16,000 MILES OF FORESTED SHORE LINE 



329 



the coast timber country, and keeps 

 some of the best timber protected in a 

 blanket of moisture, as are the red- 

 woods on the California coast. The 

 coast region is almost entirely non- 

 agricultural, and should be kept under 

 forest cover. This is fortunately a 

 future likely to be realized under the 

 Provincial policy of fire protection, 

 aided by the heavy rainfall and the 

 tendency of valuable species to repro- 

 duce naturally on cut over land. 



The predominating commercial spe- 

 cies of the coast forest are Douglas fir, 

 red cedar, hemlock, balsam and spruce. 

 The estimate of the timber in British 

 Columbia is 250 to 300 billion feet, of 

 which a large percentage of the best 

 and most accessible is on or adjacent to 

 the coast. The Province of British Co- 

 lumbia derives a large part of its reve- 

 nue from its forests ; the amount col- 

 lected in 1913 from royalties, license 

 fees and other sources amounting to 

 nearly $3,000,000, or an average of ap- 

 proximately $7 for every inhabitant of 

 the Province. Of this about $245,000 

 was used during the same year by the 

 Forest Branch for the management and 

 protection of the forests, the heaviest 



expenditures for fire protection being 

 in the mountain districts. Government 

 launches and their crews maintain a fire 

 prevention and police patrol on the !',,- 

 000 miles of forested shore lines. 



\Yhile these shores appear to be he;i\- 

 ily forested, an entirely wrong impu> 

 sion of the uniform value and similar 

 character of the forests is derived from 

 casual observation by travelers, or even 

 by timbermen who draw their con- 

 clusions from a boat trip. The forest 

 cover is practically complete and fairly 

 uniform, but a large amount of the tim- 

 ber is not of merchantable value under 

 present market conditions, nor likely to 

 be, until the better timber equally ac- 

 cessible is exhausted. The timber of 

 value for present logging, or to hold a^ 

 an investment, does not cover the whole 

 shore line, but lies in the protected 

 "draws" or valley bottoms where little 

 streams break into the "salt chuck," or 

 on moist slopes. The investor who buys 

 timber limits just because they have 

 trees on them is in for a long wait or an 

 unhappy awakening. It is very unsafe 

 to "cruise" British Columbia timber 

 from a boat. 



Startling as it may seem, probably not 





Photo by E. A. Sterling. 



BRITISH COLUMBIA COAST SCENE. 



THIS IS A TYPICAL VIEW IN ONE OF THE NUMEROUS INSIDE CHANNELS AMONG THE ISLANDS ALONG THE COAST OF 



BRITISH COLUMBIA. 



