- , AMERICAN FOEESTEY 



PROOF OF PRACTICAL FORESTRY 



The results of work done on the Webb and Whitney tracts under my 

 general supervision and under the direction of Mr. Henry S. Graves, now 

 Chief i i In- United States Forest Service, have proved beyond contradiction 

 Hun forestry is practical from every point of view in soft-wood logging in 

 ili,. Adirondacks. On both these tracts, whose total area is over 100,000 acres, 

 ; irh tree to be cut was marked, and as a rule sound spruce trees below ten 

 in. IH-S in diameter were left standing. Dead trees enough were left to provide 

 I'm- a second crop, the forest cover was conserved by moderate cutting, simple 

 ni I. 's were enforced to prevent waste of timber and injury to young growth 

 in the logging, and the tops of felled trees were lopped as a safeguard against 



ore. 



The forest was improved and the work paid. The proportion of spruce 

 trees in the woods is already increased, and the older cuttings are even now 

 ready to produce a cut of spruce as valuable as the first crop. The beauty 

 of the forest is unimpaired, and there is little sign, except the abundant young 

 spru<rs, an occasional moss-covered stump, or the trace of an old logging road, 

 that the forest was ever lumbered at all. 



But in face of these notable exceptions, and of a quarter of a century of 

 explanation and agitation, conservative lumbering in the Adirondacks has 

 made little or no progress. The usual destructive treatment of private timber 

 lands today makes it perfectly clear that the general adoption of forestry 

 in the Adirondacks can be brought about by law, and in no other way. This 

 is true in spite of the fact that in very few places in the United States is 

 the financial and physical opportunity for practical forestry so good as it is 

 here. Yet nowhere has needless destruction gone further. 



It is time to stop playing with the situation. Ostensible efforts at private 

 reforestation, in which tens of acres are replanted for hundreds or thousands 

 that are destroyed, merely serve to distract attention from the main issue. 

 What is needed on privately owned timberlands is the proper handling of the 

 forest, and not inadequate replanting after its destruction. The present 

 method, if allowed to continue, will inevitably result in the devastation of 

 substantially all the Adirondack timber lands held for lumbering purposes, 

 as well as in the burning of large areas of State lands by fires starting in, 

 the slash thus caused. And in the end the State itself will be forced to take 

 over these denuded lands and replant them at great expense. 



More is done to help the lumbermen by the State of New York than any 

 other State in the Union. The maintenance of the mountain lookout station 

 and the cost of fire patrol is paid for entirely from the State funds. In 

 several Western States the lumbermen voluntarily bear these expenses them- 

 selves. When a logging crew is requisitioned by a New York forest officer 

 to fight lire on the land of a lumberman, that lumberman is reimbursed for the 

 the time spent by his own men in protecting his own property. State taxes 

 on forest land in the Adirondacks are negligible, while other taxes are 

 -'m-rally based on so low a valuation that they do not hinder forestry. Yet 

 in spite of all this, these mountain forests, in which every citizen of the 



