One of the better known 

 attempts at State-level 

 control of cutting practices 

 on privately owned lands 

 was the passage of the 

 Forest Harvesting act by 

 the Mississippi Legislature 

 on March 24, 1 944, an act 

 that became known as "the 

 seed tree law.' It was passed 

 because of a serious 

 concern over what was 

 considered the devastating 

 clearcutting of privately 

 owned timberlands within 

 the State, with no regard 

 for the future productivity of 

 the land. The basic 

 requirement of the law was 

 the leaving of four 

 well-spaced seed-bearing 

 trees at least 1 inches in 

 diameter, or alternately 1 00 

 trees 4 inches in diameter, 

 well distributed over every 

 acre of harvested land 

 unless there was clear 

 evidence that the land was 

 being converted to pasture, 

 row crops, or other uses. 



Sporadic attempts at 

 enforcing the seed tree law 

 were, in the main, failures. 

 Well-meaning attempts by 

 timber buyers to include 

 seed-tree provisions in their 

 purchase contracts were 

 frequently negated 

 immediately after the 

 conclusion of the sale by a 

 further sale of the 

 merchantable seed trees 

 by the landowner to a third 

 party. The State forestry 



personnel were so limited 

 in numbers and available 

 time to monitor the cutting 

 that they could issue only 

 token numbers of citations. 

 These were easily handled 

 by the landowner in front of 

 a local judge, usually a 

 fellow landowner, by placing 

 a strand of barbed wire 

 around the harvested area 

 and pronouncing it a 

 pasture. 



The Mississippi Forestry 

 Commission is still 

 responsible for enforcing 

 the Forest Harvesting Act, 

 but actual violations are 

 seldom discovered. The 

 law, in its present form, is 

 essentially obsolete and 

 ineffective. Modern forest 

 management practices 

 have rendered it archaic. 



Despite industry resistance 

 to mandated harvesting 

 laws enforced by either 

 Federal or State authorities, 

 there was general 

 recognition throughout the 

 southern industrial 

 community that unrestricted 

 cutting of private 

 timberlands, without strong, 

 good-faith efforts at 

 providing for regeneration 

 and the growing of 

 professionally managed 

 timber stands on the 

 privately owned lands of 

 the South was detrimental 

 to the economic well-being 

 of the industry in the long 



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