Proclamation 4305—National Forest Products Week, 1974

During the decades ahead, as our population continues to grow and we continue to maintain our high standard of living, demands for wood. products will increase dramatically.

We can meet those demands. In contrast to the specter of shrinking energy and mineral resources, supplies of timber can be increased. It takes millions of years for the earth to create just one drop of oil or an ounce of metal ore. But foresters can plant seedlings today that will grow into harvestable trees in 10 to 40 years.

Timber is one of the few renewable resources, with the added advantages of being disposable, recyclable, inexpensive, durable, and plentiful. Under intensive management, our forests can produce more than twice the volume of timber being grown today.

Improving our knowledge of the growth, harvesting, and use of wood will require the continued cooperation of Federal and State forestry programs, the forest products industry, private forest landowners, and all who care about the conservation and prudent use of our forest resources. I am confident that as a result of this cooperative effort, wood and forest products will remain readily available at reasonable cost to the American public.

In order to give further recognition and emphasis to the importance of forest resources and forest products to the Nation, the Congress has by a joint resolution of September 13, 1960 (74 Stat. 898) designated the seven-day period beginning on the third Sunday of October in each year as National Forest Products Week, and has requested the President to issue an annual proclamation calling for the observance of that week.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby call upon the people of the United States to observe the week beginning October 20, 1974, as National Forest Products Week, with activities and ceremonies designed to direct public attention toward and demonstrate our gratitude for the forest resources with which we have been so abundantly blessed and for their contributions to our material, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of July, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-ninth.

RICHARD NIXON