Commercial timber supply of Europe 100 years ago and today

During the World Fair 1900 in Paris an international forest congress took p lace. In a sensational lecture about the "insufficient commercial timber pr oduction in the world", the chief of the French forest management A. MELARD predicted a timber shortage. That caused an intensive discussion in the Ge rman forest press of 1900 and 1901 between MELARD, the well known German fo rest professors ENDRES and JENTSCH and the famous English professor SCHLICH . ENDRES and JENTSCH strictly declined MELARDS theses, pointing to the imme nse opportunity for importing timber from Russia. SCHLICH supported MELARD' S explanation about an impending wood shortage and considered ENDRES' calcu lations to be utopian. Nevertheless all the four opponents demanded a consi derable increase of timber production in the European industrial countries. They recommended nearly the same measures, such as reduction of wood consu mption, improvement of growth by silvicultural methods and afforestation of bare land. 100 years after that no wood shortage occurred neither in Germany nor in Eu rope in total. Today, not reduction in wood consumption, but a further incr ease of wood consumption is the goal of many marketing activities. Wood con sumption in total and per capita increased considerably. This became possib le in general due to a distinct increase of removals, not as a result of a reduction of growing stocks, but as a result of intensified forest manageme nt activities. Key figures given in table 1 indicate this. A more efficient use of round wood input as: well as the material recycling are other reaso ns for today's situation with no wood shortage but a partly unused forest p roduction potential existing in Europe.