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At the outset the
business of lumbering was regarded as an essentially transitory
feature of the process of clearing and settling the country. In the
older portions of Canada the greater part of the land denuded of its
timber was suitable for agricultural settlement, and needed for
farms by the incoming population. It was regarded as desirable to
have the country cleared as quickly as possible for the plow. As
lumbering operations were pushed farther back, a large territory was
reached where most of the land was broken and sterile and not suited
for farming, but where much of it was covered with valuable pine
timber.
If the policy which
was followed in clearing the agricultural lands of the southern part
of the Province had been pursued in the newer territory, large
areas, when stripped by the ax and the bush fires usually attendant
on lumbering operations under old time methods, would have been
practically worthless, their only value consisting of their
timber-producing capacity.
The increase in the
value of timber induced more conservative methods of cutting and led
to the adoption of the system of fire ranging by which the danger of
destruction of standing timber by bush fires has been greatly
lessened. The large lumber operators realize that, instead of making
a thorough clearance of their limits within the shortest possible
time, it is often more profitable to treat the forest as a farm,
reaping a periodical crop, with as little injury as possible to its
reproductive capacity.
As large tracts of
country in New Ontario were opened up for settlement and travel by
the building of railroads, the question of what action to pursue
regarding the large areas of valuable pine land, which if
unprotected would be liable to destruction by bush fires, became one
of increasing urgency.
An advance in the
direction of establishing forest reserves from which settlers would
be excluded was made in 1893 by the setting aside of the Algonquin
National Park in the Nipissing District. This territory being under
license, however, is not, strictly speaking, a forest reserve,
though it serves some of the purposes of such. In June, 1897, a
royal commission was appointed, consisting_of E. W. Rathbun, of
Deseronto; John Bertram, Toronto ; J. B. McWilliams, PeterboroAlex.
Kirkwood, chief clerk of the lands branch of the Crown lands
department, and Thomas Southworth, clerk of forestry, to investigate
and report on the subject of restoring and preserving the growth of
white pine and other timber trees upon lands not adapted to
agricultural purposes or to settlement. The two first named
gentlemen were practical and experienced lumbermen. After a personal
investigation extending over considerable tracts of country they
presented a report, the most important feature of which was a
recommendation that the Government take the power to withdraw from
sale or settlement and set aside to be kept in permanent forest
reserves such areas of territory as are generally unsuitable for
settlement and yet valuable for growing timber.
In accordance with
this recommendation the Ontario Legislature in 1898 conferred the
requisite authority upon the administration by the Forest Reserves
Act. The first action taken in pursuance of this policy was the
creation of the Eastern Forest Reserve, consisting of 80,000 acres
in the counties of Frontenac and Addington, in 1899. The following
year the Sibley Reserve, comprising about 45,000 acres on the north
shore of Lake Superior, was set apart. A more important step was
taken in 1901 when the Temagami Forest Reserve was constituted,
comprising an area of 2,200 square miles around Lake Temagami in the
Nipissing district. This contains one of the most valuable of the
pine forests in Ontario, the quantity of standing timber being
roughly estimated at from 3,000,000,000 to 5,000,000,000 feet. This
reserve was subsequently enlarged by the addition of territory to
the north and west, bringing its area up to a total of 5,900 square
miles. The Missis-saga Reserve in the Algoma district was added to
the list in 1904. It comprises about 3,000 square miles of virgin
timber. It is altogether probable that as settlement advances in New
Ontario, only the fringe of which has so far been touched by
civilization, further areas will be set apart as forest reserves,
wherever timber covered tracts of importance are found to exist on
non-agricultural lands.
Of recent years,
the forestry work of the Province of Ontario has been under the
management of Thomas Southworth, spoken of above, with the title of
Director of Forestry. His extensive studies and practical experience
have qualified him to speak with particular authority of all the
phases of this general subject of forest preservation and its
financial aspects. For this reason we reproduce in this chapter an
article prepared by him at a recent date.1
This article to a certain extent is a reproduction of what has been
said elsewhere, but it so clearly explains and logically summarizes
the whole subject that it is reproduced, as follows:
The Province of
Ontario is one of the greatest business corporations in the world.
