^l/NITED , STATES 

 ^^^^^^^'E. PAR T M,E NT'' 

 OF AGRICULTURE 



^ M AT lOi^ > 



17 i^rr^ 



ItkFORMATIO 



0. 3. L)»'i*»rMv^i W iLcmwI^r* 



TTITH UITCLE SAME'S IIATimALISTS Friday, November 20, 1931 



NOT rOR PUBLICATION 



SPEAiaNG Tllffi ; 10 minutes. 



ANNOUNCS-SNT t This is the da;y- and hour for oior regular Friday visit with 

 Uncle Saul's Naturalists. Our Wilds Man has been talking with men in the 

 Forest Service, United States Department of Agriculture, trying to get the 

 facts on the future of the United States' wood supply. Where do we stand in 

 referonco to our stand of timber? All right, Mr. Wildsman, you tell us: 



I can remember the time v;hen one of the gr-:at concerns of the farmer was 

 to got the timber OFF his land. That, in the country where I_ lived, was a time 

 of clearinf,' the land. And clearing the la^id was no small job. But a big 

 change has cone In the timber supplies of this country and now a whole lot of 

 farmers would lilre to see more timber ON their land. 



The same change has come about in the hills and in the forests. America's 

 great staiids of virgin timber — once thought INEXHAUSTIBLE — have been used up so 

 fast tlos.t already the last extensive stands are being tapped. The United 

 States is a great wood-using nation. Our newspapers alone eat up thousands 

 of acres of timber every year. That moaning or evening paper you buy for a 

 few cents is printed on a wood-pulp paper and you have to have trees if you* re 

 going to have wood pulp. That's only one example of the country's m::Jtsioth 

 appetite for wood and that v/ood has to be supplied somehow — unless v/e can find 

 a good substitute. The trouble. is, virgin timber is practically irreplaceable 

 because of the length of time necessary to grow material of the highest 

 quality. You can' t grow a tree over the week-end, you iOiow, 



I vfas talking this over with some of the men in the Forest Service of 

 the Departiuent of Agriculture the other day and they gave me some figures. 

 The forest land of the United States, they said, amounts to about 730 thousand 

 square miles altogether. About 150 thousand square miles is managed for 

 permanent timber production under public ownership, Federal, State, and local. 

 The other 580 thousand square miles — an area larger than France, Belgivim, 

 the Notherlr^ds, Denmr.rk, Germany, and the British Isles, by the way — is 

 privately owned. Tr^is privrtely owned forest land supports industries ^^iving 

 enploymont to more than a million people raid turning out each year wood 

 products vnlued at 2 billion dollrxs. This is enough to s^ipply domestic 

 needs and furnish wood products worth about 200 million dollars to foreign 

 countries* 



Thr.t sounds very inpreaslvo-" that sounds like very good business. 

 That sounds like Amcrlco,' s wood pile is a very "big proposition and it is. 



