Great Britain’s Afforestation 
Program 
Why It Was Undertaken: How it Is Being Carried Forward 
Great Britain is on the verge of becoming a 
timber producing country. If any one had 
made such a prediction in the spring of 1914 
his statement, to put it mildly, wqulid have 
been received with incredulity. Today the as- 
sertion comes near to being a statement of 
fact. 
The stern necessities of the Great War 
proved conclusively that no nation is safe with- 
out its own supply of timber and of woed. One 
result of the war in the British Isles is that a 
program is now actually under way that pro- 
vides for the afforestation of an area sufficient 
to supply the forest needs of the British people 
for a period of three years. Never again, after 
these new forests come to merchantable size, 
DOUGLAS FIR PLANTATION ON LAKE 
VYRNWY, WALES. D. W. YOUNG, 
DIVISIONAL FOREST OFFICER, 
AT RIGHT 
does Great Britain mean to be caught with its 
wood supply cut off by hostile submarines, or 
to be forced to have the carrying power of its 
ships for food stuffs curtailed by essential but 
necessarily bulky cargoes of wood. 
It is a big program on which Great Britain 
has entered; one that extends over a period of 
40 or more years for the afforestation alone. 
But the British nation is committed to it. By 
act of Parliament three and a half million 
pounds sterling (roughly nearly $15,000,000 at 
normal rates of exchange) have been author- 
ized to be expended in the decade from 1919 to 
1929. It is anticipated that for each of the next 
two ten-year periods even larger sums will be 
made available. This is forestry in earnest and 
it behooves Americans to take note of it, for 
SAMPLE PLOT OF EUROPEAN LARCH IN 
TINTERN FOREST, ENGLAND, FORTY- 
TWO YEARS OLD 
9) 
