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CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 69 
The Forestry Report. 
In the Final Report of the Forestry Sub-Committee of the Reconstruction 
Committee the proposals now under Government consideration are developed. 
These proposals represent a basis for State afforestation combined with 
encouragement to private enterprise. 
To account for the poor condition of our woods, the Forestry Report refers 
to the fall in value of small hardwood timber and oak bark, the increased 
demand for coniferous timber, old and unsuitable methods of management, game 
preservation, and love of the picturesque. In my opinion the most serious 
causes have been omitted, namely : 
1. The agricultural depression of the past generation, which denuded the 
countryside and chilled the spirit of enterprise. 
2. The glutting of the home timber markets with the produce of the world’s 
virgin forests at prices that very often represented little beyond the cost of 
felling, transport, and marketing, in addition to importers’ or agents’ profits. 
3. The unfair handicaps from which forestry suffered, and to which I refer 
later, and the neglect of the State, shown by the absence of any endeavour 
to remove those handicaps. 
4, An absolute indifference to forestry and lack of encouragement of native 
timber by the consumers of timber, by industrial concerns, by the Government 
departments, and by all sections of the community. 
Absence of well-managed State or Crown forests in the past is rightly noted 
as a drawback to the private owner, who had nothing to guide his efforts at 
timber production by the system of High Forest, comparatively new to this 
country. He had to pick up knowledge as best he could, buy his experience 
as to trees to plant and incur sad losses. 
The proposals of the Forestry Report include planting 1,770,000 
acres in addition to replanting and improving existing woods, with 
the object of making the United Kingdom independent of imported 
timber, in emergency, for three years. This moderate requirement, however, 
is subject entirely to satisfactory arrangements being made with Canada, which 
“contains the only large reserves within the Empire.’ Failing such arrange- 
ments, the Report admits that a much larger scheme will be necessary for 
the United Kingdom, owing to the precarious nature of foreign supplies, com- 
bined with their steady rise in price. 
I would submit that a larger scheme—based on a five years’, in place of 
three years’, emergency reserve of timber—is now necessary for the following 
amongst other reasons : 
1. The Forestry Sub-Committee was appointed in July, 1916, and since 
their Report was prepared there have been large and unforeseen developments, 
including : 
(a) The ‘break-up’ of Russia and the existing uncertain position in 
that country and the Baltic, on which sources we have relied in the 
past for over 70 per cent. of our timber supply. 
(6) Further vast quantities of our native timber have been felled, 
as compared with the quantity mentioned at the date of the Report. 
2. The war goes on indefinitely, with demands accumulating, and if this 
war lasts nearer five years than three, surely a five years’ reserve for the 
future should be assured. 
8. The developments in the air and under the sea even in the near future 
are impossible to estimate; our reliance on shipping is more fully appreciated 
and its resources must not be taxed by timber transport in an emergency. 
In view of the national importance of the creation of reserves of timber to 
meet any future emergency, I hope that an extended scheme will be instituted. 
The general case for afforestation in the Report is based on these three 
propositions : 
1. That dependence on imported timber is a grave source of weakness in 
war, 