Whether viewed in the light of an inheritor having a vast estate to
dispose of, or as all this and a trading company as well, Ontario is
an extensive corporation doing business in a very large way.
Its shareholders
are the individual people of the Province, and handsome dividends
are yearly paid to them in the form of the support of public
services, charity and education, that would otherwise be paid for
out of their private pockets In the form of taxes.
I presume it may be
stated that the working capital of the Province is, through the
right to levy taxes, only limited by the ability of the citizens to
pay, as is the case with other similar corporations having more and
richer shareholders, but it is proposed to refer only to the estate
or inheritance common to us all in our land and water areas, and
what they contain or produce. This includes land, forests, minerals,
game, fish and water powers, all of which supply an income that
could be increased if desired.
Unlike many
corporations or trading companies, however, the Province realizes
that there are ways in which the “greatest good to the greatest
number” of the shareholders in this enterprise may be reached other
than in the direct payment of cash dividends, and it has been deemed
for the general good that the forest should be worked as the chief
producer of cash dividends.
Therefore for the
purpose of this article we will eliminate any consideration of any
of the provincial assets other than that of the Crown forest.
The forest wealth
of the Province has until recently been classed under two divisions:
That still remaining the property of the Crown partly sold under
license to lumbermen and partly without any claim at all; and that
part held by settlers to whom lands had been allotted or sold by the
Crown.
In the development
of the timber trade in Ontario the idea gradually evolved was to
dispose of the merchantable timber, principally pine, for cash
revenue, before handing over the land on which it grew to
individuals to be converted into farms. Having this idea in view,
the business was not regarded as one of our permanent industries.
The lumberman was considered as but the forerunner of the farmer,
and no attempt was made for many years to do any more than harvest
the standing crop of pine and other coniferous trees to the best
advantage. No idea of taking off another crop than the original one
was thought of. For many years this process worked well. As
lumbermen established camps, and cut over their limits, the
shantyman often become a farmer, squatting upon a tract of good land
as he found it in the limit, and he was soon followed by his
friends. This process has settled many townships in the Province,
and where the land included in the limit was good for farming, no
better plan could probably be devised. The hardwoods and enough pine
for building purposes were left on the land for the settler, and
from the money received from the largest pine, roads were built for
the settler and the whole people of the Province shared in the
dividends.
As the lumberman
pushed farther north in search of pine, however, the character of
the country changed. Large areas were placed under license to
lumbermen'in which the land was unsuited for farming. The settler
still followed the lumberman and tried to make farms where nature
had provided that forests only could be profitably grown, finding
out only after their capital and the best years of their lives had
been spent, that they had made a mistake.
While these men
have been wasting their efforts dragging out a bare existence, the
Province has lost large sums in cash that might have been derived
from these same areas had they been left to produce a second crop of
pine timber.
In addition to the
encroachments of settlers upon the forest area, fire proved a
prominent factor in emphasizing the ephemeral character of the
lumber industry; large tracts were burned over, until it began to be
recognized as the natural thing that fire followed the lumberman.
The success of the fire ranging system adopted in 1885 showed that
this danger could be largely removed.
This partial
immunity from forest fires led our legislators to consider the
possibility of giving the forest industries a more permanent
character, and in 1895, when
I was appointed to
the forestry work under the Government, I was directed by the then
Commissioner of Crown Lands, the Hon. A. S. Hardy, to submit a
report on the best method of reafforestating these burned areas with
pine; to ascertain the comparative cost of planting and of sowing
tree seeds, with plan of operation.
Estimates of the
cost of seedling trees for replanting were secured, and in the
process of investigating the burned over areas to ascertain the
probable cost of getting them in condition to replant or sow, I
concluded and so reported that neither was necessary except in a few
places. The cost of replanting or even of seeding successfully would
be so great per acre that the directors of the corporation, the
Legislature, would never vote the money necessary to accomplish the
work over so large an area; and they would be right, for it is very
likely that the initial expense compounded even at three percent,
for the number of years necessary for the plantation to reach a
merchantable age, plus the annual expenditure for protection and
care, would exceed the amount realized from the crop even at the
enhanced prices likely to be obtained at that time.
