FORESTS COMING BACK IN UNITED STATES

Northern Advocate, 16 July 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

FORESTS COMING BACK IN UNITED STATES

■v? in a root- at issue 01 me cnrisium | Science Monitor." there is pubJ, fished an article which should have peculiar interest in New Zealand, where the claims of alforsstnli’cn are being urged widely and strongly. The writer. Mr W. A. Du Puy, points out that not only arc millions of persons in the United States turning to National State Forests annually for recreation, but the Government's husbandry is fast achieving its fundamental objective of restoring the nation's heritage of trees. That tenth of the" United States that is in National Forests is doing very well, thank you. The great thing that has been happening during the last few years has been its discovery by i the masses and their flocking into it for purposes of recreation. Last year, 60,000.000 persons, seme of whom, of course, were repeaters, came into contact with the National Forests one way or another, ranging from a month in camp to a mere driving through one of them.

The National Forests have been discovered as places of recreation with uncounted charms and free for the taking, and their fundamental purpose, which is the growing of trees, has not been forgotten. Careful examinations show that they are on the way back in the production of timber, are beginning to show a very real prospect of producing as much or more of it than they did before the white man ever thrust himself into their solitudes.

The National Forests now cover an area as big as New York. Pennsylvania. Ohio. Illinois. Indiana and Kentucky combined. There arc 175.000.000

acres of them, which means that every citizen owns about an acre and a third of timberland, equal to a tract 200 feet wide and 300 feet long.

Between Maine and Mexico, the forest areas were pretty well cut over for 200 years, with no thought of the future: or burned over and left to come out of the despoliation as best they could. The bright side of the picture is that which shows that the forests are coming back.

Lumbering in the United States started in the white pines of Net/ England, magnificent tree that it was, spread to New York, Pennsylvania, and jumped to the West —for this same species reaches all the way to Idaho. It looked as though those tress, down east, would bo exterminated. As much as 100 years ago. however, rocky farms up that way began to be abandoned. Since the white pine puts wings on its seeds, they fly far and were likely to move in and take possession. There are many splendid forests, now 50 to 75 years old. growing on lands that were once cultivated.

The linos! white pine in the nation grew in the rich soil of Pennsylvania, where a remnant of them known as Hearts Content is still to be found in the Alleghany National Forest. There is no regret that the land occupied by white pine in New York and Pennsylvania should have gone into farms. But the story is different in the Lakes States. It was here that man wrought his master outrage against a great forest, laying the whole region bare burning it over repeatedly until there was no seed left to -point the way back for the white and red pine. In that area, as big as the Slate of California. there was nothing but a waste of brush. The soil here was lake sand, little of it good enough for farming. But it will grow pine trees, which get along where little else of value will. During the past decade, the- Forest Service has bought up much of this waste land and, remembering its,past glory, has started out to redeem it by planting on it young trees grown in nurseries. It has been setting enough of them out each year to cover a strip a mile wide and 250 miles long. At this rate, the Lakes States region, once the heart of the lumber industry of the United Stales, will eventually be brought back to production.

The long stretch of land bordering the Atlantic and the Gulf between Virginia and Texas is also sand, on which the pine tree takes refuge and which ft comes to dominate. It was cut ever almost as ruthlessly as that in the Lakes States, but conditions were more favourable to its coming back.

In the South reproduction has not been as difficult as in the North. Certain seed trees have survived.

The southern pines have quite generally reoccupied the lands where their fathers grew. Recently, they have been coming into great prominence, because it has been found that, when they are big enough for cordwood, 10 to 20 years old, they are good pulpwood material. Paper mills have been coming south to be near them. This new timber on the scars of a generation ago is turning out to be so valuable that it pays to .raise it r.s a crop. The discovery amounts to an industrial sensation. Uncle Sam has acquired small National Forests in most of the southern states and is using them as demonstration plants to teach this new tree farming.

The Sierra Nevada Mountains of California slope down to the hot. dry valleys. In the frenzies that were the early days in the Mother Lode country, when the placer miners built long flumes to lead water to,their gravel beds, little mills began cutting along the foothills. Often they stripped the pine clean and, oak brush came to occupy its place. There were bigger

nulls higher up, and fire often broke out in their slash. There were many conflagrations even before the while man came, as is attested by old scars and the age of trees over wide areas. Lightning and Indians had set them to burning. The activities of the Forest service has steadily decreased the number ol fires. In these Sierras natural seeding is likely to establish forests when the fires are kept out. The coastal areas of Washington and Oregon, and the Cascade Mountains that border them, is a region so favourable to. the growth of timber that, under ordinary circumstances, new forests come back of themselves where old ones are cut or burned. In 1846, in Oregon, the Yaquina fire ran through the Douglas fir, quite destroying one of the best forests in all the world. * * * » There are vast areas in that part of the United States that lies between the Rockies and the Sierras in which the yellow or ponderosa pine is the predominating species. There is a 700-mile stretch of these pines that reaches from the middle of Utah, all the way across Arizona, and half way through New Mexico. It is the longest stretch of pines of a single species in the nation. These forests, peculiarly, often grow in an oddly spotted way. Here will be an area of trees and immediately beside it an open grass area with never a sprig showing. Why trees grew on part of this land and not on all of it was long a mystery.

But nowi strange to say, the little trees arc marching out into the grassy areas. They are filling in what used to be open spaces in the forests. It looks as though, in certain areas, new forests might be established on 50 percent. or 100 per cent, more land than formerly. Thus these regions, in the future, may come to grow more trees than they ever did in the past.

The progress that is made toward suppressing fires can be shown in figures. Between 1910 and 1915. about 7000 acres out of each 1,000,000 in the National Forests were burned over. Between 1930 and 1935. just 20 years later, only 2000 acres out of each •1,000,000 were burned.

The National Forests are being operated. on what is known as a substantial yield basis. All the growing trees are being kept growing. There are many

places where active measures are being taken to improve the growth. “Release work” goes on in many places. Tills means that trees of no value are being cut down so that the good ones can get a better chance. Insect pests are being fought, overgrazing stopped. There is little question that the people’s forests are producing more and more timber all the time.