Proclamation 4399

October 3, 1975

Among our Nation's most valuable and unique natural resources are its forests-valuable because of the numerous uses for wood products from forests, unique because this resource is renewable. As with any resource, forest products must be used efficiently and with foresight.

Progress is being made to utilize this resource more thoroughly. Forestry research is discovering how to use wood more efficiently in construction; it is finding ways to use all of every log harvested; it is investigating the chemical properties which might be tapped to replace products now made from nonrenewable resources; it is looking into the possibilities of using wood so gasoline and oil supplies can be extended.

Our forests are vast, but we are making strenuous demands on them. With our needs rapidly expanding, there is danger our present forest production will soon be incapable of satisfying the demands made on it. Fortunately, we know our forests can, under proper management, be regrown perpetually at a rate equal to, or even greater than, the rate at which trees are used.

We have much of the knowledge and technology to expand our forests productively. We must dedicate ourselves to expanding our public and private forests as well as to managing better the forest lands we now have. This requires the close cooperation of business, industry, government and the individual citizen. A giant step was taken with the passage in 1974 of the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act. It requires an assessment of our present and potential supply and demand for all forest products and preparation of a proposed program to meet future demands. It requires us to plan and act today to meet the needs of tomorrow.

To recognize the importance of forest resources and forest products to the Nation, the Congress has, by joint resolution of September 13, 1960 (74 Stat. 898), designated the seven-day period beginning the third Sunday of October 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, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America, do hereby call upon the people of the United States to observe the week beginning October 19, 1975, as National Forest Products Week, with activities and ceremonies designed to direct public attention to our forest resources which have benefited us materially and spiritually and which we must act to preserve.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this third day of October, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundredth.



GERALD R. FORD