It may be said that
even so, for the sake of the incidental or indirect benefits in the
way of climatic effect and water supply the investment would be
worth while, but it was found that planting was not at all
necessary, that practically all the investment required was time and
freedom from settlement or fire. On burned over territory a new
forest was growing, and in nearly every case, where pine was present
in the previous crop, pine was growing again, not at first perhaps;
the first crop after the fire was usually birch, poplar or other
trees that seed yearly and whose seeds carry immense distances, but
nearly always pine followed where the fire had left any parent pine
trees within a wide radius, and would be found growing up under the
shade and protection of the broad leaved trees, under the exact
conditions required to make good timber.
This condition of
affairs simplified the problem of reafforestation on Ontario Crown
lands, and in my report to the Government in 1896 I recommended that
areas found unsuited for general farming should be permanently
withdrawn from settlement and placed in forest reserves.
In the following
year the Government appointed a royal commission to report on the
same subject. This commission included among its members two of the
ablest lumbermen in Canada, the late E. W. Rathbun and the late John
Bertram, and this commission indorsed this recommendation as
follows:
“A large portion of
the central division of the Province is more profitable from the
standpoint of public revenue as forest land than under cultivation
for farm crops, and as in addition to this it contains the
headwaters of all our principal streams, all that part of this
division found upon examination to be not well adapted for farming
should be added to the permanent Crown forest reserves.”
In 1898 the
legislature passed an act entitled “An Act to Establish Forest
Reserves,” the first specific action by legislation toward the
creation of a permanent Crown forest. This act was submitted to the
legislature by Hon. J. M. Gibson, then Commissioner of Crown Lands,
and was passed without a dissenting voice.
The passage of the
forest reserves act, and the creation of reserves thereunder, is the
formal announcement of the Government policy of gradually separating
the non-agricultural from the agricultural lands, and is the first
organized and definite attempt to create a permanent forest estate
to be owned in perpetuity by the Crown and operated for timber
crops. Under the act there have so far been created four forest
reserves, amounting in all to 5,821,000 acres. These include the
Eastern Forest Reserve of 80,000 acres; the Sibley Forest Reserve of
45,000 acres; the Temagami Forest Reserve of 3,776,000 acres, and
the Mississaga Reserve of 1,920,000 acres.
There should be
added to this Algonquin Park, created in 1893 mainly as a game
preserve, with an acreage of 1,101,000 acres,2
making a total of permanent forest reserves of 6,922,000 acres.
These reserves are
of different character. The two former, the Eastern Reserve in
Frontenac County and the Sibley Reserve, which takes in the township
of Sibley including Thunder Cape on the north shore of Lake
Superior, have been lumbered, and in most cases burned over, and now
contain a very thrifty growth of white pine and other trees. It will
be some time before they are ready again for lumbering operations,
but the growth is very rapid and the time when they may be again
operated for pine and other timbers will be much less than would be
imagined in the absence of definite information and measurements of
the rate of growth of this young timber.
The Temagami
Reserve lies in the district of Nipissing and contains 5,900 square
miles or 3,776,000 acres. This reserve besides including some of the
most picturesque and beautiful lakes in the world, of which Temagami
and Lady Evelyn might be mentioned, contains a very large quantity
of pine timber now ready to be cut. About forty years ago the band
of Indians living in the territory, alarmed at the incursions of the
lumbermen who were operating on Lake Temiscamingue and at the
suggestion, it is said, of a Hudson Bay officer equally interested
with them in the preservation of this country as a hunting ground,
started a fire that swept over a good many hundreds of square miles,
including the northern part of Temagami, Lady Evelyn, Anima,
Nipissing and other lakes. Over this burned territory there is now a
thrifty growth of poplar, birch, as well as pine and other
coniferous trees, the pine making growth at the rate of one inch in
diameter in about two and a half to three years. Of the timber now
sufficiently large to cut or what would be estimated by a lumberman
in buying the territory for lumbering, I believe there is about five
thousand millions, or five billions of feet board measure, exclusive
of spruce, tamarack and hardwoods.
