Message to Congress Suggesting a Study of the Forest Land Problem.

To the Congress:

I feel impelled at this time to call to the attention of the Congress some aspects of our forest problem, and the need for a policy and plan of action with respect to it.

Forests are intimately tied into our whole social and economic life. They grow on more than one-third the land area of the continental United States. Wages from forest industries support five to six million people each year. Forests give us building materials and thousands of other things in everyday use. Forest lands furnish food and shelter for much of our remaining game, and healthful recreation for millions of our people. Forests help prevent erosion and floods. They conserve water and regulate its use for navigation, for power, for domestic use, and for irrigation. Woodlands occupy more acreage than any other crop on American farms, and help support two and one-half million farm families.

Our forest problem is essentially one of land use. It is a part of the broad problem of modern agriculture that is common to every part of the country. Forest lands total some six hundred and fifteen million acres.

One hundred and twenty odd million acres of these forest lands are rough and inaccessible—but they are valuable for the protection of our great watersheds. The greater proportion of these protective forests is in public ownership. Four hundred and ninety-five million acres of our forest lands can be classed as commercial. Both as to accessibility and quality the best four fifths, or some three hundred and ninety-six million acres of these commercial forests, is in private ownership.

This privately owned forest land at present furnishes 96 per cent of all our forest products. It represents 90 per cent of the productive capacity of our forest soils. There is a continuing drain upon commercial forests in saw timber sizes far beyond the annual growth. Forest operations in them have not been, and are not now, conducive to maximum regrowth. An alarming proportion of our cut-over forest lands is tax-delinquent. Through neglect, much of it is rapidly forming a new but almost worthless no man's land.

Most of the commercial forest lands are in private ownership. Most of them are now only partially productive, and most of them are still subject to abuse. This abuse threatens the general welfare.

I have thus presented to you the facts. They are simple facts; but they are of a character to cause alarm to the people of the United States and to you, their chosen Representatives.

The forest problem is therefore a matter of vital national concern, and some way must be found to make forest lands and forest resources contribute their full share to the social and economic structures of this country, and to the security and stability of all our people.

When in 1933 I asked the Congress to provide for the Civilian Conservation Corps I was convinced that forest lands offered one source for worth-while work, non-competitive with industry, for large numbers of our unemployed. Events of the past five years have indicated that my earlier conviction was well founded. In rebuilding and managing those lands, and in the many uses of them and their resources, there exists a major opportunity for new employment and for increasing the national wealth.

Creation of the National Forest system, which now extends to thirty-eight States, has been a definite step toward constructive solution of our forest problem. From national forest lands comes domestic water for more than six million people. Forage, occurring largely in combination with timber, contributes stability to one-fourth the western range livestock industry. Through correlated and coordinated public management of timber and all other resources, these public properties already help support almost a million people and furnish healthful recreation to more than thirty million each year. By means of exchanges and purchases, the Congress has for many years encouraged additions to this system. These measures should very definitely be continued as funds and facilities are available.

The Congress has also provided that the national government shall cooperate with the various States in matters of fire protection on privately owned forest lands and farm woodlands. The States are in turn cooperating with private owners. Among other measures the Congress has also authorized an extensive program of forest research, which has been initiated and projected; Federal cooperation in building up a system of State forests; cooperative activities with farmers to integrate forest management with the general farm economy; the planting of trees in the Prairie-Plains States—an activity which has heretofore been carried on as an emergency unemployment relief measure with outstanding success and material benefit; and—under the Omnibus Flood Control Bill—measures to retard run-off and erosion on forested and other watersheds.

Progress has been made—and such measures as these should be continued. They are not adequate, however, to meet the present situation. We are still exploiting our forest lands. Forest communities are still being crippled; still being left desolate and forlorn. Watersheds are still being denuded. Fertile valleys and industrial cities below such watersheds still suffer from erosion and floods. We are still liquidating our forest capital, still cutting our accessible forests faster than they are being replaced.

Our forest budget still needs balancing. This is true in relation to future as well as present national needs. We need and shall continue to need large quantities of wood for housing, for our railroads and our telephone and telegraph lines, for newsprint and other papers, for fiber containers, for furniture, and the like. Wood is rich in chemicals. It is the major source of cellulose products, such as rayon, movie films, cellophanes, sugars of certain kinds, surgical absorbents, drugs, lacquers, phonograph records. Turpentines, rosins, acetone, acetic acid, and alcohols are derived from wood. Our forest budget should, therefore, be balanced in relation to present and future needs for such things as these. It should also be balanced in relation to the many public services that forests render, and to the need for stabilizing dependent industries and communities locally, regionally, and nationally.

I am informed, for example, that more than one hundred million dollars has recently gone into development of additional forest industries in the southeastern section of our country. This means still more drain from southern forests. Without forestry measures that will insure timber cropping there, existing and planned forest enterprises must inevitably suffer. The Pacific Northwest contains the greatest reserves of virgin merchantable timber in the continental United States. During recent years many private forest lands have been given better fire protection there, and there are more young trees on the ground. But the cutting drain in our virgin Douglas fir forests is about four times current growth, and unless existing practices are changed the old fir will be gone long before new growth is big enough for manufacture into lumber.

I recommend, therefore, study by a joint committee of the Congress of the forest land problem of the United States. As a nation we now have the accumulated experience of three centuries of use and abuse as guides in determining broad principles. The public has certain responsibilities and obligations with respect to private forest lands, but so also have private owners with respect to the broad public interests in those same lands. Particular consideration might therefore be given in these studies, which I hope will form the basis for essential legislation during the next session of Congress, to the situation with respect to private forest lands, and to consideration of such matters as:

1. The adequacy and effectiveness of present activities in protecting public and private forest lands from fire, insects, and diseases, and of cooperative efforts between the Federal government and the States.

2. Other measures, Federal and State, which may be necessary and advisable to insure that timber cropping on privately owned forest lands may be conducted as continuous operations, with the productivity of the lands built up against future requirements.

3. The need for extension of Federal, State, and community ownership of forest lands, and of planned public management of them.

4. The need for such public regulatory controls as will adequately protect private as well as the broad public interests in all forest lands.

5. Methods and possibilities of employment in forestry work on private and public forest lands, and possibilities of liquidating such public expenditures as are or may be involved.

Facilities of those technical agencies that, in the executive branches of the government, deal with the many phases of our forest problem will of course be available to such committee as the Congress may appoint. These technical agencies will be glad to assist the Committee in assembling and interpreting facts, indicating what has been done, what still needs to be done, and in such other ways as the Committee may desire.

I make this suggestion for immediate study of our forest problem by the Congress in the belief that definite action should be taken by the Congress in 1939. States, communities and private capital can do much to help—but the fact remains that, with some outstanding exceptions, most of the states, communities and private companies have, on the whole, accomplished little to retard or check the continuing process of using up our forest resources without replacement. This being so, it seems obviously necessary to fall back on the last defensive line—Federal leadership and Federal action. Millions of Americans are today conscious of the threat. Public opinion asks that steps be taken to remove it.

If the preliminary action is taken at this session of the Congress, I propose to address letters to the Governors of those States in which the amount of state and privately owned forest land is substantial, enclosing to them a copy of this Message to the Congress and asking their full cooperation with the Congress and with the Executive Branch of the National Government.