HARMONIZING LUMBERING AND ESTHETICS 



BY C. M. GRANGER 



A GREAT many lovers of the outdoors feel that 

 Nature's forests should be left undisturbed by the 

 ax to furnish a constant source of delight by their 

 very wildness. The Forest Service receives many requests 

 to preserve from cutting National Forest timber near 

 some mountain summer retreat or along some travelled 

 highway. Occasionally the petition comes from some old 

 resident who has lived with 

 his little patch of trees so 

 long that he actually knows 

 the majority of them as 

 friends and would sorely 

 miss one single individual 

 from the grove. Only a 

 short time ago a request was 

 received from the Rotary 

 Club of Pueblo, Colorado, 

 that the timber along a 

 projected automobile road 

 through the Greenhorn 

 Mountains, which consti- 

 tute Pueblo's outdoor play- 

 ground, be withheld from 

 sale and cutting to preserve 

 the scenic attractions of 

 the region. 



On the other side of this 

 question we naturally find 

 the lumberman, who be- 

 lieves, as a general rule, that 

 all the timber which is big 

 enough for sawlogs should 

 be cut. In many cases he 

 is compelled to strip his own 

 land because the excessive 

 taxes and interest charges 

 make it financially ruinous 

 for him to delay cutting or 

 to leave the immature trees 

 to be cut later. As a result, 

 countless areas have been 

 stripped of their timber, 

 lea\'ing nothing but a mass 

 of tops and branches and a 

 few scattered trees too small 

 or worthless for cutting. Many times fires have run 

 through these slashings, completing the devastation; but 

 whether fire comes or not the cut-over land presents a 

 most unsightly appearance. The ideal condition in 

 forest management is use without abuse, safeguarding the 

 esthetic values while utilizing the mature timber crop, and 

 this is common ground on which both the preservationist 

 and the lumberman can stand. 



The National Forests, including virtually all of the 



STAND AFTER A CUTTING 



One-third of the timber on this area has been cut under a National Forest 

 timber sale, and there remains a thrifty stand all the better in health and appear- 

 ance for the cutting of the mature and decadent trees. 



mountain areas of the West, contain all manner of 

 wonderful scenery — rock, water, and trees in every 

 conceivable combination. Because the Government sells 

 the ripe timber on the Forests, the fear has been enter- 

 tained that the wild beauty of the forests will in time 

 be changed through removal of the timber. Let us 

 see what a closer view of the situation reveals. 



The timber bodies on the 

 National Forests may be 

 divided into commercial 

 and non-commercial stands. 

 The former are made up of 

 trees of value for manufact- 

 ure into lumber and other 

 wood^ products and so 

 located that they may be 

 profitably logged. The non- 

 commercial stands, on the 

 other hand, are those which, 

 either by reason of the 

 quality of the timber or its 

 inaccessible location, are 

 not suitable for limibering. 

 The timber stand or indi- 

 vidual tree has its greatest 

 scenic value when combined 

 with other natural features 

 of picturesque character — 

 deep canyons with rocky 

 walls, high, rocky cliffs, 

 mountain lakes, and the 

 like. In such locations 

 logging is usually out of the 

 question because of the 

 rough, rocky ground, or be- 

 cause the timber is not 

 dense enough or of proper 

 quality to make lumbering 

 pay. Here, then, at any 

 rate, the forest primeval will 

 reign undisturbed by man to 

 create its scenic and esthetic 

 values in Nature's own way. 

 There are countless areas 

 of these non- commercial 

 forests in every National Forest, both mixed with the 

 commercial timber stands and in the higher rougher 

 portions of the mountains. Those bodies of timber just 

 below upper timber line are the most conspicuous ex- 

 amples — ^in which many of the trees, because of exposure 

 to severe storms and cold, become possessed of queer, 

 twisted forms, or grow only into dwarf trees of an im- 

 usually picturesque character. Due to the location of 

 such timber bodies at the very heads of the streams, they 



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