NATIONAL TIMBER REQUIREMENTS, PRESENT AND FUTURE Previous sections of the report have dealt with the present size of the forest resource, and its location, character and economic availability, present and expectable. This section will discuss the need of wood in various fields of use and sum up estimated present and future requirements. Such estimates are necessarily speculative. Records on current consumption are for the most part unsatisfactory for precise measure. Future requirements will obviously depend on many complex and unpredictable factors. Nevertheless, sound policy making requires a reasonably accurate measure of present timber consumption and an anticipation of future normal requirements with some degree of probability. This is essential to judge how effectively the forest resource is now serving material needs, to strike a balance between timber supply and current depletion and see whether or not additional industries can be supported on a permanent basis and to judge the ability of the resource to supply Chile's normal future needs in adequate degree. This section, therefore, is primarily an analysis of average current consumption of wood and other forest products and of future trends in wood use. The difficulties encountered will serve to emphasize the importance of better statistics on wood consumption and more systematic study of the factors affecting it. The values presented herein are in terms of wood product used, in board or cubic feet. They are not directly comparable, therefore, with depletion values (tables 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16) which have been converted into tree volume in order to permit direct inventory and depletion comparisons. With minor exceptions, an attempt has been made to show expectable current consumption under reasonably normal conditions. DOMESTIC REQUIREMENTS Fuelwood Fuelwood is the largest and one of the most important uses of the forest resource. Some 80 percent of Chile's population is now dependent on this fuel for cooking and heating. Conservative estimates place the wood consumed as fuel, either in natural form or as charcoal, at 145.6 million cubic feet. (See plates 7 and 8-A.) About 37 million cubic feet, however, come from fire, insect, or disease-killed trees logging and manufacturing waste. The 108.6 million cubic feet from live trees is a primary drain on the forest resource. About 43 percent comes from natural forest, about 20 percent from woodland and the remaining 37 percent from plantation areas. The cut from plantations is primarily Eucalyptus. Some 24.3 million cubic feet annually or about one-fifth of the total fuel 1Tree volume shows the amount of sound wood in cubic or board feet obtainable under the better types of practice now used in Chile, with reasonable allowance for breakage in felling and similar unavoidable waste. Tree volume values are larger than values showing the volume of products actually used, for the waste in the average operation runs larger than necessary and consequently sound wood available under reasonably good utilization practice is left in the woods or otherwise wasted. See forest depletion methods, Appendix, page 176. wood cut and 60 percent of the plantation fuelwood cut is estimated as coming from this species alone. However, a substantial amount of the primary depletion in trees of sawtimber size is for fuelwood needs, about 37 million cubic feet being used in this way. This is 34 percent of the total drain on sawtimber trees. Fuelwood requirements are second only to lumber requirements, which take 45 percent of the trees of sawtimber size. or Wood used as fuel is primarily consumed by domestic users, industrial requirements being estimated at only 24.9 million cubic feet, about one-fifth of the total. The remaining four-fifths is divided between rural and urban consumers in the ratio of about two to one, rural users consuming 62 percent of domestic requirements or 51.9 million cubic feet annually. Other important primary fuels are coal, of which Plate 8-A. In wartime gasogenes were common in propelling Chile's motor vehicles. This is a superior type. 1 current consumption is about 2,000,000 tons per year, and Llaretal with an annual consumption estimated roughly at 70,000 tons. It seems a reasonable assumption that wood will continue to be an important source of fuel. Possibilities of oil development in Chile are still in the future. The coal supply is substantial but limited and unable to supply all of the present industrial and domestic demands. The planned expansion of Chile's enormous potential water power will tap an additional primary source of energy; but unfulfilled industrial demands and high price will prevent electric power from competing as a domestic fuel over the next decade or so except in a relatively small number of urban residences. It seems certain, therefore, that wood will continue to be an important source of industrial and domestic fuel in both urban and rural areas for the next decade at least. It is true that over the 1944 to 1954 decade electric power now being developed will release for other use substantial amounts of coal in certain industries, such as railroad transportation, and that more coal will be available because coal production has been increasing rather steadily at the rate of 4 percent per year and this trend seems likely to continue. Additional coal and electric power thus made available will tend to replace fuelwood and charcoal. In addition, fuelwood is growing steadily scarcer near most large 1A fuel obtained from a hard moss-like growth found in the uplands of northern Chile. |