36 FOREST RESOURCES OF TEXAS. 



FOREST MANAGEMENT. 



The State of Texas, with a merchantable forest that covers only 10 

 per cent of its entire area, cuts nearly a billion board feet of lumber a 

 year. The lumber industry is exceeded only by the cotton and cattle 

 industries. But of its comparatively small area of timberland 125,000 

 acres are cut annually, and cut in such a way that the land will not 

 grow valuable forests again. Other timberlands, valueless for lumber, 

 but of the first importance as a protection for agriculture and as a 

 source of water supply, are burned and destroyed without regard for 

 their great usefulness. Under present methods the exhaustion of a 

 great economic resource is taking place, and conditions affecting the 

 prosperity of wide areas are rapidly changing for the worse, while the 

 public interest in the most effective utilization of the potential wealth 

 of the State as a whole remains unprotected. 



The alternative is forest management. The State needs extensive 

 forests which shall be both permanent and productive. It can not 

 afford to follow the method of prohibiting all cutting on reserved 

 forest areas, as the State of New York has done. The products of the 

 forest are at least as important to the State as the forests themselves. 

 Not that all areas now under forest ought to remain woodland; clear- 

 ing for agriculture is to be welcomed wherever agriculture will pay, 

 and farms will ultimately occupy much of the country now under tim- 

 ber. On the other hand, forest extension niay be expected to add 

 other areas, now valueless for any purpose, to the list of woodlands. 

 But whatever changes may take place in the extent and the location 

 of its forests, it devolves upon the State of Texas to see to it that the 

 forests which it needs are preserved. The means to this is forest 

 management, or the practice of forestry, either by private owners or 

 the State, or both. 



Forestry- in Texas should aim at the following ends: 



(1) To discover and introduce lumbering methods which will provide 

 for a future crop at a reasonable cost. 



(2) To devise economical fire protection for cut-over lands. 



(3) To prevent the destruction of forest growth which is needed to 

 protect streams. 



(4) To promote the maintenance of woodlots in connection with 

 farms by- spreading information concerning their care and usefulness. 



(5) To plant trees in regions where there is now no forest growth, 

 but where it can be usefully introduced. 



Toward the first and second of these ends notable progress has 

 lately been made as a result of the action of private owners, under 

 the advice of the Bureau of Forestry of the U . S. Department of 

 Agriculture. 



It is a matter of congratulation that by far the largest owner of 



