FORESTS AND MEN-part 2

Pictured above: Single tong loading with a Mobile crane in the west coast fir region.

Company Forests

LARGE PRIVATE HOLDINGS IN THE NORTH

HARDY L. SHIRLEY.

FORESTRY on large private properties has made gratifying progress in the Northern States during the past two decades. The effect is becoming visible in the woods and mill, in the factory and office. Companies have doubled and trebled the number of foresters they employ; foresters themselves have risen to positions in which their opinions count on policies governing forest-land acquisitions, cutting practices, sustained-yield operations, wood processing, and the long-term plans for future timber supplies.

Change is entering the woods in other ways. The old-time lumberjack is slowly giving way to the mechanically skilled timber worker who can handle power chain saws, power skidders, bulldozers, mechanical loaders, trailer trucks, and new road-building equipment. The trained personnel now have demanded improved logging camps and better living standards for woods workers. Officials of companies that follow good practices on their own land have sought to spread good forest practices to all timberlands that furnish products to their mills.

The reasons for the better forestry are many. Outstanding has been the wartime shortages of saw timber, pulpwood, mine timbers, and other products. More important is the growing realization that intelligently applied forestry pays. Pulp companies particularly have been quick to react to their changed situation. Canada has placed restrictions on the export of pulpwood to the United States in order to safeguard supplies for her own mills. In New York State alone from 1917 to 1940 a total of 69 pulp- and paper-manufacturing plants closed. Twenty-one new high-capacity mills were established during the period to increase paper capacity from 5,022 to 6,487 tons a day, but pulp capacity declined. A net decrease of 39 paper mills and 56 pulp mills occurred. The New York State Department of Commerce attributes this decline primarily to the scarcity and high price of pulpwood.

Pulpwood is now being transported long distances. Some mills in the Lake States haul spruce from Colorado and Montana, Pennsylvania mills haul from New Brunswick and Virginia, and New York mills from Ontario, northern New Hampshire, and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. A mill in the southern White Mountains of New Hampshire recently purchased pulp lands along the northern boundary of Maine where the wood must be floated down the St. John River to a railhead, then hauled some 375 miles to their mill. Coal-mining companies also are concerned. To insure a permanent supply of mine timbers, companies are acquiring and managing forest land. Spool manufacturers, veneer makers, roofing-felt companies, as well as lumber companies, likewise are seeking dependable supplies of timber.

The beginnings of large-scale private forestry in the North date back more than 100 years to the large individual and family holdings built up as permanent timberland investment properties in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and other Northern States. Management plans were seldom prepared, but agents for the owners sold cutting rights, collected the money, and distributed it among the several owners. Forestry entered the operation only in that the land was held permanently for timber crops rather than abandoned or sold after the first harvest; a few individual owners actually insisted on applying minimum-diameter cutting limits.

Other private forestry programs have been functioning for two decades or even more in the North. Outstanding successes and some discouraging failures have occurred. Obstacles that caused abandonment of past forestry programs still persist to plague future forest enterprise. The good and the bad must both be weighed before future trends can be predicted with assurance.

Much cause for optimism exists, but only a good beginning has been made. Scarcity is a dominant factor in spurring forestry action. So far, however, effort has been concentrated more on acquiring extensive holdings than on building up high-yielding capacity on the land. A few intensively managed properties are yielding timber volume and dollar profits at two to five times the average return per acre.

The North, as considered here, includes all States north of the southern boundaries of Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and east of the western boundaries of Iowa and Minnesota. My discussion is confined primarily to large timberland holdings, those of 50,000 acres or more, but a few smaller holdings are mentioned to show important developments in private forestry. All types of ownerships are included whether the land is held by milling companies for their supplies, by investors, or by those interested in subsurface rights.

OWNERSHIP of large forest holdings in the North is distributed among individual owners, families, investment companies, pulp and paper companies, lumber companies, mining companies, and some others.

The large private holdings are concentrated in Maine, which has 31 owners who control more than half the total area in large holdings in the North. Protection of forests against fire is good in almost all cases. The exceptions are the forests owned by coal-mining companies, where hazards are high, local interest low, and public cooperation in fire protection meager. The degree of protection attained, however, is determined more by the work of the State fire-control organizations than by special effort of individual owners. The companies that have their own fire-control organizations are the exception in the North.

The cutting practices currently applied over most of the large holdings leave much to be desired. Many properties that are operated on essentially a sustained-yield basis have cutting standards best designated as "chopper's choice." Some companies attempt to apply diameter limits and a few mark trees before cutting. Where only extensive management is practiced, marking of individual trees is not always essential particularly in areas and stands that are subject to windthrow and among tree species, such as aspen and jack pine, that have relatively short lives. Yellow birch, although subject neither to windfall nor early decadence in a closed forest, declines in vigor on areas selectively logged. Over much of northern Maine, where roads are lacking, hardwoods are still unmerchantable. Serious losses are occurring from birch dieback and beech scale. The death of old trees will, however, release spruce and balsam fir that will produce a valuable crop.

CASE STUDIES of a few owners will be presented. Those selected are not the only ones with good forestry programs, nor have they necessarily the best programs. Some were selected because they have some distinctive feature in their program. Information has been gained from published articles, letters, interviews with company foresters, and conversations with other persons familiar with the programs.

The first group of examples includes the individual, family, and investment holdings.

That type of large forest holdings is found primarily in the unorganized towns of Maine, where the remoteness and lack of transportation restrict operations to extensive, rather than intensive, forestry.

The Coe and Pingree estate, built up in the late nineteenth century, at one time included more than a million acres. The founder, David Pingree, insisted on restricted cutting of spruce to trees 14 inches in diameter and larger. The practice was abandoned soon after the turn of the century, when pulpwood cutting came to the fore. The heirs still own a large area of the land.

Management practices today are on an extensive basis, but the property continues to yield periodically a substantial income to its owners.

Gifford Pinchot and Henry S. Graves, among the first Americans to be trained scientifically as foresters, drew up management plans in 1898 for Nehasane Park and the Whitney Preserve, two Adirondack properties that were held primarily for recreation. The owners, however, early became interested in scientific forestry as a means of making the properties self-supporting.

Careful timber estimates were made, type maps were prepared, and contracts for cutting spruce trees to a 10-inch diameter limit were drawn up. The white pine, considered overmature, and cherry were cut without restrictions. Other hardwoods were not merchantable. Yield studies indicated that a cut of the same intensity could be had again at the end of 36 years. Nehasane Park was logged first in 1898 and 1899 and again in 1915 to 1930. A third cutting is now under way. It is difficult to make an accurate comparison between actual yields and anticipated yields. In the first place, the management plan as prepared by Mr. Graves was not fully carried out. The cutting intervals were shorter than he had expected and the diameter limits were lowered. Furthermore, defective hardwoods were not removed and they expanded following the removal of merchantable trees. The volume of softwood and the quality of hardwood declined because of logging practices.