Forestry can never appeal to individual enterprise on a large scale.
Returns are too slow. As a national enterprise of the highest
importance it is gaining recognition, and there is a tendency among
some American cities to take advantage of its many possibilities. With
the exception of the vicinity of the Great Lakes, the world’s largest
reservoir of pure fresh water, cities must have water supplies from
available drainage or watershed areas. These can be devoted to forestry
with advantage from a sanitary point of view, and also with profit when
the trees begin to mature. Where convenient, the forested area can
also be made to serve as public parks. The city of Fall River, Mass.,
began in 1909 to plant trees in Watuppa Pond Reservation. There are
3,232 acres of land belonging to the municipality in a natural forest
condition and 1,552 acres suitable for reforesting. The trees are
supplied by the State Forestry Bureau. The Metropolitan Water Board,
which represents Boston and other cities in this matter, has planted,
chiefly in the Wachusetts Reservation, about 1,800 acres with forest
trees. In six years the State forestry service has furnished to the
cities of the State a sufficient number of trees to cover 1,481 acres,
and it is estimated that 15,000 acres in city reservoir tracts have
been put under some kind of forest treatment. Massachusetts has gone
beyond the use of the watershed reservations for this purpose. An act
was passed by the Legislature three years ago permitting cities to buy
land to be kept distinctly as forests, quite aside from water purposes.
There are now several of these city forests in existence.
Elsewhere in the United States the same tendency exists. In ten large
and middling-sized cities forest domains aggregating over 150,000 acres
are maintained, and it is probable that municipal forests comprise
250,000 acres. Newark, N.J., has a forest of 22,000 acres, and in time
the whole of it may be scientifically forested. Hartford, Conn., has
a forest property of 4,000 acres, which is being developed for timber
production. Here are examples for Canadian cities. Winnipeg’s water
development may be made to serve a double purpose. Even Toronto’s
suburban ravines, though unsuited and unnecessary for water supply,
might serve the dual purpose of timber production and park systems.
Municipal trading has many critics, often unreasonable, but municipal
reforesting should be made a possibility where Provincial authority is
neglecting its duty in that regard and falling behind in the march of
progress.--Toronto Globe.