ABSTRACT
Whether or not timber will be available in the future remains a problem currently investigated in the forestry profession. This question is not new. Pinchot's publication of The Fight for Conservation (Pinchot, 1910), is an early prediction of doom. Pinchot indicated at that time, the United States had already "crossed the verge of a timber famine so severe that its blighting effects will be felt by every household in the land." (Pinchot, p. 15). The basis for Pinchot's prediction was similar to the rationale underlying many contemporary environmental polemics. Using information on the stock of standing timber or timber inventory and the then yearly rate of harvest, he stated that the "...probable duration of our supplies is little more than a single generation." (Pinchot, p. 16). Suffice it to say that almost seventy years later, no timber famine has beset the economy.
