Proclamation 4168—National Forest Products Week, 1972

Each year America's forest lands provide our people with a growing supply of useful wood products—lumber and plywood for housing and industrial purposes, paper for wrappings, containers, newspapers and books, and numerous other items that contribute to the comfort and well-being of our citizens. The people derive many other benefits from our forest lands; among them, recreation sites for families, wildlife habitats, fishing and hunting opportunities, and natural beauty.

In meeting the steadily increasing demands of an expanding population for wood and wood products, our forest products industries produce jobs and help to assure economic stability, especially to our rural and small communities. They also contribute substantially to maintaining the high standard of living which Americans of this century have come to enjoy and to expect.

With far-sighted management and utilization practices, America can continue to provide products of utility and beauty from the country's renewable forest resources without adverse impact on the environment. Through cooperative research between Federal agencies and private industries, we can find new and better ways both to utilize commercial timber more completely, and simultaneously to protect our forest lands.

In order to give further recognition and emphasis to the importance of forest resources and forest products to the Nation, the Congress, by a joint resolution of September 13, 1960 (74 Stat. 898), has designated the seven-day period beginning on the third Sunday of October in each year as National Forest Products Week, and has requested the President to issue an annual proclamation calling for the observance of that week.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby call upon the people of the United States to observe the week beginning October 15, 1972, as National Forest Products Week, with activities and ceremonies designed to direct public attention toward, and demonstrate our appreciation for, the forest resources which are ours in such abundance and for the role they play in enhancing our material, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of October, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-seventh.

RICHARD NIXON