Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest: Protecting Existing Forests and Growing New Ones, from the Standpoint of the Public and That of the Lumberman, with an Outline of Technical MethodsAllen, E. T. (Edward Tyson)
Science
Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest: Protecting Existing Forests and Growing New Ones, from the Standpoint of the Public and That of the Lumberman, with an Outline of Technical Methods
Allen, E. T. (Edward Tyson)
Pacific Coast -- Forestry
There is no reason why a certain poor-soiled timbered portion of
the average claim should not be considered as a permanent wood
lot, to be treated with the same interest and pride in making it
produce the greatest quantity of forest products for sale or use that
the owner accords his fields. With this point of view established
and consequent study given the subject, it will also be easier to
decide how large this portion should be. In many cases the result
will be abandonment of the idea that all forest growth is an enemy,
to be destroyed on general principles without calculating what
actual profit there is in destruction.
Another point often overlooked in the Pacific Northwest, because
of our local tendency to consider the forest only as something to
struggle against, is the exactly opposite influence of properly
placed tree growth upon sale values if the prospective buyer is
from the East or from our own cities or tree-less regions. Such
are attracted strongly by the grove-like effect of a few trees left
around the house. Their desire for this is as strongly ingrained
as the average local resident's desire for a completely free outlook
to mark his victory over unfriendly nature. The appeal a place
makes to a buyer as a pleasant home has frequently as important
an influence on his decision as its purely practical merits.
His judgment of the latter, however, is also affected by his earlier
environment. If he has lived where farming land is open, evidences
of the labor of clearing are discouraging. The untouched forest,
being totally beyond his capacity to estimate the labor its removal
entails, repels him less than stumps, logs, desolate burnings and
like detailed evidences of the work which lies before him. This
is another reason why the clearing of clearly fertile land may
be better business than the half-clearing of land perhaps best
suited for forest growth anyway. Again, not fully realizing the
plentifulness of forest products in the new locality, he may actually
overestimate the value of an attractive piece of forest land showing
evidence of the thoughtful care suggested in a preceding paragraph.
USE OF FIRE
Above all, it pays the settler in wooded regions to be careful
with fire. Properly directed and confined, fire is necessary in
clearing land. But there is no profit in allowing uncontrolled
fire to spread from the actual clearing to create a snarl of dead,
decaying and falling trees and underbrush. It is usually harder
to extend the clearing into such ground than into green timber.
This added work later is many times that necessary to safeguard
the burning in the first place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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