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Star (Christchurch), Issue 18012, 24 November 1926, Page 12

In view of periodically repeated statements that this and other coun* tries’ timber supplies are doomed to exhaustion within a certain limited number of years, interest attaches to a letter received by Mr Seed, secretary of the Sawmillcrs’ Federation, from Mr L. M. Lane, of Totara North, at present visiting America. Mr Lane writes that the opinion has been generally held that the day would come when America would require the whole of New Zealand's available softwoods on account of the depredations of her own forests. Instead of that it is a fact that the lumber men of the States been operating and planning their business and their installations on a basis of having their industry not for twenty or forty years but for all time. Their calculations are based on the maintenance of permanent forest supplies, and while the cities have denounced the millers as ruthless vandals, the latter, in reality, have minded their own business by milling their ripe crops and conserving the young forests. The result is that to-day there is a greater stand of merchantable timber in the territory west of the Rockies than ever there was in all the great original forests of New England. New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and the three Great Lake states. The authority for the statement is a report of the forest department known as the Capper Report.