Abstract
THE report of the Forest Trust of British Honduras to the end of December 1934 (Belsize: Govt. Printer, 1 1935) shows some progress in forestry work after the severe experiences following the 1931 financial crisis. From the Colonial Development Fund grants were made towards forest development in the Colony. The chief of these grants was to provide the staff to undertake a forest resources survey of the country, provided that the local Government contributed towards the cost and that the officer seconded for the work was replaced on the executive staff by an additional officer. The step so taken furnishes evidence of a broad vision on the part of the officials forming the Forest Trust. The term ‘research work’ accorded to what is mainly ordinary stock mapping of a forest—the work, or part of it, of the trained forest officer—is rather out of place, if not misleading. The staff of the Department, consisting of three gazetted officers, is still too small to make any considerable advance in executive forestry work a possibility. It is not therefore surprising to find in the Report such remarks as “No new reserves have been created”; “No new demarcation work was undertaken”; and, in spite of the magnificent start made in the early years of this young Department, that “No sylvicultural work has been done since the completion of the mahogany improvements in 1931”. The end of the year 1934, which appears very distant at the present day, seemed to show an upward tendency in a timber trade revival. It was estimated by the Trust that the export of mahogany, that magnificent forest product of the British Honduras forests, would not exceed five or six million board feet per annum in the immediate future, and that a large proportion of that export would be in lumber form.
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Forestry in British Honduras. Nature 138, 1049 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/1381049b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1381049b0