FOREST LAND AND TIMBER RESOURCES 



107 



Table 72. — Proportions of commercial forest area, inventories, growth, and cut in the U.S., by ownership 



[Percent] 



Ownership 



Commercial 

 forest area 



Growing stock 



Sawtimber 





Inventory 



Growth 



Cut 



Inventory 



Growth 



Cut 



National forest _ . 



19 



9 



13 



59 



37 

 10 

 15 

 38 



14 



8 



20 



58 



18 



7 



26 



49 



46 

 10 

 16 



28 



16 



8 

 22 

 54 



22 



Otiier public 



Forest industry 



Farm and miscellaneous 



8 

 30 

 40 



Total 



100 



100 



100 



100 



100 



100 



100 



AVAILABILITY OF WORLD TIMBER RESOURCES 



In addition to domestic timber supplies the 

 availability of timber products in foreign coun- 

 tries also represents an important factor in ap- 

 praising the timber situation in the United States. 

 Although exports of timber products are of sub- 

 stantial importance to some sectors of the U.S. 

 timber industry, for many years the United States 

 has imported larger volumes of wood products 

 than it has exported, and this status as a net 

 importer is considered likely to continue. 



Canada the Principal 

 Source of Imports 



Canada has been by far the principal supplier of 

 imported timber products in the past. Canada 

 also has large undeveloped softwood timber re- 

 sources that are physically suitable for expanded 

 production of pulp and paper products and lum- 

 ber. With the exception of the U.S.S.R. and 

 Scandinavia, there are no other major sources of 

 softwood timber in the world outside the United 

 States and Canada. 



Canadian forests cover an estimated 1,095 mil- 

 lion acres, of which approximately 619 million 

 acres are classed as "productive" forest land. 

 This is substantially more than the area of 509 

 million acres classed as "commercial" forest land 

 in the United States. Some 407 million acres of 

 the productive forest lands in Canada are further 

 classified as "accessible," or economically operable 

 under current economic conditions. The remain- 

 ing areas consist of more remote forest lands, 

 largely in the far North where transportation 

 facilities have not yet been developed and utiliza- 

 tion costs are relatively high. 



The net merchantable volume of standing 

 timber on the productive forest lands in Canada 

 amounts to an estimated 710 billion cubic feet. 

 As in the case of forest land, this is greater than 

 the figure of 628 billion cubic feet of timber in the 

 United States in growing stock trees above 5.0 

 inches in diameter. Tree sizes classed as saw- 

 timber total about 2,008 billion board feet in 

 Canada — about 80 percent as much as in the 

 United States. 



More than four-fifths of the total timber volume 

 in Canada is made up of softwoods, as shown by 

 the following tabulation: 



Percent 

 Species: of total 



Spruce 36 



Balsam fir 12 



Jack and lodgepole pines 15 



Hemlock 9 



Cedar 5 



Douglas-fir 4 



Other softwoods 2 



Total softwoods 83 



Hardwoods 17 



All species 100 



Canada's timber resources are widely distributed 

 among the provinces. British Columbia, however, 

 has about 52 percent of the total timber volume, 

 about 60 percent of the total softwood volume, 

 and more than 65 percent of the sawtimber. This 

 concentration of the larger sawtimber sizes is re- 

 flected in the large and increasing volume of lum- 

 ber shipments from this area to United States 

 markets. In 1962, for example, lumber shipments 

 from British Columbia to the United States 

 reached 3.0 billion board feet, or two-thirds of the 

 4.6 billion feet of lumber imports from all of 

 Canada. 



The central and Atlantic group of provinces, 

 including particularly Ontario and Quebec, con- 

 tain a third of the merchantable timber, and a 

 major part of the developed forest industries in 

 Canada. The Prairie provinces and Northern 



