RESULTS OF OUR FOREST POLICY 367 



Just how far and how fast the government should go in enlarging 

 its forest domain, is a question which cannot be answered easily. Under 

 the Weeks Law, the government is already buying up land slowly, 

 in some instances even virgin timber land, but that act does not look 

 to any general scheme for the purchase of valuable forest land, and 

 it is unlikely that the government will enter upon such a policy until 

 there is a clear and urgent need for it. 



There are some regions where the government might even now 

 extend her national forests to advantage. Some of the less accessible 

 timber of the Northwest should perhaps be bought up. Much of it is 

 in the vicinity of the national forests and could be cheaply protected 

 and administered as additions to them. There are, for example, some 

 10,000,000,000 feet of privately owned timber on the headwaters 

 of the Columbia in Idaho and Montana, which cannot be reached 

 within the present range of logging costs in that region. The more 

 accessible and high-priced timber in the pine belt of California is 

 sufficient to supply its manufacturing industry, including any in- 

 creased output that can be reasonably anticipated, for at least thirty 

 or forty years ; and there is left 48,000,000,000 feet of less accessible 

 privately owned timber in the higher mountains, which by location 

 is a reserve for the future. Many other billions are similarly located 

 back in the Cascades of Oregon and Washington, and in various 

 regions of the West. The recovery of such timber lands would be wise 

 from the point of view of the public, and perhaps not disadvantageous 

 from the point of view of the present owners, for the carrying of such 

 timber for two or three, or even four decades, until exhaustion of 

 other supplies has called it into the market, will involve a very heavy 

 outlay, and will not likely prove profitable, unless lumber prices rise 

 extremely high. 



Our national forests will of course play a more important part 

 in the future than they do now. At the present time they are much 

 less important than their area would indicate, because only part of 

 the land is timbered, and the timber included is generally of poor 

 quality and inaccessible. The Forest Service is handling the timber 

 very conservatively, however, cutting less than the annual growth, so 

 that the amount of government timber is increasing; while the pri- 

 vately owned timber is being cut at a very rapid rate. Furthermore, 



