THE OUTLOOK FOR TIMBER SUPPLIES 



135 



lizing poorer raw material than was formerly 

 accepted in producing most timber products. 

 As a result of research and technical developments, 

 the pulp industry today utilizes a wide variety of 

 species, tree sizes, and residues, including many 

 of the lower grade hardwoods that were un- 

 merchantable a few years ago. New materials 

 such as hardboard, particleboard, and plastic 

 laminates have been substituted on an increasing 

 scale for higher quality lumber and veneer in 

 such uses as furniture, siding, and paneling. 

 While the total amounts of these latter products 

 still represent a small percentage of the lumber 

 used, these developments are indicative of the 

 adaptations to available raw materials that may 

 be achieved through research and development. 



Further technological progress in the forest 

 industries undoubtedly is to be expected, both in 

 development of new or modified products and in 

 the use of existing timber supplies. But tech- 

 nological improvements have been greater in 

 other industries producing materials that compete 

 with timber. And research and development 

 expenditures of competing industries still far 

 exceed those of the forest industries. 



Accelerated research and other efforts to im- 

 prove technology in the forest industries thus 

 appear essential, both to permit use of the timber 

 supplies available and to achieve potential markets 

 for timber products. Rather than depend en- 

 tirely upon the uncertain prospects of new tech- 

 nology to maintain healthy wood-using industries, 

 however, there is also much to be said for invest- 

 ments in timber management to grow the kinds 

 and quality of raw material that can be econom- 

 ically used by the forest industries. 



Closer Utilization Would 

 Stretch Timber Supplies 



About 20 percent of the pulp and paper made in 

 the United States in 1962 was produced from 

 chipped residues of other industries. About 11 

 percent of the timber cut in the Pacific coast was 

 from dead and cull trees. These were but two 

 signs of the progress being made toward more 

 utilization of available wood supplies. 



Increasing use of plant residues in the future 

 has been assumed in this analysis, but there are 

 also opportunities to relieve pressures on standing 

 timber by other advances in utilization. Thus 

 on the Pacific coast an estimated 1.5 billion board 

 feet of the sawtimber inventory volume has been 

 left behind annually as logging residues on cut- 

 over areas. Inventories of salvable dead timber 

 in this section total about 41 billion board feet, 

 and smaller quantities of such material are also 



available in other regions. About half a billion 

 cubic feet of dead timber has been salvaged an- 

 nually for saw logs and other products in recent 

 years. This could be increased by expanding 

 prelogging operations in old-growth stands and 

 by other salvage efforts. 



Improvements in technology in sawmills and 

 other manufacturing plants also could further 

 increase product output from available log 

 supplies. 



Growth Could Be Increased 

 Far Above Projected Levels 



The projections of softwood sawtimber growth 

 developed in this analysis rise some 25 percent, 

 or 9 billion board feet, over the next couple of 

 decades. Projected growth of hardwood saw- 

 timber rises about 4 percent, or roughly 1 billion 

 board feet. 



These levels of prospective growth fall con- 

 siderably short of the "realizable" growth that 

 could be obtained in time if all the present area 

 of commercial forest land in each region were 

 managed as well as the better managed properties. 

 Estimates of such realizable growth compiled some 

 years ago for the 1952 Timber Resource Review, 

 for example, totaled about 27.5 billion cubic feet 

 of growing stock and 100 billion board feet of 

 sawtimber. 



Stand Improvement of Major Importance 

 in Improving Supply Outlook 



Forestry in the United States up to now has 

 been focused primarily on protection and stand 

 regeneration. Much progress has been made as 

 a result of these programs, and some additional 

 growth could be obtained in the future by intensi- 

 fied efforts along both lines. 



In the future, however, increased thinning and 

 other timber stand improvement appear to repre- 

 sent the major opportunity for improving the 

 timber supply outlook. In recent years stand 

 improvement work has covered about 1.7 million 

 acres annually — a sizable area but a very small 

 part of the total commercial forest land. 



In eastern hardwood forests timber stand im- 

 provement is of particular significance in view of 

 the large basal area in cull trees and the increasing 

 density of growing stock trees. Only a small 

 proportion of the trees now occupying growing 

 space can be classed as desirable. The removal 

 of culls, and thinning to favor the better quality 



