NORTH CAROLINA FOREST RESOURCES AND INDUSTRIES 



Summary of Survey Findings 



— <«- 



industries amounted to 59,000 man-years and the strictly 

 commercial forest-industrial work was enough to have 

 kept 33,000 employees occupied full time. 



6. About two-thirds of the timber area is in pine types 

 and one-third in hardwood types. The loblolly pine type 

 occupies 26 percent of the forest area and nearly 60 percent 

 ot it is satisfactorily stocked. 



7. Saw-timber stands occupy 53 percent of the forest 

 land, under-sawlog-size second growth occupies 45 percent, 

 and less than 2 percent is clear-cut and not being restocked. 

 About one-half of the forest land is stocked with timber 

 less than 40 years old. 



8. In 1938 the saw-timber volume was nearly 44 billion 

 board feet, equal to about 1 1 percent of the timber in the 

 South (fig. 1) and 3 percent of that in the Nation. Two- 

 thirds of it is softwood and one-third hardwood. Sixteen 

 billion feet, 37 percent of the total, is loblolly pine. 



9. The average volume per acre of all sawlog-size ! 

 stands is 4,280 board feet. 



NORTH CAROLINA is a State of varied resources, 

 which affect the everyday lite and well-being of 

 most of the people. No single resource is a sepa- 

 rate entity in the economic structure of the State, because 

 the development and use of one inevitably affects the others. 

 This is particularly true of the forest resource, which has a 

 significant influence upon agriculture, industry, employ- 

 ment, finance, transportation, public water supplies, and 

 electric power production. 



The forest resource should be recognized as an integral 

 part of the whole social and economic structure of the 

 State. Because it contributes so vitally to the welfare of 

 the people and industry of North Carolina, it is needful 

 that both public officials and private citizens awake to the 

 need for a more conservative and far-reaching plan of forest 

 use. At the present rate of cutting the forest land will on 

 the average be cut over once every 40 years. Young second 

 growth is constantly adding to the supply of merchantable 

 timber, but because of prevailing methods of cutting and 

 inadequate fire control the forest is being reduced in 

 quantity, quality, and effective usefulness. To remedy 

 this situation, sustained-yield forest management should 

 be practiced on a large proportion of the forest land. 



The following summary of factual data emphasizes the 

 importance of the forest resource: 



1. Forests occupy over 18 million acres, 59 percent of 

 the total area of the State. 



2. One-half of this forest land is in farms and in 1937 it 

 yielded 20 different forest products with a value of £24,000,- 

 000, accounting for about 7 percent ot the value of all farm 

 production and equaling four-fifths of the value of the 

 corn crop. 



3. Forests help to protect the watersheds ot over 100 

 hydroelectric developments and many municipal water- 

 supply systems. 



4. Nearly 3,000 industrial plants depend directly upon 

 the forest for raw material, and the value of their pro- 

 duction in 1938 was about $55,000,000. 



5. The wood-products industries rank next to textiles 

 as a source of employment in manufacturing. In 1938 

 woods and mill employment in the primary forest-products 



Figure 1. — Map of "the South" and "South Altantic States" as referred 

 to in this publication. 



Definitions ot terms used will be found in the Appendix, p. 68. 



