9. With the fire hazard great at present, and taxation so uncertain as to require allowing for its being excessive, the initial investment must be insignificant.
10. This confines it to land of low sale value and precludes much expense to insure the second crop.
11. To secure the perpetuation of forests on the scale essential to public welfare, the public must provide the private owner better fire protection and an equitable taxation system. Or else it must purchase sufficient cut-over land and engage in forestry itself, bearing the cost and taking the risk.
12. Nevertheless there are several practical exceptions to the somewhat unfavorable situation theoretically outlined above:
(a) Many owners are warranted in holding cut-over land for some time, if not indefinitely, because of the upward trend of land values generally. Unless clearly most useful for agriculture, such land will be made more valuable by a growth of young timber. However indefinite the profit of encouraging this growth and protecting it from fire may be if the present sale value and taxes are computed against such outlay, the two latter charges are being carried anyway and are the most important ones. Merely that it cannot be proved that they can be more than offset is no reason for not trying to compensate as far as possible at slight further expense. While this may not often permit any great effort to reforest, it will usually warrant protection of the natural new growth that will follow if given a chance.
(b) Many owners would prefer to have their milling business continue indefinitely. If such have or can purchase virgin timber to carry them 50 years or more they may do well to grow a log supply to come into use at that time, even if they would not do so merely as a stumpage investment.
(c) It is highly probable that history will repeat itself in the United States, especially in the Pacific coast states where every other condition is so favorable to making forestry a great benefit to the community, and that fire and tax discouragements will be removed as soon as the public realizes the situation. The owner who anticipates this and gets his crop started first will be the first to profit from it, and since it is the compounding toward the latter end of the rotation which now appears serious, the chances are that he will not have a heavy burden before relief of this kind arrives.
(d) Every owner of virgin timber which he expects to hold uncut for 10 years or more should consider reforestation of adjacent cut-over land in the light of fire protection also. It is the inflammable, sun-dried, brake-covered openings, yearly increasing in extent, which constitute his greatest fire menace. The conversion of these into green young growth, too dense for fern and salal and destructible only by the hottest crown fires, is the best protection he can give mature timber surrounded by them. Some additional expense for a few years to accomplish this will usually be cheaper and safer than the patrol otherwise required for an indefinite period.
(e) Advance in value of the land itself, realizable when the second crop is cut, will in many cases be great enough to make an otherwise unpromising reforestation investment profitable.