1054 



Canadian Forestry Journal, April, 1917 



for it is safe to say that niney-five per 

 cent, of the vast forest values of the 

 three prairie provinces has been 

 ruined and forfeited in the last hun- 

 dred years. This continuous chain of 

 forest fires has done no good service 

 for prairie agriculture but has bound 

 it to depleted areas of thousands of 

 square miles that for the life of at 

 least this generation must be carried 

 as a general liability. 



"The immigrant from the United 

 States and overseas sends, as it were, 

 an advance program of his expecta- 

 tions. He wants his wooden house, 

 wooden barn, wooden fence posts, 

 wooden fuel, wooden furniture and 

 half wooden farm implements. Doubt- 

 less he does not want trees cluttering 

 his homestead more than necessary, 

 but he does want the product of trees 

 laid down at his door without stint 

 and at a fair price. If Alberta cannot 

 complete the contract, if Alberta can 

 supply only the land, you have left a 

 chunk out of the newcomer's rain- 

 bow. He will seek elsewhere for a 

 more likeable combination of condi- 

 tions. 



Seventeen Million Acres * 

 "We have in this province nearly 

 seventeen million acres in forest re- 

 serves, out of a total land area of 161 

 million acres. You may think that 

 is enough to keep the wood pile go- 

 ing for all the people coming this 

 way. But measuring forest posses- 

 sions by acres is slovenly reckoning, 

 much like going down town to pick a 

 diamond with a foot rule. What lies 

 upon those millions of acres is a mea- 

 gre legacy of past fires. It is the 

 wreckage of a hundred years of mal- 

 treatment. The timber today within 

 the prairie provinces is by no means 

 sufficient to meet the needs of the 

 population and must be increased by 

 modern forestry methods. The insuf- 

 ficiency of our timber to keep pace 

 with tire demand of the future is true 

 of every province and part from this 

 side of British Columbia to the other 

 side of Newfoundland. Timberlands 

 are on the toboggan. We have only 

 one-quarter the timber owned by the 

 United States and yet their day of ap- 

 proximate wood exhaustion cannot 

 be far distant. All that we have left 



would supply the United States de- 

 mand just twelve years. 



Fire Waste 



"A new flow of millions of wood- 

 using settlers is the daily prayer of 

 western people and yet our prepared- 

 ness program gives them a quickly 

 deteriorating forest where fire, so 

 easily preventible, is striking down 

 ten trees to the lumberman's one, and 

 where in the north of these provinces 

 are patches of wantonly ruined forest 

 land, as big as Belgium, preparing for 

 you relentlessly desert areas as hope- 

 less as Sahara. Talk of the 'inex- 

 haustible' forest resources of Canada! 

 There never has been a more mis- 

 chievous phrase, cooing us along like 

 the soothsayers about the Russian 

 Czar. For even while the spellbind- 

 ing Colossus weaves his tale of con- 

 tent, he is interrupted by 10,000 for- 

 est fires, big and small, every year, il- 

 luminating his words in black and 

 red. 



Provincial Control 



"Does not the panacea for the ills 

 of the western forests lie in provin- 

 cial control and administration? The 

 conservationist does not argue the 

 political rights and wrongs of this 

 question. He is concerned only in 

 promoting complete unanimity as to 

 the wisdom of guarding and develop- 

 ing to the utmost the forest asset, it- 

 self. He is interested in supporting 

 such excellent steps as the Manitoba 

 and Saskatchewan governments took 

 at their last sessions in passing, new 

 Acts to enforce supervision of the 

 dangerous settlers' clearing fires in 

 heavily wooded districts. He is inter- 

 ested in anticipating the same advanc- 

 ed action on the part of the Govern- 

 ment of Alberta in the near future. 

 Only by provincial co-operation in 

 eliminating fire hazards can any re- 

 building of this resource be attempt- 

 ed. 



Does Ownership Paij^. 



"Whatever the past has held, what- 

 ever the future promises in the trans- 

 fer of the title to the forest resource, 

 the loser by today's neglect and the 

 winner by today's care is the citizen of 

 Alberta. Take over the forests and 

 what do you take? The Dominion 