The Mississaga
Reserve is included in the territory drained by the Winnebago and
Mississaga rivers in the district of Algoma, and lies between the
main line of the Canadian Pacific railway and the Sault Ste. Marie
branch of the same line. It comprises a territory of 3,000 square
miles, or 1,920,000 acres, and is estimated to contain over three
thousand millions of feet of merchantable white pine besides other
timbers.
In giving these
figures of areas of forest reserves, it must be borne in mind that
the Government has only recently entered upon this policy, and it
requires time to properly investigate the different areas before
having them come under the provisions of the forest reserves act. By
the act a reserve can be created by order in council, but if on
further investigation it was found desirable to open this land for
agricultural purposes, a subsequent act of the legislature would be
necessary in order to take it out of the reserves. In a general way,
however, we are aware that there is a very large territory in the
Province of Ontario peculiarly suitable for permanent forests.
So far as the
question of future timber supplies and the consequent effect on
climate and industrial conditions are concerned the Province of
Ontario is in a peculiarly fortunate condition. The southern part of
the Province which extends almost into the middle of the United
States is a very rich agricultural section, now entirely settled up,
and the home of a prosperous agricultural community. North of this
agricultural belt, stretching across the Province from east to west,
lies the watershed separating the streams flowing south into the
Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence from those flowing north into our
great Canadian sea. This height of land or watershed is not a
mountainous ridge, but a more or less level tableland, rugged and
rough in character, for the most part quite unsuited for
agriculture, but the natural home of the white and red pine, spruce
and other coniferous trees. True, in this belt there are occasional
valleys of good land. In the Temiscamingue district for instance,
there are nearly a million acres of rich alluvial clay soil. There
is also a good agricultural section in the Rainy River Valley and
another one at Wabigoon on the main line of the Canadian Pacific
railway. But generally speaking, that is the character of this
immense watershed stretching hundreds of miles across the Province
from east to west.
North of this
territory again, on the slope running to Hudson Bay, lies another
agricultural district, estimated to contain over sixteen millions of
acres of 'first class farming land, but covered at present with a
very valuable growth of spruce and other timber.
In estimating the
annual dividends possible or likely to be derived from this forest
asset, a good many things have tb be taken into account. While the
reserves so far created are pine-bearing, not all of the territory
suitable for reserves contains pine at present though it may be made
to do so. Some of this territory is rocky and has been so severely
burned over, notably on the north shore of Lake Superior, as to have
no soil left, and we need to figure on long periods of time before
those small areas will become productive. There must also be
eliminated the water areas, and fire must be counted on as a
contingency.
The present forest
reserve area includes distinctly pine-bearing lands, and for
purposes of computation over the whole area, I will take this area
6,922,000 acres as a basis. In a country where we have no large
artificial plantations that have reached maturity from the seed, it
is difficult to form definite conclusions as to the annual growth of
timber, but from measurements obtained by the Washington Bureau of
Forestry over many parts of the northern or pine-bearing states,
they have adopted nearly sixty cubic feet as the normal annual
growth under ordinary forest conditions on an acre of forest land.
This includes the whole of all sorts of trees, not pine alone. This
in board measure would be 720 feet per acre per year. In our
pine-bearing land, particularly in the reserves referred to, white
pine is not the only tree, but it is the dominant tree, and a large
proportion of this annual growth will be of that variety of timber.
Pinchot and Graves,
in their exhaustive study of the white pine in Pennsylvania,
estimate that a pine tree ten inches in diameter will yield 84
percent of merchantable timber, and in a tree twenty-six inches
diameter only seven percent is waste. Under continuous operations,
10 percent would be a fair allowance for waste in all kinds of
timber, but there should also be eliminated much solid timber not
now merchantable. With allowance also for water areas and spots not
well seeded, I do not think 300 feet board measure per acre art
unreasonable estimate for the annual growth of pine on an acre of
land in the areas. That it is not unreasonable is shown from yields
on lands that have been cut over. There are numerous instances where
50,000 feet of pine per acre have been cut, and this where only the
merchantable trees were removed, leaving many others on the way to a
merchantable size, while our estimate is for the total annual
growth.
