Anyone who travels across our country sees so many forests everywhere that he might well wonder why we have to worry about protecting them. Don’t we have too many forests with too many trees right now?

Actually, about a third of all the land area in the United States is forest land. That’s more than 250,000,000 hectares. One of the most important things we can do for the future of our country is to see that our forests are properly cared for! This is being done in Britain and elsewhere.

First, just imagine all the products we obtain from trees. Fruits, nuts, and sugar are only some of the foods. Buildings, furniture. and boats come from trees. Paper, rayon, toys—the list is almost endless.

Secondly, forests reduce the danger of damaging floods and help regulate our water supplies. Under a good forest, there is porous soil which easily absorbs heavy rains or melting snow. If this water didn’t seep slowly into the soil, it would rush off to cause floods and erosion of the soil. And, of course, our forests provide wonderful vacation lands for millions of people.

The care of forests is called forestry, and it has been practiced in some European countries for hundreds of years. More than 400 years ago, England began to issue laws about the cutting down of forests, and in the eighteenth century, England actually began buying trees from other countries for replanting!

In most forests, it is important to harvest trees when they are mature. Otherwise, the old trees would take up space that could be better used for fast-growing younger trees. Also, unharvested old trees eventually decay and become useless.

After a tract of mature lumber is cut, the area is often replanted by hand. In very many places, however, we usually let nature do the replanting. But great care and skill are needed in harvesting and replanting trees to make sure that there will be a good new growth of the right kinds of trees. This is why forestry has now become a science.

The country with the largest forest area is not the United States but the Soviet Union. Brazil ranks second, Canada third, and the United States fourth. Did you know that despite all the efforts to prevent them, about 200,000 forest fires occur each year in the United States?