BY JUSTUS W. GONGGRYP
Vast tropical forests make up about half of the world's total forest area, according to the most up-to-date report in FAO's Forestry and Forest Products - World Situation, 1937-1946. This estimate, like previous ones, includes large areas of unproductive forests. As knowledge of the tropical forests is vague and uncertain, a great deal of additional study is necessary on their areas, species, stands, growth, and silviculture.
Wherever tropical forests exist - in South America, Africa, or the Par East - there are basic similarities in the essential problems on which investigation is urgently needed. Constructive measures which will aid in making the resources of these forests equally useful to the people of the tropical countries and to the wood-hungry peoples of the temperate zones are also fundamentally the same.
This article, based on many years' study of the tropical forests and their problems, undertakes to sketch some of their common characteristics and to suggest productive lines of endeavor for the future.
AS a result of the general feeling that the upheaval of the war would necessitate revised ideas of available economic resources, including forests, a number of countries have undertaken surveys. Thus, the United States Forest Service has initiated a series of reports entitled A Reappraisal of the Forest Situation. The United Kingdom also officially issued a Report on Postwar Forest Policy, and without doubt the governments of other nations are fully aware of the urgency and complexity of the problems treated in such reviews.
The Third Report to the Governments of the United Nations by the Interim Commission on Food and Agriculture observes that fears have been expressed that the forest resources of the United States and Canada may in the near future become insufficient to supply the raw material for North America's growing pulp industry. The same trend exists on a world-wide scale.
This study is based upon the assumption that an abundant and continuous supply of wood and other forest products from forests throughout the world, including those of the tropics, is essential for the realization of an expanding world economy and a higher standard of living. This does not mean that all the forests in the world are to be brought into production. Many large forests are incapable of producing a sufficient quantity of timber; either because of inaccessibility or because they cannot grow marketable timber. Again, the working of some forests is restricted because of their scenic value, or because they are required for scientific purposes, or in a protective capacity which, in certain cases, may be considered their most important function.
It is certain, however, that the shortage predicted for the production of the temperate forests of the Western Hemisphere is also present in the Eastern Hemisphere This shortage is felt nowhere more keenly-than in Europe. The world cannot afford to have large parts of its productive forests lying idle. It is essential to determine first, where such forests are situated; second, what and how much they can produce; and third, how this production can be realized. This investigation should begin by ascertaining to what extent forest management has already progressed and to what extent the forests of the world have served mankind up to the present time.
Much has already been written on this subject. The Third Report to the Governments of the United Nations by the Interim Commission on Food and Agriculture regards forestry as a world problem and emphasizes the need of special consideration with regard to the tropics. An attempt will be made in this article to formulate concisely the various points to be brought forward for a future world forest policy for the tropics. The above-mentioned report has stated the necessity for putting the subject on this level.
There are certain aspects of tropical forestry which make consideration on an international basis even more urgent than is the case for other parts of the world. One such aspect may be the consequence of the elemental condition of life in tropical countries, a condition which existed before the war, but which has since the war become fraught with further complications because of political changes in several parts of the tropics.
It is an established fact that forest management coincides with a certain maturity of government. An inexperienced government has to be convinced that the expenditure for forest management is a necessity and not the fad of well-meaning, but mistaken, enthusiasts. In a great many cases in the past, this condition came rather late, after irreparable damage had already been inflicted upon the forests and had affected the welfare of the people dependent upon them.
Excellent results had been achieved before the war by the Forest Services which had been established in several tropical countries, and which were in the process of expansion. In countries invaded after Pearl Harbor, the large majority of local forestry officers were put into prisons or concentration camps. Even in countries where forestry institutions were respected, it is doubtful whether the results achieved will survive the confusion of the postwar period. Countries of the war area which were spared enemy occupation have the advantage of being able to resume their programs more easily, although in some cases conditions have been so changed by the war that maintenance of the old Forest Services is uncertain. Most tropical Forest Services, the oldest of which date only from the middle of the nineteenth century, depended largely for advice and training of personnel on European and American forestry technicians. They were instituted only after governments became convinced of their necessity by the evil consequences of neglect of forest management. It would be tragic, indeed, if the same sequence of mistakes and failures were to be repeated all over again. The consequences would be much more serious, due to greatly increased population, than they were a hundred years ago.
