A Brief History of Forestry.: In Europe, the United States and Other CountriesFernow, B. E. (Bernhard Eduard)
History
A Brief History of Forestry.: In Europe, the United States and Other Countries
Fernow, B. E. (Bernhard Eduard)
Forests and forestry -- History
Large as this force appears to be, it is small in comparison with the
acreage, and inadequate. Although the net income from the 300 million
acres of State forest which are actually worked is now close to thirty
million dollars, the expenditures being near 6 million, the pay of the
officials is such as to almost force them to find means of subsistence
at the cost of their charges. Perhaps nowhere else is there so much
machinery and so much regulation with so little execution in practice.
Nevertheless, progress is being made in gradually improving matters, and
the forest property, or at least the cut, has become more and more
valuable. While in the middle of the last century the income from the
domain forest was only $500,000, by 1892 it had grown to $10,000,000, by
1901 to $23,000,000, in 1908 to nearly $30,000,000, besides several
million dollars’ worth of free wood. In 1908, the department spent over
half a million dollars on planting and assisting natural regeneration.
Timber is sold as a rule to contractors by the tree or acre, and a
diameter limit is almost the only restriction. In 1897, however, an
arrangement was made by which the lumberman was obliged to reforest, or
at least to pay a certain tax into a planting fund, and a part payment
of $2 to $4 per acre as guarantee must be made before cutting. This
order has, however, remained mostly a dead letter, the buyer preferring
to allow his guarantee to lapse. In 1906, there stood $3,000,000 to the
credit of this planting fund, and only half of it had been applied.
Meanwhile the unplanted area increases, since natural regeneration
generally proves a failure.
3. _Education and Literature._
The attempts at forestry education date back to the year 1732 when a
number of foresters were imported from Germany to take charge of the
forest management as well as of the education of foresters, each
forstmeister having six pupils assigned to him. This method failing to
produce results, the interest in ship timber suggested a course in
forestry at the Naval Academy, which was instituted in 1800. Soon the
need of a larger number of educated foresters led to the establishment
of several separate forest schools, one at Zarskoye Selo (near St.
Petersburg) in 1803, another at Kozlovsk in 1805, and a third at St.
Petersburg in 1808. This latter under the name of the Forest Institute
absorbed the other two, and from 1813 has continued to exist through
many vicissitudes. Now, with 15 professors and instructors and an
expenditure of nearly $250,000, and over 500 students, it is the largest
forest school in the world. It prepares in a four years’ course for the
higher positions in the forest service. “The history of this Forest
Institute is practically the history of forestry in Russia.”
A second school at Novo-Alexandria, near Warsaw, was instituted in 1860.
In these schools, as in the methods of management, German influence is
everywhere visible.
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