A Brief History of Forestry. / In Europe, the United States and Other Countries

by B. E. Fernow

The surveillance of the execution of this law lies, with the assistance of the Forest Committees, in the hands of the State Forest Administration.

This latter, centralized in the Department of Agriculture, consists of a Director General with two Vice-Directors and a so-called bureau of forests with seven division chiefs, a number of vice-inspectors and assistants. The local administration in the governments is represented by the Direction of Crown lands with a superintendent or supervisor and several inspectors. The crown forests, divided into some 1260 administrative units, are under the administration of superintendents, with foresters and guards of several degrees.

The whole service comprised, in 1908, about 3790 higher officials, some 850 of whom in the central office at St. Petersburg, and over 30,000 lower officials some 20,000 of whom are educated underforesters.

Large as this force appears to be, it is small in comparison with the acreage, and inadequate. Although the net income from the 300 million acres of State forest which are actually worked is now close to thirty million dollars, the expenditures being near 6 million, the pay of the officials is such as to almost force them to find means of subsistence at the cost of their charges. Perhaps nowhere else is there so much machinery and so much regulation with so little execution in practice. Nevertheless, progress is being made in gradually improving matters, and the forest property, or at least the cut, has become more and more valuable. While in the middle of the last century the income from the domain forest was only $500,000, by 1892 it had grown to $10,000,000, by 1901 to $23,000,000, in 1908 to nearly $30,000,000, besides several million dollars’ worth of free wood. In 1908, the department spent over half a million dollars on planting and assisting natural regeneration. Timber is sold as a rule to contractors by the tree or acre, and a diameter limit is almost the only restriction. In 1897, however, an arrangement was made by which the lumberman was obliged to reforest, or at least to pay a certain tax into a planting fund, and a part payment of $2 to $4 per acre as guarantee must be made before cutting. This order has, however, remained mostly a dead letter, the buyer preferring to allow his guarantee to lapse. In 1906, there stood $3,000,000 to the credit of this planting fund, and only half of it had been applied. Meanwhile the unplanted area increases, since natural regeneration generally proves a failure.

3. Education and Literature.

The attempts at forestry education date back to the year 1732 when a number of foresters were imported from Germany to take charge of the forest management as well as of the education of foresters, each forstmeister having six pupils assigned to him. This method failing to produce results, the interest in ship timber suggested a course in forestry at the Naval Academy, which was instituted in 1800. Soon the need of a larger number of educated foresters led to the establishment of several separate forest schools, one at Zarskoye Selo (near St. Petersburg) in 1803, another at Kozlovsk in 1805, and a third at St. Petersburg in 1808. This latter under the name of the Forest Institute absorbed the other two, and from 1813 has continued to exist through many vicissitudes. Now, with 15 professors and instructors and an expenditure of nearly $250,000, and over 500 students, it is the largest forest school in the world. It prepares in a four years’ course for the higher positions in the forest service. “The history of this Forest Institute is practically the history of forestry in Russia.”

A second school at Novo-Alexandria, near Warsaw, was instituted in 1860. In these schools, as in the methods of management, German influence is everywhere visible.

In addition to these schools, chairs of forestry were instituted in the Petrovsk School of Rural Economy in Moskau and in the Riga Polytechnic Institute, and also in seven intermediate schools of rural economy.

In 1888, ten secondary schools were established after Austrian pattern for the lower or middle service, rangers and underforesters; their number, by 1900, having been increased to 30 and, in 1908, to 33, with 460 students. These are boarding schools in the woods, where a certain number of the students are taught free of charge, the maximum number of those admitted being 10 to 20 at each school. The course is of two years’ duration, and is mainly directed to practical work and theoretical study in silviculture. The total expense of such a school is about $3,300, of which the State contributes $2,500, the total expenditure, in 1908, being $84,134.