Note.--Mr. Brown is a practical forester, having been chief forester
for the Houston Oil Co. and a graduate of Biltmore Forest School.--Ed.
The preservation of our forests is an imperative business necessity.
We have come to see that whatever destroys the forest, except to make
way for agriculture, threatens our well being.--President Roosevelt.
With abundant supplies of timber for farm consumption, farmers of the
South have been inclined to regard the question of forest preservation
merely as a matter of sentiment, and have come to look upon the
forester as an impracticable sort of sentimentalist, whose main object
in life is to keep some lumberman from cutting his timber.
This indifference has resulted in the loss of the support of the
farming element to the cause of forestry, whereas the lumberman
who at one time considered the forester his natural enemy and the
forestry cause a clog in the wheels of progress, immediately began to
investigate the question with a view of combatting forest legislation
and the creation of a forestry sentiment throughout the country.
The result was that a thorough understanding of the objects of
forestry and the aims of the forester has caused the lumbermen and
lumber associations to give their unqualified support to all practical
forestry legislation. And in the Southern States we find that the only
journal of any importance that is persistently advocating forestry as a
business is one of the foremost lumber journals south of the Ohio River.
The silence that the farm journals of the country have maintained on
the question can be explained only by their ignorance of the question
and its important bearing on the agricultural interests of the entire
country. And as it is the purpose of this magazine to discuss all
questions of vital importance as well as those that will be of passing
interest to the farmers of the whole country it is well to begin with
an understanding of what forestry is, and to advance a few reasons why
the farmer should be the most ardent advocate of forestry.
Dr. W. H. Schlich, the noted English forester, says the task with which
“forestry has to deal is to ascertain the principles according to which
forests shall be managed and to apply these principles to the treatment
of the forests.”
Dr. B. E. Fernow, formerly chief of the Division of Forestry, defines
it as “The rational treatment of forests for forest purposes.”
Dr. C. A. Schenck, of the Biltmore Forest School, gives the following
very broad and terse definition: “Forestry is the proper handling of
forest investments.”
We see from these definitions that the forestry is purely a matter of
business differing only from other investments in the time element. A
forestry venture cannot be undertaken with a view of getting immediate
returns, but contemplates the continuity of the investment which makes
it the first duty of the forester to determine what is the best use the
forest can be put to in order to obtain the greatest annual return upon
the investment without drawing upon his capital invested. This does
not necessarily mean that his forest must be devoted entirely to the
production of timber, it may be maintained as a game preserve, or as a
watershed, in which case the returns to be obtained from the sale of
timber will be a secondary consideration.
Consequently we see that the forester is not merely a botanist or a
tree planter, but in the fullest sense of the term is a technically
educated man, with the knowledge of the forest trees and their history
and of all that pertains to their production, combines further
knowledge which enables him to manage forest property so as to produce
certain conditions resulting in the highest attainable revenue from the
soil by wood-crops.
The effect of forest cover and water-flow has been so persistently and
constantly proclaimed as the one great need for forest preservation
that the more important one of supply has been neglected.
In a series of articles by Dr. Fernow, on “The Outlook of the Timber
Supply in the United States” (Quarterly, 1903), after carefully
considering the data compiled by the Chief Geographer, together with
his personal investigations, he summarizes the situation, which
justifies the urgent need of the forester’s art in the United States,
from the point of view of supplies, as follows:
1. The consumption of forest supplies, larger than in any other country
in the world, promises not only to increase with the natural increase
of the population, but in excess of this increase per capita, similar
to that of other civilized, industrial nations, annually by a rate of
not less than three to five per cent.
2. The most sanguine estimate of timber standing predicates an
exhaustion of supplies in less than thirty years if this rate of
consumption continues, and of the most important timber supplies in a
much shorter time.
3. The conditions for continued imports from our neighbor, Canada,
practically the only country having accessible supplies such as we
need, are not reassuring and may not be expected to lengthen natural
supplies appreciably.
4. The reproduction of new supplies on the existing forest area could,
under proper management, be made to supply the legitimate requirements
for a long time; but fires destroy the young growth over large areas,
and where production is allowed to develop in the mixed forest, at
least, owing to the culling processes, which remove the valuable kinds
and leave the weeds, these latter reproduce in preference.
5. The attempts at systematic silviculture, that is, the growing of new
crops, are, so far, infinitesimal compared with the needs.
That this is a question of serious importance to the South, as well as
to the whole country, is shown by the great increase in the South’s
production of lumber, which, owing to the depletion in other sections
of the country, has risen from eleven and nine-tenths per cent in
1880 to twenty-five and two-tenths per cent of the total output of the
United States in 1900, and it is not hard to predict an even greater
production for 1910, when one concern alone has increased the number
of its mills in the long leaf pine belt from seven to fifteen, and its
daily output from 500,000 to 1,000,000 feet during the period from 1900
to 1904.
Basing their estimates upon the present standards of grading, the
hardwood lumber journals are predicting the total exhaustion of the
available supplies of this timber in fifteen years, and the hardwood
lumbermen are already looking to forestry as a means of relief.
In an address delivered before the third annual meeting of the Hardwood
Manufacturers’ Association of the United States, as an introduction to
the subject of “The Hardwood Producing Centers of the United States,”
Mr. John W. Love, of Nashville, said:
“I hope to be able to briefly call the attention of this body of
practical manufacturers to a few pertinent facts that may, in a
measure, at least, open our eyes to a painful truth, viz., the
rapidly decreasing area of hardwood timber in the United States,
and when we consider how very little is being done to conserve our
forest growth--how the forests are being cleaned from hoop-poles to
giant oaks, and that to supply the one item of cross ties that are
used in this country alone, about 4,000,000,000 feet of timber is
required (clearing about 200,000 acres of wood lot annually), and
a large proportion of these ties are cut from thrifty young trees,
we must conclude that a matter so weighty as to give us pause. The
one hopeful sign of the future is the hope that practical forestry
methods may be enforced by the Government.”
