THE GIFTS OF A FOREST

About the Book

These essays were written and published during a 60-year professional career concerned with forest resources overseas and with forestland ownership in the United States. Forest resources are now recognized as a critical factor in the environmental stability and livability of the earth. Their problems are particularly urgent in the tropical countries with which many of the essays are concerned. Over half of American forests are in small forest ownerships. This pattern of ownership is under great stress because of rising taxes on land and competing uses for land. The essays in this book are based upon the author’s direct personal experience of those problems.

About the Author

The author prepared for an international career by studying languages at Harvard College and natural resources at Yale’s Graduate School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He has since combined managing his 1200-acre forest property in upstate New York with professional work elsewhere in the United States and in 45 foreign countries. During World War II he explored for cinchona trees in the Andes of northern Colombia, the only source of quinine then known. Otherwise his overseas work has been with foreign aid programs of the United States and the United Nations. His writings thus reflect a direct and prolonged knowledge of forest resources in many parts of the world and with forest ownership in the United States.