THIRD BIENNIAL REPORT 

 Kentucky State Forest Service 



January 1, 1928— June 30, 1929 

 WM. E. JACKSON, JR., State Forester 



Vfr, 



The second Biennial Report of this Department to the General 

 Assembly of 1928 gave a survey of the work for the years 1.926 and 

 1927 up to and inluding December 31, 1927. This the Third Report 

 deals with work done for the past year and a half and outlines the 

 scope of the future work necessary to develop and protect the forest 

 resources of Kentucky. 



SUMMARY 



Kentucky has 10,500,000 acres, out of a State total of 25,718,500 

 acres of land, which is not suitable for anything except the growing 

 of timber. There are approximately 6,000,000 acres of woodland in 

 farms, 2,800,000 acres in large boundaries of forest land, and approxi- 

 mately 1,700,000 acres in idle or waste land which should be growing 

 timber as it is unsuited for agricultural uses. About 50% or 5,000,000 

 acres of this timber land lies in the mountainous counties east of a 

 line drawn from Lewis to McCreary Counties. 



All of this land should he growing just as much timber as it can 

 produce so that future generations will have lumber to cut instead of 

 bare hillsides. If properly managed, Kentucky's timber lands could 

 always produce one billion board feet of lumber per year, which should 

 meet the State's yearly need for lumber indefinitely. Floods cause mil- 

 lions of dollars' worth of damage every year in Kentucky. This menace 

 can be stopped in a great measure by keeping the steep hillsides 

 clothed in forest cover so that the rapid run-off of unusual precipita- 

 tion can be retarded until the stream can carry off the flow in its 

 regular course. 



Forestry in the United States is no longer merely a theory or a 

 subject for discussion. It has gotten down to concrete things in the 

 woods. Nor is the growing of timber confined to public lands; it is 

 gradually making headway on land in private ownership. But it would 

 be useless for any organization or individual to attempt to grow timber 

 if the area was to be burned periodically through the acts of a careless 

 or indifferent public. 



In laying plans for the conservation of the timberlands we still 

 have left in Kentucky and once more placing the State on a lumber 

 producing basis, rather than receiving our needed lumber supplies from 



