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Show the valley floors where it produces for the recrea- tionists and townsfolk dairy and poultry products and potatoes and other garden vegetables. In the hill and mountain area of Vermont, New Hampshire, and particularly in central and north- ern Maine the land below timberline is covered with second-growth forests of hardwoods mixed with aspen and coniferous soft woods. It is an area now dedicated chiefly to recreation and to timber production, much of it badly managed. Today, New England is a mature, primarily urban society. Its relatively dense population is concentrated chiefly in the industrial cities of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the Boston met- ropolitan region. Any program for water and other resources management must pay particular attention to these economic characteristics. Agriculture, and therefore water management in relation thereto, is thus of relatively less impor- tance than in most other regions. This does not imply that there are no land use difficulties involving the use of water. One of the serious soil erosion problem areas in the country is found in Aroostook County, where the spring snow melt takes a heavy toll of topsoil because the potato crop system leaves the soil unprotected when the thaw comes. There is also some erosion in the lower Connecticut River Val- ley because of the cultivation of specialized row crops on rolling land. While there are other local- ized erosion areas in New England, a large por- tion of the rough, steep land is too poor to farm and has either been left in forests or has reverted to forests. A more general water development need, af- fecting improved land use, is that of drainage and flood control. The latter is most damaging on a few of the major streams such as the Connecticut and the Merrimack. But small drainage im- provements are needed in many locations throughout Connecticut, Vermont, New Hamp- shire, Massachusetts, and in some parts of Maine.3 While appxoximately 30 million acres of a total land area of 4r0 million are in woodland, the forest resource in New England does not play a role of primary economic importance. Still the num- ber of employees estimated in 1939 to be em- ployed by the timber products industries exceeded 83,000, and the value of goods produced was nearly $3 75,000,000/ Because drain of the soft- wood saw timber, the principal lumber source, is proceeding at a much more rapid rate than growth, a further decline in the importance of timber products awaits New England unless posi- tive steps are soon taken to reverse this trend. Over half of the timbered area is either commer- cially unproductive or yields only cordwood. Un- der proper management and protection from insects, disease, and fire, it might be made to con- tribute a much greater share of the timber prod- ucts consumed in New England.5 Federal ownership of forest lands in New Eng- land is of recent origin and includes less than 1 million acres. All other forms of public forest ownership equal approximately that amount.6 Thus, the problem of improved timber manage- ment for watershed protection, recreation, and timber products is largely the immediate respon- sibility of private owners. Twenty years ago a meeting of public and private groups concerned with rebuilding the social values of forests worked out for New England a program which is still sound and still needs to be accomplished.7 It proposed modest extension of Federal, State, and town forest ownerships to (1) give better pro- tection to certain areas for stream flow and flood control, (2) supplement small scattered owner- ships so as to provide a raw material stable base for small wood-using industries, (3) increase fish and game resources for recreation purposes, and (4) stimulate private owners, by example, toward good forest management. It also proposed other local, State, and Federal measures to encourage 3 See Northeast Agricultural Atlas, by U. S. Department of Agriculture, Postwar Planning Committee, Map by Soil Conservation Service, May 1943, entitled "Drainage Problem Areas.'' 4 Henry I. Baldwin and Edgar L. Heermance: Wooden Dollars, p. 122, table 48 (published by the Federal Re- serve Bank of Boston,, 1949). 5 In 1936 the New England Regional Planning Commis- sion estimated that local forests furnished less than half of the region's timber products requirements and only about 10 percent of its lumber needs. 6 Baldwin and Heermance: op. cit, p. 97, table 12. 7 This was the New England Forestry Congress, held at Hartford, in 1929. 30 |
