Humanité et Subsistances [MAN AND HIS SUSTENANCE] André Guerrin. 492 pp. Scientific Library Series No. 31. Les Editions du Griffon Neuchâtel, Switzerland. 1957 Sw. Fr. 48.70.
This study deals with the basic problems of nutrition in the light of diminishing productive areas and increasing populations, but it is of interest to foresters in that the role of forest cover in attenuating " the regrettable factor of regression of the possibilities for cultivation of the soils of our planet ", and the feasibility of clearing new areas under forest for food production, are examined and discussed at the regional and even, in some instances, at country levels.
The author's chief preoccupation is with striking a balance between possible increases in food production and likely rates of increase in demographic pressure, and with reaching certain conclusions as to how an apparently critical situation may be improved. Foresters will be sorry that, in this context, he does not give more attention to the influence of forest cover and trees on agricultural production and in bettering crop yields; and that he entirely omits any consideration of the forest as a source of raw materials essential to economic welfare.
Many of the issues raised in this book are very complex and, despite the urgent need for action, much careful study is still required before a decision can be reached in regard to the author's recommendations. It is difficult for an organization such as FAO to accept in particular certain conclusions put forward by Professor Roger Heim in his preface. This does not, however, detract from the value of the wealth of factual data contained in Mr. Guerrin's review, in helping the reader form his own opinions about an immediate and fundamental problem facing mankind.
Forest Trees of Australia. Forestry and Timber Bureau, Commonwealth of Australia. 230 pp. illus. Govt. Printing Office, Canberra, 1957 £ 2.2s. (Austr.).
Here is a very fine book describing 82 native Australian forest tree species. Of these, 67 are eucalypts, 7 other broadleaved, and 8 coniferous species. There are colored and black and white illustrations.
The first chapter provides a concise summary of the vegetation of Australia, covering treeless communities, and tree-dominated and mallee communities which are subdivided into mallee and low rainfall woodland, woodland, and forests; the latter is further distinguished as sclerophyllous or rain formation. This is followed by a brief description of Australian forest trees and groups including general introductions on the hardwood genera, principally the Myrtaceae consisting of Eucalyptus (95 percent of Australia's forest area), Angophora, Syncarpia, and Tristania, and including Acacia of the Leguminosae and Casuarina of the Casuarinaceae; and on the softwood genera of Agathis, Araucaria, Callitris, Athrotaxis, Dacrydium and Phyllocladus.
The Eucalypts are classified on the bests of the structure of the anthers of the flowers into three major sections: those with oblong anthers, with two long parallel slits; those with kidney-shaped anthers with a single opening; and those with box-like anthers with two pore-like holes. Although there is hybridization among species within each section, no such hybridization has been recorded between species of different sections. Within these three anther divisions, groups are recognized according to bark, foliage, flower, buds, and fruit, all characters which are readily identifiable in the field in a general way. From a study of the common names of the species in these various groups, it is clear that it is safer and less confusing to use only the Latin names.
The book should be a valuable reference outside Australia to foresters concerned with the introduction and cultivation of Eucalypts, and the Director-General of the Australian Forestry and Timber Bureau and the other contributors to this volume, deserve to be congratulated and thanked for issuing it.
The Federal Lands: Their Use and Management. Marion Clawson and Burnell Held. 500 pp. Index and statistical appendices. Published for Resources for the Future, Inc. by The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore. $ 8.50.
This book constitutes a history of the federal lands of the U.S.A., a review of the land use policies applied to them and of the administrative methods through which these policies are implemented, a critical analysis of achievements through these methods, and finally a tentative projection into the future of the role of these lands in the country's economy, with suggestions for increasing the efficiency of their management.
All these factors are actually closely interrelated and it would be difficult to understand the present-day management of these federal lands without a study, at least in major outline, of their history through what the authors call the eras of land acquisition, disposal to private persons, reservation, custodial management, and finally intensive management which began only about ten years ago.
