EDITORIAL 



WHY WE NEED MORE FOREST RESEARCH 



ONE of the biggest economic problems before the 

 United States is the production of wood to meet 

 the future needs of our growing population and 

 industries. No one at all familiar with present conditions 

 can doubt that a very serious shortage of timber, with 

 attendant high prices, hardship for consumers, and 

 hindrance to the economic development of the country, 

 will be upon us within a very few years unless vigorous 

 action is taken immediately to insure continuous forest 

 production on forest lands. , 



A movement, which has already a large measure of 

 popular support, is under way to bring about this con- 

 tinuous production, not only from the public forests but 

 also on the much greater area of privately owned forest 

 land. But it must be borne in mind that the unanimous 

 support of the public, of the law-making bodies, and of 

 the forest owners themselves, will not suffice to insure 

 the production of the right material in quantities suf- 

 ficient to meet our future needs. Forest protection, con- 

 servative cutting, reforestation, restriction of cut to an- 

 nual growth, will result in continuous crops of some 

 kind of timber, but if undertaken in a haphazard way 

 will not result in continuous crops large enough to meet 

 even our present needs, nor is it at all certain that we 

 shall have either the sizes, grades, or even the species 

 of lumber which will be needed. 



When good land is cheap, production and transporta- 

 tion costs low or nil, population sparse, there is little need 

 for study of methods to increase food production, or of 

 selection of varieties to plant. The Indian in the Tropics, 

 who has only to go out and gather food which grew 

 without any effort on his part, has no need to indulge in 

 agricultural research. But with a highly developed 

 civilization, with its ever-increasing population and re- 

 sultant decrease in per capita area of agricultural soil, 

 with increasing costs of production, and with the neces- 

 sity of carrying the products of the soil long distances 

 to the consumer, it becomes imperative to investigate 

 methods by which a maximum amount of food can be 

 produced, at the lowest practicable cost, on soils best 

 adapted for each particular kind of crop. It is also neces- 

 sary that the production of different kinds of foods bear 

 some relation to the requirements of the consumers for 

 the various products. It would not do to devote all 

 agricultural land to the raising of cereals,' for instance, 

 even if it should be found that the maximum number of 

 calories of food could be produced by doing so. 



In forestry the same rule holds. The "timber-miner," 

 who only harvests what Nature produced, and cares 

 nothing for the future, has no use for forest research. 

 But for a growing nation, whose forests under present 

 methods are producing but a fraction of its needs, and 

 even under the best methods that can be applied with our 

 present knowledge will produce little more than enough 

 for merely present needs, such research is of fundamental 

 importance. 



Foresters have yet barely scratched the surface in the 

 study of American forests. It is not enough to know that 

 certain methods of cutting in the Southern Appalachians, 

 for instance, will be followed by reproduction, and that 

 such reproduction will grow rapidly and produce valu- 



able timber. It is necessary to know what method will 

 produce the most valuable limber, or the timber which 

 will best meet the national needs, and at the most reason- 

 able cost ; it is necessary to know just what species or 

 mixture of species will succeed best under each given 

 set of conditions ; it is necessary to be able to say defi- 

 nitely in advance just what will be the yield of a given 

 species managed in a given way on a specific tract of 

 land, and what it will cost to produce it. 



From the standpoint of the private owner it will not 

 be enough to say that by adopting such and such a 

 method he will make a profit ; he wants to know how he 

 can get the largest possible return from his investment 

 in land, labor, and money. From the standpoint of the 

 nation, it is not enough to know that certain methods 

 will result in continuous forest production on forest 

 soils ; it is necessary to know which of several methods 

 will best accomplish this result, and what methods will 

 insure the proper proportion of different sizes and of 

 different grades of material, and of different species. 



We have reached a turning point in the development 

 of forestry in this country. There are ample social, 

 economic, production and growth data to clearly show the 

 need for a change in our methods of handling our timber 

 lands. No further data are necessary to prove to any 

 intelligent observer of our forest conditions that unless 

 our cut-over lands, unsuited for agriculture, are turned 

 back into forest production, we shall in the near future 

 be at a serious economic disadvantage. 



Foresters have a sufficiently well worked out plan for 

 remedial legislation, and enough of basic knowledge for 

 formulating some simple silvicultural procedure by which 

 to maintain continuous production in each forest region. 

 But even as it is, if the forestry profession were con- 

 fronted tomorrow with the responsibility for drawing up 

 a plan of management for all the forest lands of the 

 United States, it would be put to a severe test, just as 

 was the case at that time of the placing of the National 

 Forests under forest management. 



The Forest Service found it necessary to establish 

 eight or nine experiment stations to solve the technical 

 problems that immediately arose in marking timber, in 

 working out methods of brush disposal, methods to 

 secure natural reproduction, methods of artificial refor- 

 estation, and similar problems. If the profession, there- 

 fore, is not to be content with merely securing some kind 

 of growth on cut-over land, no matter how inferior it may 

 be as compared with the original stand, but desires to be 

 able to secure forest growth of the highest economic 

 utility, it must set itself at once to the task of securing 

 more fundamental facts upon which to base its practice 

 on the vast area of privately-owned timber land. 



The only way in which such data can be obtained is 

 by long-continued, painstaking, scientific research. They 

 cannot be obtained in a year or in a few years as in 

 the case of agricultural investigations which deal with 

 annual or biennial crops, but require long periods. 



Is it not time that such research be started on a very 

 much larger scale than has been undertaken hitherto, in 

 order that when the mandate comes, we foresters shall 

 rot be found lacking? 



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