An ordinary forest
well seeded to pine would produce this 50,000 feet in about one
hundred years or at the rate of 500 feet per year. One other
deduction must be made, however, for fire, for while we have greatly
lessened the damage from this source, it must be counted on, and we
will reduce this estimate 50 percent or 150 feet board measure an
acre a year for the pine timber only. This estimate applied to our
present reserves would give an annual production of 1,038,300,000
feet.
As to the value of
this timber, much depends on its location and ease of access to
market. On the basis of the recent timber sale, $7 per thousand feet
would be a fair average as applied to the reserves in question. This
would return annually $7,268,100. This sum appears large, but it
must be borne in mind that the territory now being operated each
year, probably not so large as this, returns $1,000,000 to the
treasury, and at $1.25 instead of $7 per thousand feet.
It would, perhaps,
be unfair to apply the prices realized at the recent sale to the
whole of this area, but to reduce it to $5, a very modest estimate,
the annual increment in pine would reach a value of $5,191,500, and
besides the other timbers growing on the reserves, spruce, cedar,
birch, larch, maple, etc., have a commercial value that is rapidly
increasing.
One hundred and
fifty thousand feet board measure at $5 per thousand would be worth
75 cents as the annual rental value of this land. It may at first
sight appear high, but the Prussian Crown forests under a most
expensive semimilitary system of management, including the cost of
maintaining several forestry schools and colleges, yield a net
income over all expenses of about $1.45 an acre a year over the
whole territory good and bad. I am well aware of the difference in
conditions as to markets, etc., but surely if the Germans can obtain
a net revenue of $1.45, we can, in time at least, under proper
management, realize half that sum as our gross revenue. I might also
add that the Crown forests of Saxony yield about $4.50 an acre a
year, net.
A recent concrete
instance of the growth of pine under somewhat adverse circumstances
is shown by the result of a small plantation of pine trees on the
sand plains of Nebraska. This plantation covers .52 of an acre on
the ranch of Bruner Bros., in Holt County, Nebraska. It is
rectangular in form, measuring 70x192 feet, and is located in sand
hills bordering a dry valley. The trees on this plantation were set
out in the spring of 1S91 as three-year-old seedlings averaging
about eight inches in height. Furrows were turned two feet apart,
and the trees were planted two feet apart in the furrows. Since
planting, the trees have received no cultivation whatever, but they
have been protected from fire and stock. The altitude of the
location is 2,200 feet.
This sand is what
is ordinarily called blow sand and covered some of the small
seedlings. Last year the Bureau of Forestry at Washington had these
trees counted and measured, when it was found that the total volume
of wood in the plantation was 586.02 cubic feet, with a total annual
growth of 50.6 cubic feet. This, converted into board measure, would
be over 600 feet a year on a fraction over half an acre, or 1,200
feet an acre a year.
It is true these
trees were planted at regular intervals, and would therefore have a
better chance for growth than trees reproduced by nature with her
wasteful methods, but it must also be remembered that the soil was
very bad and of such a nature as had been considered hitherto quite
incapable of growing trees at all.
Hence it will be
seen that my estimate of 150 feet board measure an acre a year in
our peculiar pine-bearing country is a very moderate estimate.
Applying this estimate to say 40,000,000 acres of permanent
reserves, which I hope to live to see, we have a yearly growth of
6,000,000.000 feet, which at $5 per thousand would represent a value
of $30,000,000.
This is not a rosy
picture, but a very conservative estimate, and if the timber other
than pine is considered, it will be found low.
And now, having
definitely adopted the policy of separating agricultural from ,
non-agricultural lands, placing large areas of non-agricultural
lands in reserves to form a permanent Crown forest to be operated in
perpetuity for timber supplies and the payment of cash dividends,
the problem is presented of how to work these reserves to the best
advantage.
