Some Highlights of 1964: Land Use

Probably the most notable of the 1964 events relating to use and management of land was the volume and significance of legislation passed by the Congress in 1964. Two general points deserve mention:

1. Initiative for the new legislation and leadership in its passage came from interested groups of citizens and from the Congress as much as from the Executive branch. In the two other periods of great activity—the administrations of both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt—it was the Executive Branch that led in conservation legislation.
2. The measures passed in 1964 will require large additions to professional personnel concerned with resource matters. A major training job will be thrust upon the universities. If the universities adjust to the new demand (no small task in itself) the training can come quickly; a second prerequisite—experience—must be accumulated over several years. The need for personnel will rise at state and federal levels as well as in the universities themselves, and will encompass planning, research, and action programs.

THE LAND AND WATER CONSERVATION FUND will give additional support for acquisition of federal land reserves, but most of the money—probably somewhat more than $100 million annually—will go for grants-in-aid to states to finance land acquisition and development. While this is an important addition, it will not completely alter the scale of present spending which is already considerable in some areas. The combined expenditures of nine states that have embarked upon major park expansion programs in recent years—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Michigan, Washington, and California—have approached the $100 million per year level. Under the legislation, the funds are made available to the states on a matching basis, but 65 percent of the grants-in-aid are at the discretion of the Secretary of the Interior. Moreover, the grants are contingent upon a comprehensive state park plan, so that they will call for a degree of long-range park planning which has often been lacking. Important as will be the cash funds, the impetus to planning and state action may in the long run prove equally important, if not more so.

THE WILDERNESS ACT brings 9 million acres immediately under its protection, and provides a procedure for further additions. Roadless areas within federal wildlife refuges and national parks are to be reviewed over the next decade, with recommendations for including suitable areas in the wilderness system. This provision will require more long-range planning and public commitment than has heretofore been given to these types of federal land management units. This may well be one of the more important consequences of the Act. In its final form the Act, while somewhat less than conservationists had advocated, has generally been hailed as a major step toward the long-term protection of the larger wilderness areas of the nation. Although nothing can keep future legislation from modifying the Act, reduction or The 88th Congress voted to establish an unprecedented number of new park and recreation areas. The Canyonlands National Park in Utah, the Ozark National Scenic Riverways in Missouri, Fire Island National Seashore in New York, the Roosevelt Campobello International Park in Canada and the United States, the Ice Age National Scientific Reserve in Wisconsin, the Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii were authorized, together with four national historic sites. Possibly more significant than the large number of authorizations was the fact that most or all of them included provision for federal purchase of private land or rights in land. Prior to the establishment of the Cape Cod Seashore in 1961, Congress had steadfastly refused to appropriate federal funds for purchase of land for parks; this has now become an accepted procedure. The 88th Congress appropriated relatively large sums for purchasing land in several areas.

The Congress also provided for the establishment of the Public Land Law Review Commission. Like the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, the new Commission has equal representation from each house of the Congress and from the general public, and a fixed term of life; but it differs in that its eighteen members so chosen will elect their own chairman, a nineteenth member, who will serve as full time director. Congress seems increasingly willing to turn to this kind of group for the study of major problems; the joint Congressional-Presidentially appointed Commission may become the US version of the British Royal Commission.

CROP OUTPUT IN 1964. On the second smallest acreage planted to crops (306 million acres) in modern times, total crop production in the United States was the second largest on record, only 3 percent below the all-time high of 1963. This may not seem remarkable in a country accustomed to mounting crop production on declining acreages. But the weather in 1964 was distinctly unfavorable. Serious moisture deficiency was widespread, especially across the great central portion of the country. The year's experience thus provides a partial answer to the question of what would happen if the nation should again be visited with severe and extensive droughts. The tentative answer is that modern crops and modern technology not only can produce more per acre in normal and good weather, but are less vulnerable to drought than older crops and methods were.

NEW TIMBER ESTIMATES During 1964 the US Forest Service released preliminary findings of the latest of its periodic evaluations of the American forest resource situation.

The study, which is expected to come out in final form early in 1965, gives the most favorable picture of the US forest situation yet developed by any public or private research agency. While appraisals over the past forty-two years have shown improvements in the timber balance sheet, this is the first time that the current rate of timber growth in America's forests has been found to significantly exceed the volume harvested.

An increasingly effective forestry effort, above all fire protection in southern growth areas, has paved the way for extensive natural stocking. As a result, a wave of young growth timber is now reaching merchantable size and is beginning to have an impact on the national timber inventory. Markets for such products as pulpwood for papermaking and peeler logs for plywood manufacture have expanded. These gains in demand have been countered by losses of some traditional markets for wood, particularly for lumber. The Forest Service study shows that, on balance, timber products are maintaining about the same relative position in the industrial raw material mix that they have held for several decades. But drastic decreases in the use of wood as fuel, coupled with fuller utilization of the commercial harvest, have led to a decline in total removal from forests.

The reported improvements, however, have not been uniform in terms of species, grade, and geographic area. Most of the cutting is from preferred species and from trees of larger diameters, while most of the growth is on smaller trees and less desirable species.

On the basis of the Forest Services assumptions, prospective timber supplies, given recent levels of forest management, appear large enough to meet demand for wood, without a substantial increase in real prices, until about 1990. Thereafter, a problem of resource and adequacy would likely arise, leading to increasing pressure upon the resource and increasing timber supply costs. The outlook for a softening of the pressure on US forest resources revealed by these new projections is remarkable when compared with the appraisal made by the Forest Service in 1952. It seems unlikely that such sharp changes are entirely attributable to improved forest growth and decreased forest drain. Improved forest measurement technologies , particularly in the western forests , have significantly influenced new findings. For example, the recent surveys forced the Forest Service to go back and revise upward its 1952 sawtimber inventory estimates for the nation by some 500 billion board feet—an increase of almost 25 percent.

To the extent that the improvement is real, its maintenance will require continued progress in forest management. At the same time, items likely that, given the correlation between the presence of commercial forest land and areas of poverty—in Appalachia, for example—there will be increasing concern about the possibilities of using the forest as a vehicle for regional economic development and less concern, for the time being, about any general scarcity of forest products.