of these plants, 

 possibly not a great deal at once, but to an increasing 

 amount as time goes on because when your plant must 

 draw on supplies one to two thousand miles distant with 

 all the intervening possibilities of transportation disrup- 

 tion, its sale or collateral value automatically shrinks. 



Turning now to the question of better utilization of 

 the timber which we cut each year: The man with a 

 dollar in the bank can do infinitely more and do it quick- 

 er with that dollar than can the man who has first to earn 

 his dollar. That is essentially the advantage, from the 

 practical standpoint of getting results quickly, which 

 those who direct their energies upon conservation have 

 over those devoting themselves to timber production. It 

 appeals to me that it is easier to make one tree which 

 you have in hand do the work of two than to raise two 

 trees of which the seed is not yet planted. This seems 

 especially true when we consider that less than half of 

 every tree cut in the forest is fully utilized. The Madison 

 Section of the Society of American Foresters has been 

 giving some study to the place of utilization in a national 

 forest policy and the statistics which follow have in part 

 been assembled by its forestry committee. 



According to the best figures available, our present 

 consumption of lumber is around 40 billion board feet. 

 To put this amount of timber on the markets and in 

 your factory requires the cutting in the woods of possi- 

 bly 75 billion feet of standing timber. There is an 

 inevitable waste between the tree and the market and it 

 would be foolish to even speculate upon saving all of 

 this waste under present economic conditions in most of 

 our country, but there are places where it seems wholly 

 feasible and practicable to bring about large savings and 

 thus to relieve the drain upon the growing timber we 

 have in hand. A few of these possibilities will be named. 



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