THE NEW POSITION OF THE FORESTRY COMMISSION

Abstract

IN Nature of March 17, 1945, the work of the Forestry Commission during its first twenty-five years was considered. The twenty-sixth annual report, for the year ending September 30, 1945, marks the beginning of a new phase. The report deals with the operations carried out on a more or less much diminished scale which had appertained during the war years. The total area planted by the Commission to the end of September 1945 was 469,000 acres, the total area controlled being 1,364,000 acres. The interest of the report lies in the details given on the future forest policy of Britain. Within the last thirty-five years the country has, on two occasions, for a period of years been dependent mainly on its own supplies of timber, of which in normal times of peace some 10,000,000 tons were imported annually. The two wars caused great inroads to be made on the privately owned woods of the island, for these had to supply the main bulk of the country's requirements; and the fellings-50 million cubic feet-were much heavier during the Second World War than in the First. The new State forests, the oldest but twenty years old at the outbreak of war, could supply only pit wood, from thinnings made in the oldest of the Commission areas. According to old-time accepted thinning theories in Conifers, mainly of German origin, there would have been little or nothing to come from these young British woods of twenty-five years of age and less. But investigation and observation, coupled with practice, have already demonstrated what had been expected, that in the exceptional moist and equable climate of Britain, the growth of some of the exotic Conifers surpasses that of the Conifers of Western Europe ; hence earlier thinning is possible, though present experience is insufficient to lay down a rule in the matter.