UL 
13 
THE COMING TIMBER FAMINE. 
ERY few people have any con- 
ception of the enormous demands 
that are constantly made upon 
the world’s available stock of 
timber, the extent to which the existing 
supplies are being annually diminished, 
and the extraordinarily serious conse- 
quences that must ensue if nothing is 
done in the near future to grapple with 
the emergency thus created. It is gener. 
ally known in New Zealand that our 
kauri is within measurable distance of 
extinction, and that many of our most 
valuable indigenous trees cannot long 
hold out against the constantly increas- 
ing demand. But even the people most 
directly interested in our sawmills or in 
the importation of Oregon pine do not 
seem to realise that the shortage in our 
timber output is merely a single phase of 
a widespread falling off in the world’s 
supply of timber, and that in no long 
period of time we will be unable to re- 
plenish our stock by importations from 
other countries except at a ruinous cost. 
“Will there be a timber famine?’ asks 
Mr. J. H. Young in a recent issue of the 
“World’s Work” (Eng. ed.), and his an- 
swer to this momentous question opens 
in the following ominous terms:— 
FACTS AND FIGURES. 
“The rate at which the 
world’s supply of timber is being de- 
pleted is causing the gravest anxiety to 
those who are interested in afforestation, 
and many authorities on timber-growing 
affirm that unless the State undertakes 
some scheme of sylviculture, the very ex- 
istence of the many industries dependent 
upon our wood supply is bound to be 
seriously imperilled in the future.” This 
warning is directed more particularly to 
the United Kingdom, but unfortunately it 
apples quite as emphatically to nearly 
every other country in the world. In one 
alarming 
sense it is quite unnecessary to pile up 
huge masses of statistics to illustrate 
what must be a sufficiently obvious truth, 
For it is self-evident that the forest re- 
sources of the world.are not illimitable, 
and that if they are continually being cut 
down without being replaced, the day 
must come sooner or later when the de- 
mand for timber will no longer find means 
to satisfy itself, 
mere truism, 
isms it ig 
Chis, is, of course, a 
but like many other tru- 
not sufficiently appreciated by 
people in general, and this must be my 
excuse for labouring a point that cer- 
tainly needs very little corroborative 
testimony. However, it may help to 
drive the argument home if I add here 
a few figures bearing on this question of 
the diminution of the world’s timber 
Stock, quoted from an interesting article 
that appeared recently in the Melbourne 
“Age.” “The world’s timber supplies are. 
rapidly diminishing, and in almost every 
country the circumstance - is causing an 
apprehension bordering on consternation, 
for the demand for timber all the world 
over is steadily and speedily augmenting. 
Jt was estimated not long ago by an 
Afforestation Committee in Britain that 
if the present rate of consumption is 
maintained the timber supplies 
of Europe and America will be 
exhausted in another twenty years. 
Britain annually imports 5,000,000,000 
superficial feet of timber, and her con- 
sumption, according to the Jatest avail- 
able returns, increased. in 1906 by 
633,000,000 feet, Germany has a well- 
organised Forest Department, and one- 
fourth of her area is under forest ;, never- 
theless she imports nearly 3,000,000,000 
superficial feet per year. France has 
one-fifth of her area under forest, and 
she employs 3000 officers in the work 
of timber conservation and reafforesta- 
tion; vet France imports 738,000,000 feet 