In this various
problems present themselves. The first, of course, is the great one
of fire protection, but this I am happy to say we are within
reasonable distance of having solved. Of course in the forest, as in
the city, the prevention of fires entirely is an impossibility, and
in the forest there is the added difficulty not often found in well
regulated cities, that a fire once under headway cannot be checked
by any human agency at present known. At the same time the system of
patrol adopted some years ago is proving very effective, and our
losses from fires for the past few years have been inconsiderable.
Among the most
serious problems confronting the Government in the permanent timber
policy, is the reproduction of the right kind of species from a
commercial point of view. This Province is the habitat of probably
the most valuable timber tree in the world, the Weymouth or white
pine, the tree that has been so great a factor in the prosperity of
the Province. There are peculiar features connected with its
reproduction that have to be carefully considered in any permanent
forestry operations.
In the first place,
I have noticed that where a forest has been operated for pine for a
number of years, and where no fire has taken place, there seem to be
no seedling pines coming up. True, there are pine trees still
growing to take the place of the mature trees removed, but they are
trees that were suppressed and stunted in their growth at the time
of the previous lumbering operations, and that took on new growth
after the pressure in the forest was relieved, but I cannot find
that in a forest of this sort there is any new crop coming on, that
is to say, trees that have seeded since the cutting of the original
crop.
Why this is so is
not quite clear to me, but I imagine the reason will be found in the
fact that the ground and the conditions of shade are not suitable
for the proper germination and growth of the pine seeds.
On the other hand,
where there has been a forest fire, after lumbering operations, we
nearly always find a growth of young pine coming up, at any rate if
any old or seed trees have been left in the vicinity of the fire.
Assuming this
condition of affairs to be general, that young pine will not come up
as a second crop except under suitable conditions, it will readily
be seen that if in operating an old forest, nothing but the pine
trees are taken out, the result must eventually be that the
character of the forest will have changed from a pine forest to one
of another description, and necessarily of a less valuable
character. If it is pine mixed with spruce, if the pine is removed
and the spruce only allowed to reproduce, it will naturally become a
spruce forest, or a hardwood forest as the case may be.
Hence it is obvious
that in operating an old or virgin forest with a view of
reproduction of the most valuable sorts of trees, a scientific
knowledge of the growth and method of reproduction of these trees
will be necessary in order to have the cutting properly executed.
This must be done also with a view to the financial part of the
operation, because whether in private forestry or government
forestry, it must necessarily be largely a commercial proposition,
and the cost of operating must be considered in its relation to the
ultimate profit.
This is one of the
problems confronting us. There are others of a more or less
technical nature, and for their solution scientifically trained men
will, in my opinion, be necessary. That we have many men engaged in
the lumbering business who are highly skilled men indeed in the
operation of removing the present standing crop of timber as
expeditiously and economically as possible, is true, but their
training is not extended to the problem of removing this timber with
any regard to a future crop.
While we need
scientifically trained men for this purpose, men with a knowledge of
botany, plant pathology and general sylviculture, as these men would
have to be employed partly by the Government, partly by lumbermen,
it would be necessary that in addition to these things they should
also be expert lumbermen, and have a thorough knowledge of logging,
driving to market, sawing, culling lumber, etc., so that in addition
to the training they could receive in the schools, their education
would be utterly incomplete without the other training in the bush
and in the sawmill, as well as in the lumber yard.
For the proper
management of our permanent forests, well trained men will be needed
and it will require the joint training of the college, the bush and
the sawmill to produce them. -
It is difficult to
estimate the far-reaching consequences of this policy in securing a
permanent source of future supply against the time when the present
demand for lumber and other forest products will have enormously
increased and many now productive areas, if worked in the ordinary
way, will have become depleted. The intention of the Government of
the Province is that these reserves shall be /Operated in accordance
with forestry principles, removing only the mature timber from time
to time with as little injury as possible to the young growth and
the reproductive character of the forest in order that the supply
may be perpetually maintained. |
