FIFTH NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 61 



The total planted area, federal, State and private, is known to be small, although 

 no census of it has been taken. 



Forest planting in the Lake States is commercially feasible, judging by the 

 increasing market for pine and hardwoods and by the available statistics of natural 

 growth. Species for planting in the pine type are white, red, Scotch and Jack 

 pine. The last mentioned is useful on the poorest sands, and a stand may be 

 secured by spreading cones on newly burned lands, a method both cheap and 

 efifective for this species. Good transplants of white pine and red pine must be 

 used in the reforestation of pine lands with these species. Professor Roth, of 

 the University of Michigan, recommends good, sturdy stock and wide spacing, 

 10 feet or more, since clearing up the lands is too costly and this money can to 

 much better advantage be used in protection from fire during the two months of 

 greatest danger. Planting can be done at as low a figure as $6 per acre, and will 

 pay. He estimates the area within Michigan requiring reforestation at 10,000,000 

 acres. In Wisconsin it is estimated at from two to three miUion acres. No 

 estimate is available for Minnesota. 



The present standing timber of value will be gone within a relatively short 

 time. In Michigan it is estimated by the timber owners as a decade : in Wisconsin 

 it will be a little longer and in Minnesota State Forester Cox estimates about 

 thirty years for the present saw timber to last. 



Such facts point to -the necessity of an immediate and extensive plan of 

 reforestation for the great area of land, incapable under present conditions of 

 reproducing valuable species naturally. 



CENTRAL HARDWOOD REGION 



THIS forest has its principal extent in Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, 

 Kentucky and Tennessee, a large part of the watershed of the Ohio River 

 and its tributaries. To the west it occupies the southern portion of the 

 Lake States, extending to the prairies, the central part of Missouri and the north- 

 western part of Arkansas. It dips down into Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, 

 occupies the Piedmont Plateau east of the Southern Appalachians and extends 

 northeastward into southern New England. For convenience of treatment, that 

 portion lying in the Southern States is discussed with what pertains to the 

 Southern Forest Region. 



The Central forest contains the principal supply of hardwood timber and 

 almost all of our broad-leaf, deciduous trees find their best development there — 

 oaks, hickories, ashes, walnut, cherry, tulip poplar, etc. A full description of 

 forest types and forest conditions is not pertinent to a statement concerning com- 

 mercial planting. Ownership is almost entirely private, much of the timber being 

 in woodlots, excepting in the more thinly settled hill and mountain portions of 

 the region. Exploitation of valuable species, fires and grazing have caused 

 deterioration of the forest on a very large area. Lands have been cleared and 

 farmed that now need reforesting, since their value is greater in forest than as 

 farm land. Interest in commercial planting is greatest in the northeastern part 

 of this region and in Ohio, to a less degree in Indiana and the Lake States, and 

 little interest, if any, in the rest of the region. 



