Annual

Meetings

Forest conservation and tree farming held the spotlight ficient system of fire protection, that 95 per cent of Western at the Western Pine Association's semi-annual meetings at Pine cut-over lands are restocking satisfactorily, that memthe Palace Hotel, San Francisco, August 19. The show was ber company lands are left with adequate seed trees, and put on by Chairman J. F. Daggett and his Conservation that an increasing number of companies are giving considCommittee, assisted by the Association's five-man forest eration to the continued production possibilities of their engineering staff, which is headed by Stuart Moir, Associa- holdings. tion forester. State chairmen also reported upon the State forestry leg-

The Western Pine industry has conducted a well organ- islation which the industry is supporting in order to be sure ized and adequately financed forestry program for the past that occasional backward operators be required to follo\,\' ten years. Reporting to the Association's forest conserva- the sound forest practices which the industry has developed tion committee are separate forest practice committees for and found to be reasonable and practical.

Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California and Ari- The Association's forest engineers, in their answers to zona-New Mexico. Working closely with the forest prac- Chairman Daggett's questions, told of the work they are tice committees and individual operators are forest engi- doing to help individual operators practice better forestry. neers headquartered at Missoula, Montana; Yakima, Wash- Many operators employ their own foresters, of course, but ington; Portland and Klamath Falls, Oregon; and Sacra- the Association men, being familiar with methods and conmento, California. ditions over a wide area, often are able to suggest changes

The presentation to the industry representatives at San which will result in improved forest conditions rvithout Fran'cis'co was in the form of a roundtable discussion. with greatly increasing production costs. They realize that good Chairman Daggett interrogating State forest practice com- forestry must be based upon sound enonomics, a considermittee chairmen regarding the forestry problems in their tion too often lost sight of by Government agencies. respective areas, the self-imposed rules of operation under Another recent forward step coming up for further conwhich these problems are being met, and the plans for still sideration at the meeting was the Tree Farm Program, unfurther improving conditions under which a second crop der which operators who adopt the policy of adequately of timber is being grown on lands from which ripe or over- protecting their timber lands and keeping them in private ripe timber is being harvested for lumber, nearly the entire ownership for the continuous production of merchantable output of which now goes for war and only the most essen- forest crops may have their holdings certified as M/estern tial civilian uses. Pine Tree Farms. Already nearly a million acres have been

Discussion brought out the facts that the industry is so certified and it is expected that another million will be spending more than a million dollars a year on a very ef- added before the end of 1943.