FORESTRY ON LARGE OWNERSHIPS IN THE SOUTH

J. HERBERT STONE, CHARLES F. EVANS, W. R. HINE.

In few places and in few times has interest in growing trees as a commercial crop been greater than it is now among the owners of large private forests in the South.

The reasons for this upsurge are many. So are the evidences of it. Pulp companies, sawmill owners, investment corporations, and the larger woodland owners are aware that trees have great market value. Prices obtained are high and supplies are limited. Public forests have demonstrated over and over that timber is a crop that grows. Many forest industries are placing their holdings under good forest management; instead of trying to sell cut-over land, they are buying additional areas of forest land; they are teaching forest management to their employees and to small owners from whom they buy forest products. Businessmen in the other fields, educators, legislators, and leaders in thought and action generally are taking an interest in the movement; they also have learned that timber is one of the South's great resources.

Between the Potomac and the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the prairies of Texas and Oklahoma are 183 million acres of forest and potential forest land 40 percent of the commercial forest land of the country. Soil and climate, except in limited areas, are favorable for tree growth.

FOUR MAJOR TOPOGRAPHIC REGIONS are recognized: The mountains, the Piedmont, the Coastal Plains, and the Delta.

In the mountains, the forests are made up principally of hardwood trees, oaks, yellow-poplar, cherry, and others. The white pine and hemlock occur, mixed with the better hardwoods in the moist coves. Spruce grows on some of the higher, colder ridges. Shortleaf pine and some other pines mix with the hardwood species on the lower mountain slopes. Rainfall ranges from 60 to 100 inches a year. The rough and steep topography makes for difficult and expensive logging.

A substantial part of the mountain forest area is in public ownership, acquired for the purpose of controlling the rain and snow that fall on the headwaters of the navigable streams. Some large areas remain in private ownership. The rest is in small ownerships, strips of forest land running from the crop and pasture land in the valley up the slope to the ridge. Relatively slow growth and higher costs of logging make the mountain region a little less attractive to private forest enterprise than the other regions.

The Piedmont forests are a mixture of southern pines and upland hardwoods. The more prolific light-seeded pines have reclaimed large areas abandoned by agriculture. At one time or another, 90 percent of the Piedmont has been under cultivation. Hardwoods, however, come in under the pines, and often with or without the help of man, reclaim the area. Therein lies one of the most difficult problems.

Rainfall in the Piedmont averages about 60 inches annually. The topography is rolling; logging is relatively easy and inexpensive. The heavy rainfall, frequently in severe downpours, and an erodible soil, require especial care in locating log and skid roads and drainage to avoid soil depletion and damage to the water resource. Forest holdings in the Piedmont are mostly small and held as part of the farm.

On the Coastal Plains, forests are predominantly pine, including the longleaf, slash, loblolly, and shortleaf. Also included are the bottom-land hardwoods along the many rivers and the cypress and tupelo in the swamps.

Rainfall is heavy usually averaging about 60 inches along the Gulf coast but dropping off gradually from the Mississippi westward to the treeless prairies. Logging is relatively easy and inexpensive, except in the swamps and deeper river bottoms and except during periods of prolonged rain. Tree growth is generally rapid. The large private holdings of the South are mostly located in the Coastal Plains along the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and in the rolling uplands of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. A warm climate, abundant rainfall, and a long growing season assure excellent conditions for both the establishment and growth of trees. Most soils are reasonably well drained and can store water and plant nutrients. Throughout the region, trees are the paying crop for 57 percent of the land. With proper attention, this could be one of the most productive timber regions anywhere.

The Delta province is that area of fertile flood plain lying along the Mississippi River and stretching from southern Missouri to the Gulf. It embraces about 32 million acres.

The forest is composed largely of hardwood species and growth is rapid. Annual floods are the rule in this area, but the water does not remain on the land long enough to affect adversely growth or the regeneration. The condition of annual floods is, however, an obstacle to logging. The logging must be done in the summer and early fall. Some years this period is shortened materially by the summer rains. The heavy, large-sized timber that is obtained from the Delta forests requires a heavier and more expensive type of logging equipment than is ordinarily needed in the pine forests of the South.

There are wide variations in the fertility of the Delta soils. Many of them, however, are quite fertile and clearing for agriculture has been going on in the past. There may be some additional clearing in the future for this purpose. However, it seems probable that 40 to 50 percent of the area will remain in forests. Ownerships are medium to large. There are a number of sawmills with ownerships in excess of 50,000 acres. Large farms or plantations are more typical of the area than small ownerships, and many of these plantations include forest areas in excess of 1,000 acres.

