NEWS-PRINT SUPPLIES

Hokitika Guardian, 5 January 1921, Page 1

NEWS-PRINT SUPPLIES

( H(, ' v lo,| g wM Canada’s forests last? Can unaided Nature keep pace with an annual wood-cut that already exceeds 2,000,000 cords, and that will steadily increase as the paper-making industry grows? Widely diverse views have been expressed on this point (says the “Newspaper World” of October 30th). Boosters speak of the supply as “inexhaustbile”; others raise a cry of alarm; for.there are other destructive forces at work than the woodman’s axe —disease and fire.

Professor C. D. Howe, Dean of the Forestry Department of Toronto University, recently warned the people of Canada that unless measures are taken to pi event waste and to stimulate growth, the “end of the spruce is in sight.” In the Province of Quebec the average cut per acre under Government license is six or seven cords per acre. At the rate of H cords to the ton of paper, a mill making 200 tons a day will cut some 24 square miles of forest

every year. According to this authority it takes 150 years for Nature to produce a spruce saw-log of 12 inches diameter, and during the past 40 years as much lias been cut as will take 250 years to replace. But, it should be stated, this is under natural conditions, in which the seedlings in their initial stages have adverse influences to face. More scientific methods of logging, and measures of protection during early growth, would reduce this maturity period to a little more than',half. Fire prevention is receiving more and more attention, as indeed the situation demands; for Professor Howe tells us that during the past 75 years fires have destroyed from one-half to two-thirds of the entire Canadian forests. Re-afforestation, in these circumstances, is naturally not being left to the Government alone. Some of the pulp makers are looking ahead and anticipating the failure of purely natural supplies, by establishing nurseries and planting out their cut-over lands. The seeds are collected in the fall and planted in the spring. Germinating in from 1-1 to 21 days, and attining a height of 2 or 3 inches the first season, and I to 6 in the second, the firs and spruces are taken out of their frames in the beginning of the third season and set, out in rows in the open nursery. Care is still needed, bot'.r as to watering and weeding. When they are about a foot high they are transferred to the j forest, five or six feet apart, and protected from fire. About every ten years, according to the irate of growth, they are thinned out by eliminating the poorest. To make the work effective, the science of forestry has to be taken up seriously, and one or two progressive firms now employ experts. America, possibly in ignorance, but more probably in her own interest, is at present stressing the term ‘‘inexhaustible.” United States paper companies have acquired extensive timber limits in Canada, and are now protesting against a restriction (it has been in force for years) that the logs must be converted into pulp in the Dominion, so encouraging losal industry. These companies urge that here lies the cause of news-print shortage in the States. But the Canadians “get back” on their cousins by pointing out that, while the news-print shortage in the States last year was 63,000 tons, 4 hat same year American manufacturers exported 110,295 tons; which puts on the protest another complexion. In any case, one can sympathise cordially v ith Canadians in their wish, while cultivating inter-trade relations, to conserve to their own population as much as possible of .the profits, direct and secondary, of their own natuifU tesourees.