An indication of the Importance of the commercial forestry 

 resources in the Albemarle Area can be shown by the proportion of 

 of all land in forests. For the area as a whole, forest lands 

 cover 68 percent of the total land area. Three counties in the 

 area greatly exceed this average - Dare with 73 percent of all land 

 in forests, Gates with 74 percent, and Tyrrell with 87 percent. 



A significant proportion of the total forest land in the Albe- 

 marle Area is owned and managed by pulp and paper companies - almost 

 one-third of the total. Most of this company controlled land is in 

 low-lying poorly drained tracts in Washington, Tyrrell, and Dare 

 Counties. The companies have spent large sums of money to develop 

 their land to its highest potential, by cutting drainage canals, 

 laying roads, and practicing good fire control and timber manage- 

 ment practices. It has been estimated that if farmers and other 

 small tract owners employed the same techniques, they could double 

 or triple their current production of timber. 



Miscellaneous private owners control one-third of all the 

 forest land in the area. This is slightly more than the pulp and 

 paper companies hold. Much of this privately controlled land is 

 concentrated in huge tracts in the Great Dismal Swamp north of the 

 Albemarle Sound in Gates, Pasquotank, Perquimans, and Camden Coun- 

 ties. There is another large tract in the East Dismal Swamp in 

 Hyde and Dare Counties on the south side of the sound. Part of 

 this land is being drained and developed in a manner similar to 

 the pulp and paper company holdings. However, most of the forest 

 land not owned by the major land holding companies is in small 

 tract private ownership. As a rule, forest land held in small 

 tracts is not very well managed and is, consequently, relatively 

 unproductive . 



Close to 28 percent of the forest land in the area is on farms, 

 It has been found that, on the average, about 50 percent of the 

 total farm acreage is in forest land. However, the average farmer 

 derives over 90 percent of his farm income from field crops or 

 1 ive stock . 



7 



