1350 Canadian Foreslry Journal, October, 1917 



is making remarkable advances, and certainly has many surprises in store. 

 Coupled with these facts must be considered the exhaustion of cheap, access- 

 ible forests and the rapid deterioration of what were recently virgin areas 

 of timber. The supply grows less. The demand grows greater. It is for 

 New Brunswick, therefore, to take full toll of every square mile of her forest 

 possessions, to realise from the markets of the world such tremendous profits 

 as have accrued to Sweden and other European countries as well as to some 

 of our Canadian provinces that are awake to the advantages of a great tim- 

 ber endowment. 



Clearly, no private corporation or association of companies or individuals 

 can undertake the task of inventorying the timber possessions of the prov- 

 ince, and establishing a permanent policy of protection and development. 

 That is a Government function for more reasons than one. The loag-time 

 element involved in the growing of trees is beyond the administrative reach 

 of any but a self-perpetuated institution such as the State. The fmancial 

 profits of even the wisest forest policy cannot be checked up week by week as 

 with certain outlays for agriculture or fisheries or roads, but at the same 

 time no resource responds more surely or generously to preservative measures 

 than the forest. 



LOOKING INTO THE PROVINCIAL STOREHOUSE 



New Brunswick has now under way the first great step in building up 

 a permanent policy in respect to its forests. The Forest Survey and Land 

 Classification, which now has been under way for about a year and a half, 

 had covered by May 15, 1917, more than 550,000 acres, out of a total of 

 7,500,000 acres of Crown lands. Not only will the province get knowledge 

 of the location and contents of its forest land, the amount and kind of re- 

 production, and rate of growth, but will be given an accurate soil map, where- 

 by future settlement may be directed intelligently. The project will occupy 

 several more years and is equivalent to a provincial stock-taking, a highly 

 important element in any progressive and constructive policy. 



With public opinion heartily endorsing the continuance of the Forest 

 Survey, the next step, obviously, is to employ the information so secured in 

 the best interests of the people of the province. 



Few men acquainted with New Brunswick or Quebec or Ontario woods 

 operations will contend that the present rate of cutting can be continued in- 

 definitely, unless present cutting methods are materially changed. 



What are the faults of these methods? In what way do they hamper 

 the natural re-growth of a tract from which logs are being taken? 



In practically all Government regulations covering Crown timber, cer- 

 tain provisions have been inserted aiming to guide the cutting so that the 

 forest area may be kept permanently productive. One of these provisions 

 specified that trees below a certain diameter shall not be felled, except a few 

 for skids, or those blocking a road route. For example, the New B unswick 

 regulations stipulate that no spruce tree shall be cut on licensed lands unless 

 it will provide a log 123^ inches or over, stump measurement. Few will 

 assert that this regulation in itself is sufficient or that the Provincial Govern- 

 ment is able wi h its present machinery to give it more than formal enforce- 

 ment. And yet on the regulating of cutting by a minimum "diameter" pro- 

 vision and other safeguards, dictated by long experience, the future security 

 of every lumber and pulp mill and the bulk of the employment in the province 

 rests. 



If the provincial storehouse of wood materials is to be handled on the 

 basis of permanent production, every form of needless waste must be elim- 

 inated. The cutting of stumps almost breast high cannot be condoned in 

 these days of timber scarcity and rising values. The jobber who skims oil 

 his tract, eaving lodged trees to rot, who abandons patches of trees that are 

 shghtly inconvenient to reach, who uses good spruce logs for his roads and 



