Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1939, Page 225
REFORESTATION IN NORWAY
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This situation caused the Storting, in 1916, to pass the so-
called “Panic Act,” which provided that in all parishes where
inore stringent regulations were not already in force, felling of
healthy trees for sale or industrial production under 20 cms. in
diameter, measured over bark at breast-height, should be pro-
hibited unless the trees had previously been marked by specially
aPpointed officials.
There can be little doubt that this provision saved quite
considerable forest tracts from total destruction during the War
and in the post-war period up to 1921.
Aroused by the growing fear for the future of the forests,
die Storting decided in 1917 to undertake a general valuation
and survey of all forests in the country with a view to obtaining
reliable data as to their value, yield, reproduction, etc. At the
same time the necessary funds were appropriated both for this
national survey and for a “forestry census,” the object of which
to furnish data for an estimate of the average annual quantities
0r wood and wood materials absorbed by manufacturing, export
and domestic requirements.
The valuation was completed in 1932. Although it was found
that for the country as a whole the annual increment of the
torests exceeded by a few hundred cubic metres the total con-
sumption disclosed by the forestry census, it was, nevertheless,
established that some of the best and most extensive forests were
overcut.
. Taking the country as a whole, the survey presents a gloomy
Picture. In relation to existing possibilities of production the
Pfesent wood-capital and annual increment, as disclosed by the
valuation, can roughly be put at from 30 to 60 per cent. of the
normal.
At the same time the investigations made into the powers of
reProduction of the forests show that these have been lost or
substantially impaired owing to previous mismanagement over a
íotal area of about 2.3 million hectares, corresponding to about
30 per cent. of the country’s total area of productive forests.
he districts on the west coast which were deforested in bygone
ages are not included in this figure.
A new forest law, was passed in February 1932, and makes
Provision for a fairly effective supervision of the private forests,
.°se management is placed under the control of specially ap-
Pointed forest boards, local forest officers and forest rangers.