While the productive capacity of the tropical forests is quite sufficient to ensure the attainment of a higher standard of living with reasonably efficient forest management, the neglect of proper measures can result in the utter ruin of a country.
In the so-called primeval forests of Central America, the: forester finds traces of Mayan agriculture indicating that these practically uninhabited tracts must have supported a large and highly civilized population several centuries ago. The same is true of tropical Africa where some forests reveal the remains of populations, towns, and civilizations of which even the names are forgotten. On the other hand, evidences are visible throughout the tropics of the terrible havoc man can cause by fire, which may finally result in the creation of deserts. Every forester and soil conservationist knows the seriousness of these trends which have in many cases resulted in the disappearance or the migration of populations. Such occurrences may have been considered unavoidable in the unenlightened past. In these days adequate protective measures are available for promoting the welfare of mankind. They cannot happen automatically, however, but only as a result of careful planning and research.
Independent evaluations of the total forest area of the world have been made by Zon and Sparhawk, and by Illvesalo and Jalava. Although their methods differed, the figures they arrived at do not differ fundamentally. One objection can be made against both sets of figures, namely that the first requirement for a statistical tabulation is lacking in both cases: there is no exact definition of terms - in this case of what constitutes a forest. The following table gives the mean of the data of these two tabulations, rounded to millions of square kilometers.
TOTAL SURFACES AND FOREST AREAS BY CONTINENTS
|
Continent |
Total Land Area |
Total Forest Area |
Coniferous Forests |
Deciduous Forests |
|
|
Temperate |
Tropical |
||||
|
(...Millions of square kilometers...) |
|||||
|
Europe |
9.9 |
2.9 |
2.0 |
0.9 |
... |
|
Asia |
42.2 |
8.3 |
3.6 |
2.1 |
2.6 |
|
Africa |
29.4 |
3.2 |
0.1 |
... |
3.1 |
|
North America |
21.7 |
5.8 |
4.2 |
1.2 |
04 |
|
South America |
18.7 |
8.4 |
0.5 |
0.3 |
7.6 |
|
Australia and adjacent isles |
9.0 |
1.1 |
0.1 |
... |
1.0 |
|
TOTAL |
130.9 |
29.7 |
10.5 |
4.5 |
14.7 |
It might be deduced from this table that all coniferous forests are located in temperate climates. This is not entirely accurate, as some conifers are also to be found in the tropics - for instance, the forests of Caribbean pine, Pinus caribaea, in Central America and the West Indies; forests of Parana pine, Araucaria angustifolia in South America; forests of. Pinus merkusii in Sumatra; forests of Pinus merkusii and Pinus insularis in the Philippines; and forests of Agathis spp. in Borneo and New Guinea. Without doubt tropical forestry will find it expedient to increase very extensively the area under conifers. However, the greater part of the existing 10 million square kilometers of coniferous forests are situated in the Northern Temperate Zone where they constitute by far the most important economic section of the forest area.
In 1935, the Comité International du Bois (CIB) ascertained that 92 percent of world imports of wood were made up of conifers. Practically all of this enormous mass of over 50 million m3 of wood came from the forests of Europe and North America. The share of the world's timber trade coming from the tropics was so small that the CIB specifically stated that details of trade in tropical woods were of insufficient importance to record.
In the years just preceding World War II, a rough estimate made in Intersylva1 sets the export of wood from the tropics to countries of the temperate zones at approximately 2 million m3 annually. Imports of wood or wood derivatives greatly exceeded this figure. The International Institute of Agriculture's figures2 show that, in Africa, over a period of years, the value of wood and forest products imports exceeded exports by amounts varying from 34 to 90 million gold francs annually.
