Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest Part 1

Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest.

by Edward Tyson Allen.

PREFACE

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT AND WHY

The object of this booklet is to present the elementary principles of forest conservation as they apply on the Pacific coast from Montana to California.

There is a keen and growing interest in this subject. Citizens of the western states are beginning to realize that the forest is a community resource and that its wasteful destruction injures their welfare. Lumbermen are coming to regard timber land not as a mine to be worked out and abandoned, but as a possible source of perpetual industry. They find little available information, however, as to how these theories can be reduced to actual practice. The Western Forestry and Conservation a.s.sociation believes it can render no more practical service than by being the first to outline for public use definite workable methods of forest management applicable to western conditions.

A publication of this length can give little more than an outline, but attempt has been made either to answer the most obvious questions which suggest themselves to timber owners interested in forest preservation or to guide the latter in finding their own answers.

Only the most reliable conservative information has been drawn on, much of it having been collected by the Government.

While the booklet is intended to be of use chiefly to forest owners, a chapter on the advantage to the community of a proper state forest policy is included, also a chapter on tree growing by farmers.

The first presents the economic relation of forest preservation to public welfare, with its problems of fire prevention, taxation and reforestation; for the use of writers, legislators, voters, or others desiring to investigate this subject of growing public concern. It is based upon the conclusions of the best unprejudiced authorities who have approached these problems from the public standpoint.

In the technical chapters on forest management and its possibilities, the author accepts full responsibility for conclusions drawn except when otherwise noted. To the Forest Service, however, is ent.i.tled the credit for collecting practically all the growth and yield figures upon which these conclusions are based. Especial acknowledgement is due to Mr. J. F. k.u.mmel for information on tree planting.

In concluding this preface, the author regrets that the booklet which it introduces was necessarily written hurriedly, a page or two at a time, at odd hours taken from the work of a busy office.

For this reason its style and management leaves much to be desired, but it has been thought better to make the information it contains immediately available than to await a doubtful opportunity to rewrite it.

INTRODUCTION

WHERE WE STAND TODAY

WHAT WE HAVE

_The five states of Montana, Idaho, Was.h.i.+ngton, Oregon and California contain half the merchantable timber in the United States today--a fact of startling economic significance._ It means first of all that here is an existing resource of incalculable local and national value. It means also that here lies the most promising field of production for all time. The wonderful density and extent of our Western forests are not accidental, but result because climatic and other conditions are the most favorable in the world for forest growth. In just the degree that they excel forests elsewhere is it easier to make them continue to do so.

WHAT WE ARE DOING WITH IT

_On the other hand, forest fires in Montana, Idaho, Was.h.i.+ngton, Oregon and California destroy annually, on an average, timber which if used instead of destroyed would bring forty million dollars to their inhabitants, Idleness of burned and cut-over land represents a direct loss almost as great._

These are actual money losses to the community. So is the failure of revenue through the destruction of a tax resource. Equally important, and hardly less direct, is the injury to agricultural and industrial productiveness which depends upon a sustained supply of wood and water.

DOES IT PAY?

Practically all this loss is unnecessary. Other countries have stopped the forest fire evil. Other countries have found a way to make forest land continue to grow forest. Consequently we can.

It is clearly only a question of whether it is worth while. Let us consider this question, not only in its relation to posterity or to the lumberman, but from the standpoint of the average citizen of the West today.

CHAPTER I

FORESTRY AND THE PUBLIC

TIMBER MEANS PAY CHECKS

_Forest wealth is community wealth._ The public's interest in it is affected very little by the pa.s.sage of timber lands into private owners.h.i.+p, for all the owner can get out of them is the stumpage value. The people get everything else. Our forests earn nothing except by being cut and s.h.i.+pped to the markets of the world. Of the price received for them usually much less than a fifth is received by the owner. Nearly all goes to pay for labor and supplies here at home.

_Even now, when the western lumber industry is insignificant compared to what it will be soon, it brings over $125,000,000 a year into these five states._ This immense revenue flows through every artery of labor, commerce and agriculture; in the open farming countries as well as in the timbered districts. It is shared alike by laborer, farmer, merchant, artisan and professional man. It is their greatest source of income, for lumber is the chief product which, being sold elsewhere, actually brings in outside money.

That it is essential to the prosperity of every citizen to have this contribution to his livelihood continue requires no argument.

From the manufacturing point of view alone, our forest resources are as important to everyone of us as to the lumberman, and in many ways more so, for if they are exhausted he can move or change his business; while the dependent industries cannot. But our welfare is at stake in a dozen other ways also.