The Delta is a productive timber area and tree crops can be made an increasingly important part of the local economy with good management. From the standpoint of forest practices, it is an area where the forest is least understood by foresters, and yet forests can furnish substantial employment and income to the people and forest products to the Nation. This source of employment looms more important as the mechanization of cotton production on the farms increases.

FOREST INDUSTRIES are second only to agriculture in their contribution to the economy of the South. With a product estimated to be worth more than 2 billion dollars annually, the industry serves every citizen. It provides Dearly every owner, large or small, with a market for forest products. Wood cutters, truck drivers, railroad men, sawmill hands, and many others earn wages handling forest products. The butcher, the banker, and the doctor serve the people who handle the forest products. In nearly every community, operating units of the forest industry employ workers, buy products, pay taxes. The contribution is so general and so long-continued that most people assume it will always be with us, not realizing that the timber resources on which this vast industry depends might play out.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the South felt the effect of the Nation's expansion. Large mills were constructed. They mowed down the virgin timber on a liquidation basis. The financial arrangements of that day were predicated on the rapid and the complete removal of the standing trees; the concept of timber as a crop was neither understood nor accepted by the industry. Gradually, the original stands were cut over and, by 1935, the virgin timber had been cut.

Hundreds of big mills had to quit. Smaller mills that cut smaller trees and required less volume a day took over. They cut the remnants and the second growth that had reached merchantable size since the first operation. In 1944, we still had 18,000 sawmills, which cut 12.6 billion board feet, or 38 percent of the country's lumber for that year.

Most of them are quite small. Eighty-two percent of the mills produce less than 1 million board feet a year, 16 percent produce 1 to 5 million, 2 percent produce 5 million or more. The sawmill industry brings in 1 V2 billion dollars of the South's total income.

The gum naval stores is one of the oldest industries. At its peak in 1908-9, it produced nearly 2 million drums of gum rosin; in 1946-47, about a third that much was produced because other sources of turpentine and rosin had been developed through destructive distillation of longleaf pine stumps and the recovery from pulp-mill wastes.

The pulp industry is our newest large forest industry. The first permanent pulp mill in the South was built by the Carolina Fibre Co. at Hartsville, S. C., in 1891. Growth of the industry was slow until the early 1930's but has been rapid for the past 15 years. Today, one-half the pulp and one-third of the paper of the United States is produced in the South. Some 50 mills utilize 8 million cords of wood annually. The industry is still expanding.

Thus far, the industry has concentrated on production of kraft paper. The difficulty of obtaining pulp and the pulpwood for the manufacture of paper for newsprint and other light-colored papers, however, is causing the industry to consider the South's possibilities in those fields also. The first newsprint mill in the South, built by the Southland Paper Co. at Lufkin, Tex., started production in 1940. A second mill was started in 1948.

The pulp and paper industry has stimulated business in the South. Communities where pulp mills have been built have prospered. The industry has invested more than a billion dollars and manufactures products that add 50C million dollars to the income of the region. An estimated 100,000 persons are employed directly in the production, transportation, and manufacture of wood pulp.

Many other products are obtained from the forests and form an important part of the raw material for the forest industry poles, piling, cross ties, fence posts, fuel wood, pipe bowls, handles, and furniture among them. Each is important: Fuel wood is the only heating material available to millions of southerners, and is especially important to many tobacco farmers, who use it to cure tobacco. More oil is being used for heating, but the trend may be halted by limitations in the oil supply and through improvements in wood-burning equipment. Mines must have wood props. Electric companies must have wooden poles. Railroads must have wooden cross ties. Chemistry is transforming wood into clothing, cattle feed, plastics, and many other new products. All point up the fact that the welfare of the cities of the South is closely keyed to the proper management of the timber resource; more wood products mean more industry, more industry means more pay rolls, more pay rolls mean more business for the cities.

FOREST LANDS in the South require protection from uncontrolled fire. They should be so managed that succeeding cuts of forest products will maintain and build up the growing stock of trees for the production of continuous crops of forest products. A survey in 1945, made by State and Federal foresters, shows how the forest lands are being protected and managed. On large ownerships ( holdings of more than 5,000 acres), fire protection was rated as adequate on 38 percent and inadequate or nonexistent on the rest; cutting practices were considered good on 32 percent, fair on 26 percent, and poor on 42 percent. On holdings of fewer than 5,000 acres, fire protection was rated as adequate on 42 percent and inadequate on the rest; cutting practices were good on 2 percent, only fair on 24 percent, and poor on 74 percent.