1 Intersylva, Journal of the International Forestry Center, II (1942). p. 242.
2 International Institute of Agriculture, International Yearbook of Forestry Statistics, Vol. III: Africa (Rome, 1942)
Another estimation3 puts the surplus of imports of wood over exports at 2.5 million tons for Africa. It can be assumed that the greater part of this came from Europe. In a similar way the forests of North America supplied the requirements of Central and South America. Although the forests of Southern Asia were more productive than those of Africa perhaps it is not generally known that to a large extent the packing cases in which tea, rubber, and other products were exported from Malaya, India, and elsewhere in the East came from Finland. Countries such as China and Japan, which could have been supplied with timber from Southeast Asia, imported large - quantities of wood from North America. Figures may become available later on which will corroborate these claims in detail. There is no doubt, however, that up to World War II the tropics constituted a drain on the resources of the Northern Temperate Zone and in this respect had to be considered as a liability rather than an asset.
3 Intersylva, op. cit., p. 645.
A similar situation obtains in a number of South American countries.4 Costa Rica, for instance, imports more forest products than it exports, although its forests are in large part still in a virgin condition, outside of the densely populated areas.
4 The Forests of Costa Rica, a general report made by the Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture in co-operation with the office of the Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Washing" ton. November 1943.
However, the rest of the world can ignore this situation in the tropical forest regions only so long as forests elsewhere are plentiful and productive enough to supply not only Costa Rica but any other country's demand for cheap lumber. The picture is now changing,. since the northern countries have had to realize that their forest wealth is not inexhaustible. They will have to preserve their resources, economize, plan, and limit their own requirements, in order to meet all present and future needs.
Sometimes the term "forest products" when used in its broadest sense may include such cultivated items as rubber, gums, cinchona, vegetable oils, etc. In Puerto Rico even coffee in certain respects is included in this category. It may be added that it is to the advantage of certain of these products to have forestry principles of cultivation, rather than agricultural ones, applied to them. However, in view of the fact that the rotations of these types of crops are very short, they have not been included in this discussion, so that, for the purposes of this article, the term "forest products" is used in its narrower sense to embrace only the more permanent forest crops.
Perhaps the greatest dangers to tropical forests are fire and shifting cultivation, which are often underestimated by investigators. Frequently these are complementary. A flight by airplane over tropical forests readily demonstrates the catastrophic influence of such factors. It is to be hoped that all responsible governments will recognize this effect and take requisite action. A proper conception of the amount of damage already caused by these two factors can only be obtained by aerial surveys on countrywide scales. Indeed, international co-operation in respect to this will be essential. However, if one were to anticipate the findings of such a survey, there can be no doubt about the fact that the tropical forest areas are diminishing. It is obvious, therefore, that from an international point of view, one of the worst results of the present crisis would be for the wood-producing countries of the Northern Hemisphere to try to ease their own situation by producing only for internal consumption. By so doing, the pressure on the tropical forests would be increased and the process of deterioration accelerated. It would be optimistic, indeed, to suppose that in a few years the tropical regions would be able, wholly unaided, to develop those principles and practices of scientific forestry it took Western civilization centuries to evolve.
Hence, the logical solution appears to be to hasten the application of the principles of sound forest management in the tropics, thereby preserving their forests for permanent use, supplying the forest products needed for the internal consumption of tropical countries, and at the same time offering the surplus of forest products for export, in order to ease the pressure on the forests of the Northern Hemisphere and to assist in their rehabilitation.
It has been pointed out that the timber balance of the European countries from 1927 to 1929 was based on a productive area of about 1.35 million km2 of forests and that during that period a total yearly surplus of about 30 million m3 of raw wood was available for export to non-European countries.5 For the years 1928-29, Egon Glesinger6 had put the normal production of timber and firewood for Northern Europe, excluding the U.S.S.R., at 231.62 million m3, but estimated that actual output was 253.11 million m3 and total consumption was 255.69 million m3. However, even if the exact production capacity of European forests is debatable, the efficiency of modern forest management remains undisputed. It should be possible to produce enormous quantities of forest products from the tropical forests which make up half the forest area of the whole world' and which cover more than ten times the productive area of European forests. At present, a large number of these forests are not only lying idle, but are being destroyed and their products burned. Only when tropical forests have become self-supporting will measures for their protection become a serious possibility. It would be unrealistic to suppose that financial backing for the development of such forests would be provided from altruistic motives. There is no better description for this whole development than the French phrase "la mise en valeur des forêts tropicales." It implies not only their utilization but also putting them to good use, making this tremendous resource profitable and ensuring an adequate return for the money invested. The project is also vast enough not only to offer inducement for the investment of the great amount of capital needed but also to provide well-paid, rewarding work and to help improve the present labor conditions in the tropics.