OUR INTEREST AS CONSUMERS

Every person who uses wood, whether to build, fence, burn, box his goods, or timber his mine, is directly interested in a cheap and plentiful supply of timber. _Every acre burned, every cut-over acre lying idle, raises the price for him without furnis.h.i.+ng any revenue with which to help pay it. Every acre saved from fire, every acre of young growth, lowers it for him and puts money in circulation besides._

Similarly, the cost to the consumer of most articles of every day necessity is directly affected by the connection of forest material with their production. Wood and water are almost as essential to mining as are, hence influence the price of metals. In the form of fuel, buildings, or boxes, if not as an actual const.i.tuent of the product itself, wood supply bears a like relation to almost every industry.

Every reduction of the lumber traffic which helps support our railroads, or of their supply of poles, ties and car material, tends to raise the cost of our groceries and other rail-transported commodities.

SCHOOL LANDS

Most of our western states have immense areas of forested grant lands, the sale of timber from which supports the public schools and other state inst.i.tutions. Destruction of this a.s.set is a direct blow to these inst.i.tutions which can be only partially met by increased taxation.

THE FARMER HAS THE MOST AT STAKE

In the case of western agriculture, the relation to the forest is fundamental and inseparable. Enough has been said to show that because of its importance as a sustaining industry lumber manufacture is a prodigious factor in creating a market for farm products, also that the cost of all articles used by the farmer is cheapened by forest preservation. _But back of this lies the all-important dependence of western agriculture upon irrigation. We must save the forests that store the waters._

Of particular significance to the farmer, too, is the tremendous importance of forests as a source of tax revenue to help support state and county government. The cost of government is growing as our population grows. Taxable property grows mainly in the cities.

Elsewhere we confront the problem of diminis.h.i.+ng timber to tax and consequent heavier and heavier burden on farm property. _It will be a bad situation for the farmer if the timber is all destroyed and he has to pay all the taxes, as well as a higher price for his buildings, fences and fruit boxes. Every acre of timber burned or wasted hastens this day._

The conservation thus suggested does not mean non-use of ripe timber, but does mean protecting it from useless waste and destruction, and replacing it by reforestation when it is used.

CONDITIONS OF LIFE THE REAL ISSUE INVOLVED

Lack of s.p.a.ce forbids recounting many other ways in which the forest question touches the average citizen. It enters into our prospects of development, our investment values and our insurance rates. Like the keystone of an arch, or the link of a chain, forests cannot be destroyed without the collapse of the entire fabric. Their preservation is not primarily a property question, but a principle of public economy, dealing with one of the elements of human existence and progress. _Failure to treat it as such means harder conditions of life, a handicap of industry; not only for our children, but for us as well._

It all sums up to this: On every acre of western forest destroyed by fire, or that fails to grow where it might grow, _we, the citizens of the West who are not lumbermen, bear fully eighty per cent of the direct loss_ and sustain serious further injury to our general safety and profit.

HOW WE THROW AWAY MILLIONS

Notwithstanding the above facts, we allow $40,000,000 which we and our families should share to vanish every year, leaving nothing more enduring than a pall of smoke from Canada to the Mexican line.

The great area thus denuded uselessly, with that which produced public wealth through lumber manufacture, _together having been capable of affording a community resource of $165,000,000_, are abandoned to lie idle and a menace to remaining timber. It is exactly as though the owner of a 165-acre orchard should destroy forty acres wantonly and also abandon the rest, unfenced, uncultivated and uncared for.

The one waste is as unnecessary as the other. Our Pacific coast forests owe their unparalleled productiveness to a peculiarly fortunate combination of climate and rapid growing species unknown elsewhere.

Nowhere else is forest reproduction so swift and certain. Nowhere can it be secured with so little effort and expense. A little forethought in cutting methods and protection of the cut-over area from recurring fires, and an early second crop is a.s.sured. Saw timber can be grown in forty to seventy-five years; ties, mine timber and piles in less.

HOW WE MIGHT MAKE IMMENSE PROFIT INSTEAD.

It is reasonable to suppose that, although the quality may be inferior to that of the old forest removed now, timber scarcity will make a second cut in sixty years equally profitable per acre. Therefore, if the area denuded annually at present were encouraged to reforest and protected, it should at the end of that period again yield $165,000,000 to the community. Each year's growth at present would be worth a sixtieth of that sum, or $2,750,000. _If given any chance to do so, the area deforested in only ten years would actually earn the people of our five western forest states $27,500,000 a year._