Canadian Forestry Journal, December, 1917 



1449 



A Prophecy on Forest Denudation 



The Journal reproduces the follow- 

 ing letter from the Mont re,-) 1 "Gaz- 

 ette" because its authorship com- 

 mands attention. Mr. William Little 

 of Westmount, P.Q. was to a great 

 degree the founder of the Canadian 

 Forestry Association and has upheld 

 its work with splendid zeal, even now 

 when the weight of advanced years 

 makes itself felt. As a leading lum- 

 berman and the son of a lumberman, 

 Mr. Little has evinced a foresight 

 no less noteworthy than his public 

 spirit. Many lumbermen to-day re- 

 count Mr. Little's early prophecies 

 of Canadian forest conditions which, 

 while gloomy enough then, have 

 since proved abundantly true. 

 To the Editor of the Montreal Ga- 

 zette: 



Sir, — If you will refer to the col- 

 umns of the Gazette of a cjuarter of a 

 century ago, you will find therein 

 editorials by the Gazette and letters 

 of mine by the score, protesting 

 against the sacrifice of our timber 

 resources in the most reckless manner 

 by our government for the merest 

 trifle of their value, beseeching them 

 to take stock of our white pine and 

 spruce timber before it was too late, 

 only to be ridiculed as visionary 

 alarm ists. 



The End of White Pine 

 Now, at last, when our stock of 

 white pine timber is reduced to the 

 mere cullings discarded by previous 

 operations, while in most of our log 

 booms are found about nine spruce 

 logs to every one of pine, and but 

 few of these are over ten inches at 

 the top end, we find that our spryce 

 timber, except that in British Colum- 

 bia, is in about as deplorable a con- 

 dition as our white pine, for we are 

 informed by Mr. James White, of the 

 Commission of Conservation, that in- 

 stead of having, as supposed, ma- 

 terial for a supply for fifty years, as 

 reported by cruisers in Eastern Can- 

 ada and the United wStates, that about 

 thirteen or fourteen years' supply on 

 this side of the Rocky Mountains 

 would be nearer the limit. And this 



is the stock we are now to depend on, 

 not only for our home rec(uirements, 

 but to supply the Empire and her 

 Allies that have been robbed of their 

 timber by the German armies that de- 

 vastated everything wherever tra- 

 versed by them. 



Spruce Prices Jump 



This scarcity of spruce timber is 

 now becoming evident not only here, 

 but in the New England States, as is 

 shown in the markets of Boston and 

 New York, where spruce timbers that 

 were sold three years ago at from S18 

 to $20 per thousand feet, are now sell- 

 ing for $40 a thousand feet, board 

 measure, and the smaller spruce tim- 

 ber that was of hardly any value, a 

 few years ago, is now, on account of 

 its great demand for pulp and paper 

 making, considered of almost as much 

 value as common pine, so that the 

 Canadian pulp mills that sold their 

 output of woodpulp at $16.50 per ton 

 in 1914 are seUing it now at S42 per 

 ton. 



And the spruce wood itself that was 

 sold, f.o.b., cars here only two years 

 ago for from $5 to $6 per cord for 

 unpealed pulpwood, has lately been 

 sold at $15 per cord, for rossed wood 

 on the cars. And a press item states 

 that the pulpwood timber is now get- 

 ting so scarce in the Adirondack 

 woods that the pulp mills at Water- 

 town, N.Y. State, are paying from 

 $18 to $21 per cord for rcssed wood 

 delivered to their mills. 



Effects of The War 



And a glance into the future would 

 indicate that even these prices must 

 be greatly increased when account is 

 taken of the frightful devastation of 

 timber that has already been made 

 in the forests of Europe, notably in 

 Belgium, France, Poland, Eastern 

 Russia, Western Prussia, Austria- 

 Hungary, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Ser- 

 bia, Bulgaria, Roumania and even in 

 Great Britain and Ireland; and it is 

 known that in all these countries the 

 stumpage value of spruce and fir tim- 

 ber even years before the war far 

 exceeded any price paid for like 



