Tensas Gazette

OUR FORESTS

Statistics Disprove the Rumors That They Are Disappearing

According to some facts and figures presented by Henry Gannett in a recent issue in the New York Sun there is to-day nearly if not quite as great an area of woodland in the United States as when the white man set foot on our shore. There are not many square miles of merchantable timber now as then, but the territory occupied by growing trees is about as extensive as it was four hundred years ago, and these trees will in time grow to a size suitable for the production of lumber. Some of Mr. Gannett's statements are quite inconsistent with the general belief that American forests are giving out. He says, for instance, that only about two hundred and seventy thousand square miles, or less than one-tenth the area of the country, is artificially cleared land, and while to offset this loss there has in recent years been great extension of wooded land in the prairie states as well as in some of the natural tree-growing states. A table is published showing the total area and the wooded area of each state, the figures having been obtained from reports of the census and agricultural departments, from official surveys and in a few cases from careful estimates. As a grand result it is shown that the wooded area in the United States, excluding Alaska, is nearly one million one hundred and thirteen thousand square miles.