10 Miscellaneous Circular 15, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. 



is producing half of the lumber cut of the world and using 95 per 

 cent of it at home. The consumption and destruction of wood in 

 the United States amounts to about 56.000.000.000 board feet an- 

 nually. The present population of Arizona and New Mexico is 

 using 300,000,000 feet a year, not including cordwood or mine props. 

 As the Southwest develops and the population increases, demand 

 for timber here as elsewhere will increase correspondingly. 



Seed for management. — The United States contains 469.000.000 

 acres of forest land of all sorts, timbered, cut-over, and burned. 

 Most of this should always be forest land. It is an area which, if 

 it can be kept at work growing trees, is ample to furnish all of the 

 wood needed for home use and for export trade. Eighty million 

 acres of these forest lands, however, have been denuded to the point 

 of absolute idleness so far as the production of timber of commer- 

 cial value is concerned and millions of other acres of cut-over land 

 are reproducing at but a fraction of their capacity. This waste is 



Proper range management makes sheep grazing in the forests profitable. 



being increased through fire and destructive lumbering by 10 to 15 

 million acres every year. Timber is being cut or destroyed four times 

 as fast as timber is growing. Freight on lumber into States that have 

 idle forest lands costs hundreds of millions of dollars every year. 

 Fishing, hunting, and other recreational pursuits are everywhere 

 subjected to sharp limitations. Because of devastated watersheds, 

 floods follow continued rains and bring damage beyond realization 

 alike to town and farm, while cities run short of water during 

 drought. 



Things that hinder. — Timberland owners are unable to see profit 

 in growing a crop that requires 150 to 200 years to mature and which 

 will be harvested by a future generation. Distances between timber 

 and transportation lines or markets, and lack of near-by market for 

 by-products work in combination with rough topography and small 

 number of trees per acre to prevent the manufacture of lumber cheap 

 enough to carry the interest of the owner beyond the harvesting of the 



