The Afforestation Question in Britain

Abstract

IN a previous article the present and future positions of the timber supplies of this country were considered. The afforestation question will now be briefly dealt with. Lord Selborne, in the House of Lords, recently asked whether the Government was in a position to announce its decision on the report of the Forestry Sub-Committee of the Reconstruction Committee, mentioning the pressing necessity for replanting which existed throughout the country. Lord Peel replied that the Government had accepted the report of the Forestry Sub-Committee, and that a central authority for tfce United Kingdom would be set up and planting be proceeded with with the least possible delay. This announcement will be greeted with approbation by all acquainted with the urgent importance of the afforestation problem. Differences of opinion on administrative questions exist,: but these are trivial compared with the main object in view—the afforestation of the waste lands of the country. Forestry in its general aspects is a branch of economic industry of which the British public has known very little in the pst. It is not surprising that it should have remained in ignorance of its importance. For we have no forests in Britain in the sense in which the word is understood in Europe and elsewhere in the world. Ours are pretty woodlands. In the future it will be riecessary to grow commercial woods, for the war has demonstrated unmistakably that, as a mere matter of safety in the case of emergency, we must have a reserve supply of timber and pit wood in the country.