First Hardwood Reforestation

Epochal in the history of reforestation in America is the experiment now being carried on by the Thistlethwaite Lumb,er Company in reforesting hardwood lands in Louisiana, the American Forest Week committee here says in connection with the national observance of the week, April 24 to 30.

This, the first large commercial hardwood reforestation project in the United States, under way in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, is, in a sense, a monument to the late Lote Thistlethwaite, who began the work now being carried on by his broth'er John R. Thistlethwaite.

Perhaps because the depletion of hardwood has not been so obvious as that of softwood, commercial reforestation in the past has been confined entirely to coniferous trees, the American Forest Week committee says. Hardwood land, the committee points out as another probable reason why its reforestation has not been generally undertaken, is usually excellent agricultural land while land upon which coniferous tre,es grow is more often not.

The Thistlethwaite project, the committee feels, is significant in that it inaugurates the interest of practical lumbermen in hardwood reforestation.

On its cut-over hardwood tract of 11,300 actes the Thistlethwaite company estimates the minimum annual growth at 50O board feet per acre. The normal diameter growth on individual trees at present is everaging half an inch per y,ear, and the maximum over one inch. The growth is distributed among red oak, white oak, hickory and ash.

The tract, where the experiment in the restoration of hardwood is being carried out, forms only a reserve where young trees are protected but has been set aside by Thistlethwaite as a sanctuary for wild life for the entire reforestation period of thirty years.

Thinning has been necessary because of the too dense growth of trees to the acre, and the company has sold the product of the thinning at a dollar a cord as it lay on the ground.

No artificial planting is being done, fire protection and scientific thinning being the only aids to natural replanting. Even so, Mr. Thistlethwaite figures the cost of forest management at $26.& per acre, including the original land valuation of $5.00 an acre, and made up otherwise as follows: interest 30c per acre a year; fire patrol and incidental supervision 1Oc and taxes 32c.

These figures disregard compound interest which most practical lumbermen insist on computing in connection with any reforestation enterprise, with the general conclusion that it cannot be profitabe. There are others, however, who argue that it is not fair to demand compound interest in tree growing investments, particularly when the growing of new trees is carried on simultaneously with the cutting of mature trees in the same forest.

As an example of how the possibilities of hardwood reforestation have been brought home to him, Mr. Thistlethwaite tells of cutting logs 16 inches and up at the small end on a tract of timber that was an old plantation during the Civil War. In many young tracts of hardwood timber in Louisiana old furrows in which corn and cane were planted still exist, evidence that the tracts were fields not so many years ago.

Examination of logs on the Thistlethwaite holdings and knowledge of neighboring operations show that 40 to 45 per cent of hardwood logs 16 inches and up are 50 years and under in age according to Thistlethwaite.

Hardwood reforestation would be profitable on the thousands of acres of rich bottom land in the south which are idle today, and which regardless of their fertility, cannot be used for crops for the next fifty years because of the cost of drainage and clearing, he believes.

"Ifardwood reforestation, to my mind and from the findings of experience, is even more feasible, less expensive and less dangerous than softwood timber growing," he says.

The two most important things to be considered in hardwood timber growing, as in softwood growing, are fire prevention and equitable taxation, the American Forest Week committee says, adding that the Thistlethwaite Lumber Company is fortunate that Louisiana has special forest land taxation laws encouraging to reforestation.