5 Silvae Orbis, Monographs of the International Forestry Center, No. 6 [German] or No. 6a [French] (1942), p. 1.6 Egon Glesinger, Le Bois en Europe (Paris, 1932), p. 127.
As a rule, the working of tropical forests has differed very much from logging operations in the coniferous forests of the Northern Hemisphere. While these latter operations resulted in cutting the whole crop, tropical forests were generally logged only for special timbers of the largest sizes. On the Ivory Coast of Africa, where Aubréville estimates a total volume of 400 m3 of logs and 200 m3 firewood per hectare, the logging took only one white mahogany, Entandrophragma laplaei, on 10 to 22 hectares; one aboudikro, Entandrophragma cylindricum, on 10 to 24 hectares;. one dibetou, Lovoa klaineana, on 8 to 14 hectares; and one bosse, Guarea cedrata, on 4 to 16 hectares. The splendid forests of Central America, with hundreds of different species of wood, are often worked for mahogany alone. as the other species are not considered marketable. The trees to be logged in many tropical forests are so scattered that the woodsmen trying to locate them are even called " mahogany hunters" or "snakewood hunters," as the case may be.
The conclusion reached by foresters after research in tropical forests is that eventually, with very few exceptions, a use can be found for every species. At the present time, modern logging methods are already being used in working mahogany in Central America. However, unless practically the whole stand of salable sizes can be cut in one sustained operation, it is unreasonable to expect cheap lumber from the tropics.
Frederick C. Simmons7 complains that "in the United States.... a lot of logging is done with one specific product or the needs of one specific plant in mind, instead of taking out all the useful timber products ready for harvest in one operation... Each successive operation had to repair or build roads, bridges, camps, and recruit and supervise a new crew. This method of logging cannot help but bring about high costs."
7 Frederick C. Simmons, Recent Developments in Logging in the Northeast, Northeastern Forest Experiment Station, Forest Products Paper No. 7 (January 1946).
The difficulties referred to are evident and are multiplied a great many times in numerous forests of the tropics. Unless a market can be found for many insufficiently known species, economical use of modern logging machinery is impossible and exploitation means the retention of slave labor methods no better than those of Pharaoh's time and will result as well in very expensive wood.
Consequently, the first prerequisite for an increased utilization of tropical forests is a better knowledge of tropical woods. An outstanding amount of work has already been done in this respect. The current literature on the subject listed in the Yale University School of Forestry publication, Tropical Woods, is just one example. Investigation is more often than not carried out in search of a substitute for high-priced timber. It should rather be the other way round. Research should be broadened and start by ascertaining the composition of the stands in a forest and the uses to which the timbers could be put. Consideration of these uses should not be limited to specialty products such as wood for airplanes, ships, decks, etc., but should include ordinary lumber required for making houses, furniture, and packing cases and for the numerous purposes of modern wood technology.
Such research in itself is already a tremendous undertaking. Tropical forestry cannot but be thankful for the work done on tropical timbers by the great Forest Products Laboratories of the Northern Hemisphere. However, the investigations needed along the lines indicated are not being undertaken according to a general plan. The Northern research institutes were set up to examine their own forest problems and this primary objective keeps them more than fully occupied.
Before the war, the tropical forest experiment stations had their programs each for its own region, but the Caribbean Forest Experiment Station in Puerto Rico is perhaps the only one whose development will not have been fundamentally modified by war and postwar difficulties. Even if the war had not occurred, the machinery and organization for tropical forest research would not have been sufficient from an over-all point of view.
There is need in the tropics for several forest products laboratories. It would be idle to suppose that private enterprise will be able to fill this need. Tropical forests are continuing to offer great advantages to the businessman with vision and capital. The timber trade is very conservative, however, and no one who has ever had any connection with the marketing of new timber species can imagine that this proposition would offer the same inducements to the investment of capital as would oil, minerals, or even rubber and other plantation products.
