









How To Meet Timber Needs 
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HE PROBLEM of meeting the timber requirements 
of South Carolina’s forest industries boils down 
to this: certain classes of timber, chiefly the soft- 
woods and the more valuable hardwoods, are being used 
faster than they are being replaced by growth. Essen- 
tially, the solution consists of closing the gap between 
anticipated timber needs and net growth. 
Part of the solution is to increase the amount and 
improve the quality of the growing stock. This will 
necessitate better fire protection, more planting, thinning, 
taking special steps to encourage natural regeneration, 
and improving the species composition and quality of 
the stands. Yet these measures alone will not suffice to 
bring productivity up to the desired level if the 
deteriorating effects of current drain continue. Even if 
the best forest practices could be put into effect immedi- 
ately, it would be many years before growth in many 
classes of timber could be brought in line with needs. 
In the meantime, heavy drain will continually thwart 
efforts to increase growth. Frequently, faster growth 
resulting from good cultural practices will be more 
than offset by reductions in total growth due to a 
dwindling volume of growing stock. Thus, closing the 
gap between growth and needs requires not only better 
timber cropping practices, but also important shifts in 
the commodity drain — shifts from timber in short 
supply to timber in better supply, and from localities 
which are receiving the brunt of the drain to areas 
where cutting is not quite so heavy. It also means 
stopping the destructive cutting that leaves the stand 
in poor condition for regeneration and growth. 
MINIMIZE EFFECTS OF OVERCUTTING 
It will not be possible to stop overcutting immediately 
and still provide the timber needed by the present forest 
| industries, but many of its adverse effects can be 
diminished by making shifts in the drain by area, species, 
kind, and size of timber. If these and other suggested 
Measures are put into effect, timber yields can be 
expected to equal anticipated timber needs. 
Timber Supply Outlook in South Carolina 


Ease the Drain on Pole Timber in the Coastal Plain 
The most urgent prerequisite to building up the 
growing stock is to ease the drain on pole timber in 
the Coastal Plain. Already in short supply, drain 
exceeded growth in 1946 by 517,000 cords. About 
half of this deficit was softwoods. 
The large supply of pine pole timber in the Piedmont, 
along with the excess pole timber growth, offers an 
opportunity to shift some of the pole timber drain 
up-State. Each year for the next 20 years 100,000 cords 
of pulpwood drain could be transferred from the 
Coastal Plain to the Piedmont without jeopardizing 
attempts to build up the low supply of saw-timber grow- 
ing stock. A large share of this should come from 
thinnings and improvement cuts in the overstocked 
young stands in this part of the State. 
A greater use of pine topwood from trees cut for 
sawlogs would further relieve the pressure on the overcut 
pole timber. In 1946, the volume of pine trees cut for 
lumber in the Coastal Plain amounted to 1.1 million 
cords. The tops, most of which were left in the woods, 
amounted to 212,000 cords. About 5 percent of the 
1946 pulpwood production came from tops of trees cut 
for lumber. Increasing this proportion to 15 percent 
would ease the drain on softwood pole timber by 67,000 
cords. In view of the willingness of many producers to 
obtain pulpwood from tops, this goal seems reasonable. 
To achieve it would mean a closer working relationship 
between sawlog and pulpwood producers. 
Material which could be obtained from thinning too 
dense stands will also help to ease overcutting of pine 
pole timber (fig. 60). Altogether there are 832,000 
acres in pole and- saw-timber stands of pure pine types 
that are more than adequately stocked. The greatest 
concentration of this acreage occurs in the group of 
counties located in the lower Piedmont. Here counties 
such as Abbeville, McCormick, Greenwood, Newberry, 
Fairfield, and York each contain over 25,000 acres of 
stands in need of thinning. In the Coastal Plain, Berkeley, 
Charleston, and Orangeburg Counties appear to offer 
the best opportunity. 
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