The policy applied to 376 million acres of rural federal land (excluding Alaska, the Indian reservations and lands in the hands of the Department of Defence) has been one of multiple use. The authors explain clearly not only the framing of this policy, which sets certain priorities for one or another type of land use for each area, but also describe how the products of these lands are utilized by certain groups of beneficiaries or by the public as a whole. In particular, they show the influence on the formation of this policy of organized groups, demonstrating the machinery of decision-making from the level of the humblest local organization to the Congress and the President of the United States.
The management of federal lands is entrusted to a great many government agencies, the four principal being:
1. the Forest Service, which administers the national forests;2. the Bureau of Land Management, which manages grazing lands outside the national forests, land derived from the partial revestment of the areas originally conveyed as grants to the Oregon and California Railroads (which included large forested tracts) and other public domain lands, and finally the submerged areas of the outer continental shelf lands, the so-called " offshore " lands, where oildrilling concessions have been awarded lately;
3. the National Parks Service which administers 9 million acres reserved for their aesthetic beauty and touristic attraction, as well as a certain number of historical sites, battlefields, cemeteries, national monuments, etc., and the federal capital parks;
4. the Fish and Wildlife Service which is in charge of a certain number of wildlife refuges and also helps some of the above-mentioned services or the States to manage other public domain lands.
For each of these four government agencies, the authors consider the relative, present and future (up to 1980) importance of the main uses of the lands under their control namely: for grazing, timber harvest, hunting and fishing, recreation, watersheds and for stream flow control and the locating and exploitation of mineral resources.
Of particular interest is Chapter 4 in which the authors analyze the various factors which enter into pricing processes in order to arrive at unit prices for products extracted from federal lands, and also factors which influence the formation of investment capital to be used to heighten the productivity of such lands. In this connection, one will note their critique of the system of abandoning to individual states and counties, in lieu of the taxes which they are not permitted to levy on federal lands, of a large portion (25 to 76 percent) of the revenue from these lands.
Despite the difficulty of drawing a distinction between investment and current expenditures (except for the Forest Service which makes such a breakdown in its own bookkeeping statements), the authors were able to estimate the gross revenue from these federal lands for 1956 and 1956, compare them with expenditures and forecast the course of events up to 1980. This balance sheet shows a good profit both at present and for the future, but this is due entirely to the revenue from the leasing of offshore lands, and turns into a deficit if this revenue is subtracted from the total figure.
The authors conclude their study by showing that, because of the ever-growing complexity of the problems involved in their management, the era of intensive management of federal lands now entered upon will lead to profound changes in the methods applied to them. They establish the principle clearly that the purpose of such management should never be the seeking at all costs of maximization of net monetary income. It should, they believe, come closer than it now does to a commercial business enterprise whose transactions are carried on directly with the public, and which earns an income that makes it potentially self-sustaining without recourse to appropriations. But it requires more flexible budgeting and commercial audit, not customarily permitted for an ordinary government agency.
This result can be achieved by various methods, which the authors study in detail. However, they seem to favor the substitution for the present management systems of a federal land corporation, a type of government enterprise already common in the United States, which enjoys a great deal of autonomy and to which the criteria just mentioned could easily be applied. In addition, it could be relieved of non-revenue-producing functions now being performed by the agencies concerned, for instance, the research and technical assistance work of the Forest Service. Such activities would then continue to be conducted by the normal type of government agency.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Conservation - 1911-1945, Volumes I and II. Compiled by Edgar B. Nixon, United States Government Printing Office, 1957.
The public and private papers of a leading public figure often reveal insights into his personal interests and significant accomplishments which too frequently escape the historian dealing only in broad political issues. That this is particularly true of Franklin Roosevelt has been demonstrated in this 1,300 page collection of his papers on forestry, soil, water and wildlife, park conservation and natural resource planning.
There is an underlying reason for Roosevelt's broad interest in natural resource problems: he was a countryman at heart. He had what Aldo Leopold has called " an ecological conscience ". Many pages of his letters, conference reports as well as written speeches, reveal a man with an awareness of trees, wild things and a " feel " for the land - not as a sentimentalist, but as a practical realist. Only a man who had reforested his own acres with tree species he himself had carefully chosen and who had watched them grow, would have the vision needed to create and stoutly defend a national reforestation program so that unemployed city boys might have similar experiences in the Civilian Conservation Corps.
