FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSIONER. 1 67 



These forests as a financial investment have been most profitable. 

 They could now be sold for several times what has been paid for them. The 

 policy to extend them is both wise and necessary. 



The Constitution prevents the cutting of trees on the Forest Preserve 

 which are mature, over mature or even dead. It absolutely prevents the 

 practice of forestry, because forestry is utilizing our wood crops to the best 

 advantage. It prevents any improvement being made in the forest itself 

 and causes the absolute loss to the State of millions of feet of wood material 

 annually, because the ripe crop cannot be cut or utilized and the decay is, 

 on the average, as much as the growth. The State has purchased at a large 

 expenditure these one and one-half million acres of forests primarily as a 

 matter of forest preservation. But the policy now pursued in handling 

 these lands is actually destroying the forests. This is easily seen when we 

 realize what is really taking place. At least 1,250,000 acres of the Forest 

 Preserve are covered with heavy forest growth. A large part of this has not 

 been cut over in the past twenty years and much of it has only been lum- 

 bered for the softwoods, therefore containing mature and over mature trees, 

 also fully stocked forests, which are growing in the average at least two 

 hundred board feet of lumber per acre per year. An annual growth of 200 

 feet per acre on 1,250,000 acres will be 250,000,000 feet of lumber per year. 

 Under proper forest management this amount of timber could be taken from 

 our forests each year and the forests would be better than they were before. 

 This annual growth of one-quarter of a billion feet, which is going to waste, 

 is one- fifth of the total lumber cut off the State for 1907, and represents 

 the amount of timber that would be secured by lumbering clean not less 

 than 25,000 acres of forest. If this annual increment were utilized it 

 would decrease the demand upon other forest lands, thus aiding in forest 

 preservation. 



Besides assisting in preserving the forests, large revenues could be 

 secured from this source. The 250,000,000 feet of lumber that are destroyed 

 by the elements annually in our forest holdings are worth, at $3 per M. 

 feet B. M. on the stump, three-fourths of a million of dollars. Is there any 

 good reason why such a vast amount of our natural resources should be 

 absolutely destroyed each year? This money would alone pay the expenses 

 of operating all of our fish hatcheries, pay all the salaries of this Commission, 



