Predicting from Inventories: A Timely Issue

Editor's Introduction Timber scarcity has been one of the driving issues of the conservation movement since its inception. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, a growing number of concerned onlookers believed that future supplies of timber were threatened. Ironically, these fears began before Americans really knew how much timber there had been in the original forest or how much had been removed. Nonetheless, as the frontier moved westward, leaving cleared land in its wake, it became increasingly obvious that consumption was exceeding supply. In the 1880s the federal government began counting the trees and toting up figures for accumulative consumption. This inventory process continues today, although in much more sophisticated ways. This essay by Michael Williams traces the evolution of these inventories and shows their significance to the forestry community. Earlier in this feature, George A. Craig wrote about the history of timber appraisal systems (JFH, October 1983). The combination of forest inventories and the accompanying appraisal systems has allowed forest managers and others to know how much timber we have, where it is, and what it is worth. However, as with the appraisals, inventory figures have been disputed. Thus in the 1980s, as in the 1880s, the very bases for decision making, let alone the decisions themselves, are subject to close scrutiny. D uring the nineteenth century the American forest was reduced in size by the combined impacts of agricultural clearing, lumbering, and fire. After the Civil War many people were beginning to question the conventional assumption that the forest was inexhaustible. "The nation has slept because the gnawing of want has not awakened her," wrote Thomas Starr in 1865. "She has had plenty and to spare, but within thirty years she will be conscious that not only individual want is present, but that it comes to each from permanent national famine of wood." Starr's use of the word famine was wholly appropriate since wood was second only to food as a basic, lifesupporting commodity in American life. However, the sheer abundance of the nation's forests veiled the wasteful utilization practices of those who strove to achieve the immediate goals of producing agricultural goods and wood products for the expanding nation. Rising trends in agricultural clearing and lumber production in the closing years of the nineteenth century brought Starr's specter of timber famine closer to realization. Between 1900 and 1910 Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot and President Theodore Roosevelt manipulated this specter skillfully to further their general policy of revitalizing the nation through conservation. Roosevelt's opening speech at the historic American Forest Congress in 1905 set the tone for thinking about the forest for the next couple of decades: Our country . . . is only at the beginning of its growth. Unless the forests of the United States can be made ready to meet the vast demands which the growth will inevitably bring, commercial disaster, that means disaster to the whole country, is inevitable. The railroads must have ties . . the miner must have timber ... the farmer must have timber ... the stockman must have fence posts. If the present rate of forest destruction is allowed to cont'inue, with nothing to offset it, a timber famine in the future is inevitable.