NATIONAL FORESTS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 47, 20 November 1918, Page 3

NATIONAL FORESTS

LORD SBLBOE-NE'S PLEA FOR STATE SCHEME. Lord Selborne, presiding at a meeting of landowners and estalo agents, at Winchester, referred to the Report of the Forestry Snb-Comraitteo of the Reconstruction Committee, no said that there were differences of opinion as to the manner in which the roport should be accepted, and especially as to the authority which was to be established. He sincerely hoped that we should have for the first time a separate, properly organised, and properly appointed forest authority for the ivhole of the United Kingdom. He therefore urged them to do all they could to strengthen the lands of the War Cabinet in accenting without emasculation the Report of the Forestry Sub-Committee.

As to State afforestation, he thought all those who had examined the question agreed that the private landowner by himself could not really meet the needs of the country. If we were caught— which Gotl forbid—in m\f war of the magnitude of (he present one thirty years hence, and there had been no replanting, on a sufficient scale, the country would bo in a very bad position from the very beginning. Go far as we could foresee it would oe impossible to keep o.ur mines'going on in.ported pit props. Therefore, as a mere measure of national safety, apart altogether from the importance of the forestry industry in an civilised country, it had certainly becomo necessary for the Government to become the owner'of forests and the planter of forests, and to establish a Forest Authority which would own millions of acres, and gradually, under a proper and well-thought-out system of rotation, establish forests on the French or some other model,

Mr. M. C. Duchesne, the honorary secrotary of the Royal English Arbo'ricultural Society and the English Forestry Association, said he understood that by the end of this year nearly 1,000,000 acres of woods in this country would have been felled for war purposes. In 1916 and 1017 the amount of home-grown, timber felled was over 1,000,000 tons, and this year it was estimated that 6,000,000 tons would be required, including over 3,000,000 tons of milling timber. . The forestry interests would give every help to establish forestry on sound lines, and they asked that tho subject should not bo made tho ground for party politics. A resolution was unanimously adopted expressing the view that every encouragement should be given to estate forestry, and also the hope that the Government will come to an early decision on tho Report of the Forestry Suli-Com-initecc- and place tho future of forestry in tho United Kingdom on a proper commercial basis.