This in an address from a lumberman to an association of lumber
manufacturers is indeed an encouraging sign of the times, but I fear
he has waked up “to the realization that our efforts to secure a more
rational treatment of our forest resources and apply forestry in their
management are not too early, but rather too late: that they are by no
means sufficient; that serious trouble and inconvenience are in store
for us in the not too distant future; that the blind indifference and
the dallying or amateurish playing with the problem of legislatures and
officials is fatal.”
The railroads and the farmers of the Western plains were among the
first to appreciate the importance of making provision for a future
supply of construction timber and material for use on the farms.
With the far-sighted policy of manipulators of great corporations, the
officials of the Santa Fe Railroad were among the pioneers in forest
planting in America on railroads, as about twenty years ago they
planted 1,280 acres in hardy catalpa at a total expense of $128,000,
and they estimated that at the end of twenty-five years from date of
planting this tract will have produced $2,500,000 of poles, ties and
posts.
A few years ago the Illinois Central made a plantation of catalpa and
black locust in Illinois and during the current year the Louisville &
Nashville Railroad have arranged for a similar plantation in Alabama.
It has not been necessary for the farmers of the South to resort to
plantations for their supplies of posts and fuel, and if we are not
improvident of our supplies it will hardly become necessary, as we have
left on nearly every farm enough timber of suitable varieties from
which we can procure our future supplies by self-sown seed, provided
the sections to be reserved for timber growth are protected from stock
and fires. In some instances, however, it may prove cheaper and more
expedient to plant as was the case with the now famous yaggy catalpa
plantation near Hutchinson, Kan., in which a ten-year-old block showed
a net value of $197, or a yearly net income of $19.75 per acre.
And a twenty-five-year-old plantation of red juniper, belonging to F.
C. F. Schutz, Menlo, Iowa, showed a net value of $200.54 per acre, or a
yearly net income of about $8--not a bad showing for forestry, when we
bear in mind that the net income from other farm crops seldom exceeds
that amount, but from the farm crops the returns are secured annually,
while in the case of a forestry investment there is quite a period
preceding the first harvest, during which we have to figure in an
accumulative value.
All wood-lot planting should be governed by the local demand, for
that reason it would be hard to suggest either methods or species for
the South as a whole, but generally speaking, black locust (robinia
pseudoacacia), hardy catalpa, mulberry and chestnut would be the most
desirable, as the first three would be quickly available for fence
posts, and the chestnut would always be in demand for telephone and
telegraph poles as well as furnishing construction timber.
Wood-lot forestry has the advantage over similar work conducted on
a large scale, as the farmer is at no expense for protection or
supervision, the location of forest on the farm assures its safety from
fire or trespass, and he gives it his personal attention.
However, to secure the most desirable management his supervision should
be carried on under the direction of trained foresters.
To secure this without appreciable additional cost it is to his
interest to ally himself with those who are striving for a State
forestry system, under which a forester would be employed whose duty
would be to look after the State reserves and give advice to farmers
and timber land owners on the management of all forest tracts set aside
for permanent forest investments.
The indirect utility of the forests is well known and appreciated by
those who have given the matter any thought, but the average American
farmer has little use for a thing which does not appeal to him in
dollars and cents, however, the Bureau of Forestry realizing the great
importance of this matter to the agricultural interests, sent Mr. J.
W. Twomey to the San Bernardino Mountains of California to conduct
investigations of the “Relation of Forests to Stream Flow,” and in the
“Year-Book” of the Department of Agriculture for 1904 he reports these
conclusions:
“In humid regions, where the precipitation is fairly evenly distributed
over the year, and where the catchment area is sufficiently large to
permit the greater part of the seepage to enter the stream above the
point where it is gauged, the evidence accumulated to date indicates
that stream flow is materially increased by the presence of forests.
“In regions characterized by the short wet season and a long dry one,
as in Southern California and many other portions of the West, present
evidence indicates, at least on small mountainous catchment areas, that
the forest very materially decreases the total amount of run-off.
“Although the forest may have, on the whole, but little appreciable
effect in increasing the rainfall and the annual run-off, its economic
importance in regulating streams is beyond computation. The great
indirect value of the forest is the effect which it has in preventing
wind and water erosion, thus allowing the soil on hills and mountains
to remain where it is formed, and in other ways providing an adequate
absorbing medium at the sources of the water courses of the country.
It is the amount of water that passes into the soil, not the amount of
rainfall, that makes a garden or a desert.”
With such evidence as this before them, what farmer in the South will
dare question the importance of forestry to the agricultural interests
of every section of the South, and especially those sections lying
adjacent to streams having their sources in the territory of the
proposed Appalachian Forest Reserve?
By protecting the forest growth on the watersheds of these streams the
flow of the water is rendered more continuous, and the dangers from
violent floods, which destroy fences and carry away the most fertile
soil, are lessened.
The South to-day is pre-eminent in agriculture and timber production,
but the wasteful destruction of our forest resources bids fair to
transfer the laurels to the great undeveloped West, where we find
over 60,000,000 acres of forest reserves, which will for all time to
come offer a continuous supply of lumber for the manufacturer and
an abundance of water for the farmers who have made a garden of the
deserts.
It is the duty of the Southern farmer to join with the hardwood
lumberman in his efforts to introduce forestry in the South, and by so
doing give to succeeding generations the heritage that except for the
destructive forces of man would have come to them in nature’s great
scheme of things.
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