There are good reasons for the Northern Hemisphere Forest Products Laboratories to consider expanding their activities to include tropical forests. They have done so in some cases but mostly through the accident of circumstance. The forest policy of timber-producing countries of the Northern Hemisphere is no longer self-contained but will have to be correlated more and more with the development of the forests of the tropics. Co-ordination of research on tropical woods and forest products is therefore of world-wide interest.
If a general plan for the international co-ordination of tropical forest research or, more generally, of the investigation of tropical forest resources, should be agreed upon, there is one point that would require particular attention. The number of species in tropical forests greatly exceeds those in the temperate forests, and the same necessity which already exists in the north, of comprising several botanical species under one name in the timber trade, assumes great importance. Furthermore, the variability of many tropical timbers is very great. For example, the specific gravity of balsa, Ochroma lagopus, varies from 0.08 to 0.48, that is, in a relation of 1 to 6. The question of nomenclature and grading are both very much more important and complicated than is ordinarily realized. The anatomy and taxonomy of tropical trees is indispensable for tropical forestry, but it is futile to imagine that identification by a small sample of wood will be sufficient to establish the value of a log or a shipment of the same species. The timber trade will, quite correctly, value a well-graded shipment of mixed botanical origin more highly than a shipment of only one of the component species which had been graded without proper attention to technical requirements.
With figured furniture or veneer woods, the botanical identity will hardly be questioned by the trade. A timber merchant will pay very much more for a beautifully figured log of one of the numerous "false" mahoganies than for a plain log of established pedigree. That merchant, however, will require microscopic scientific evidence if he wishes to evade an onerous contract. The unreliability of the trade in many tropical timbers is intensified by the phenomenal complication of indigenous names, different names being applied in neighboring areas to the same timber and the same name to quite dissimilar timbers. Even with scientific names the confusion, though less, still exists. With the best of intentions some botanical descriptions have been concocted from samples of leaves, flowers, and fruits of what subsequently proved to be different species. In the forests of Java and Surinam research workers affixed numbers on selected trees and -these were visited at different seasons by collectors. Also, members of different native tribes were asked to identify and name these selected trees at different seasons. In this way, authentic material for herbarium and wood collections was obtained from authentic individual trees, remaining at known places in the forest and available for re-examination and control. Meanwhile, from this list, a dictionary of indigenous and scientific names was developed. Controlled work of collectors can be used to make descriptions of trees, supplying a satisfactory basis for diagnoses of botanical identity.
The great importance of the individual tree has been shown very clearly in Scandinavian research on the selection of masurbirch (wavy-grained birch) and other forest trees. The numbering of selected mother-trees in the tropical forest could lead, perhaps, in a few human generations to an improvement of the stock that would seem hardly credible now.
Trees of historical or poetic significance are preserved with pride in all countries. In some cases these trees might be of botanical or silvicultural interest. It would be little trouble and might prove of value in forest research to suggest that in every country of the world at least five full-grown trees of every indigenous species should be durably marked with a number plate and preserved for scientific purposes. Lists of these numbered trees with full particulars of the scientific data obtained from them should be supplied to the international forestry institution, that is, to FAO's Division of Forestry and Forest Products.
The realization of an expanding economy and higher living standards necessitates the development of the tropical forests.
At the present time the imports of timber and of other forest products into the tropics exceeds the exports, thus making the tropics a drain on the forest resources of the northern countries.
Efficient forest management could change the: tropical forests into a very valuable asset, offering an attractive investment opportunity for much capital and work for large numbers of people. This management, however, cannot be realized if the tropical forests cannot be made to pay. The working of these forests is at present greatly restricted because only a few kinds of trees, useful for specialty purposes, are taken from most stands. A market has to be found for numerous kinds of timbers whose qualities are insufficiently known.
The forest situation of the northern countries renders this research a matter which interests the whole world. The northern forest research institutes have already done much work on tropical timbers. This work has to be broadened and brought under a comprehensive plan.
It is advocated that every country should mark and conserve for scientific research at least five full-grown trees of each species indigenous to that country.