These volumes do not include any of Roosevelt's papers on public power or reclamation except insofar as they were related to the general field of resource planning. Presumably, papers on the Tennessee Valley Authority, Rural Electrification Administration and other water developments will be included in another collection. There is much evidence to indicate that he was primarily interested in integrated management of resources - particularly river basin and regional resource planning. The T.V.A. and the National Resources Planning Board were pioneering efforts in this respect.
His conservation programs were established largely during his first and second administrations before the second world war. To review them all would require more pages than should be allotted to any reviewer; but the impact of their sheer numbers cannot be appreciated without a listing of the highlights: establishment of the Soil Conservation Service, of 159 new National Wildlife Refuges, of the National Parks of King's Canyon, Great Smokies and Isle Royal and of a number of national monuments; the first national water pollution control act; the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934; the Duck Stamp, Pittman-Robertson and Wildlife Co-ordination Acts (all landmarks in wildlife conservation); the Quetico-Superior Wilderness Committee; expansion of the National Forests by 13 million acres; the Plains Shelterbelt Act; and the Norris-Doxey Farm Forestry Act. There are many other major forward steps in existing programs which had received no progressive help for years.
Roosevelt's personal interest in conservation was fertile ground for early leadership in conservation policy when, as State Senator in Albany, he sponsored the Roosevelt-Jones Wildlife Protection Bill. His first real controversy with the former Governor of New York came in 1931 over the Reforestation Amendment (designed to retire and reforest submarginal New York State lands) when the latter opposed it as being unnecessary. (It was approved by a large majority of voters). These early experiences were fostered by his personal friendship with Gifford Pinchot as early as 1911. On many occasions during his career, Roosevelt sought out and used some of Pinchot's advice on forestry matters. And it is of interest to note that Pinchot and Roosevelt were planning a World Conference on Conservation shortly before the President's death. In due course this materialized as the United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources.
As a participant in several New Deal conservation programs beginning with a job as a forestry foreman in a C.C.C. camp during college years, this reviewer felt that he had a reasonably detailed knowledge of conservation in the New Deal; but these two volumes open up many new insights into Roosevelt the man, Roosevelt the political leader, and Roosevelt the conservationist, which will be instructive to both the professional foresters as well as to laymen. No historian of the 1930's henceforth can afford to overlook this dynamic and lasting chapter of American history.
C.H.S.
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WORLD FOREST PRODUCTS STATISTICS A Ten-Year Summary - 1946-55 Here, in one volume, are forest products statistics for the ten-year period since issues of FAO's Yearbook of Forest Products Statistics first appeared. Complete with revised figures never before published, this important reference publication contains tables, technical notes, definitions, country notes, charts and reviews of production and trade. 200 pages. Trilingual (English-French-Spanish) edition. Price $ 3.00 or 15s |
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FIBREBOARD AND PARTICLE BOARD Report of the FAO/ECE International Consultation on Insulation Board, Hardboard and Particle Board held at Geneva, January, 1957. Chapters deal with: Product Description, Nomenclature and Definitions World Production, Consumption and Trade English edition available August 1958. French, Spanish and Russian editions in preparation. The Technical Papers presented at the Consultation are also in preparation for issue in mimeographed form, in original languages only. These will be available only on application directly to FAO Headquarters |
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INDIAN FORESTER Founded in 1875 INDIAN FORESTER Is a monthly publication, edited and published by the Central Silviculturist at the Forest Research Institute Dehra Dun. It publishes original articles, reviews and abstracts on tropical forestry along with results of researches carried out at the Institute. The journal also publishes articles on agriculture, hunting and travel. It is the only journal in India exclusively devoted to forestry and related fields and enjoys a world-wide circulation. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION Rs. 20.00 (Inland) SINGLE COPY (Current issues) Rs. 2.00 These prices are exclusive of postage INDIAN FORESTER Will also be found an effective advertising medium particularly for those engaged in trades allied to forestry. For advertising rates and other particulars please write to the manager. Editorial & Business Offices: - Main Building, Forest Research Institute & Colleges, P.O. New Forest, Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh, Provinces, India. |
