NATIONAL FORESTS AND PRIVATE LANDS 121 



lands and, incidentally, the adjoining National Forests, that this paper 

 deals. Just as our forest problems as a whole must be attacked and 

 solved piece by piece and area by area, so intelligent management of 

 the National Forests and adjacent lands depends on treating each of 

 the innumerable natural economic units according to its needs. Failure 

 to do this has been perhaps the chief defect in National Forest policy 

 to date. The adjacent lands to which I refer, cannot be treated as one 

 homogeneous area but must be attacked unit by unit together with 

 the National Forest lands forming part of each unit. Most of these 

 areas may be defined as productive units sufficient in area to support 

 continuously one or more wood-using industrial plants. Usually each 

 unit will consist of a watershed 25,000 acres or more in extent, or a 

 combination of several small watersheds. The lands involved will in 

 each case be hilly or mountainous land, or otherwise unfit for agri- 

 culture except in spots. They are essentially commercial forest areas 

 where permanent industry depends on continuous forest production. 

 Frequently some agricultural land lies within or alongside their bound- 

 aries. In this case a high type of agriculture depends on proper 

 management of the forest lands, since otherwise the markets for 

 agricultural products will disappear or be too remote, and there will 

 be no alternative employment for labor in seasons between agricultural 

 activity. 



Obviously enough, the ultimate ideal in these cases is to get them 

 under unified ownership and management. This end cannot be at- 

 tained hurriedly, however, and if good management waits on its 

 attainment the forest will disappear from large portions of the area 

 before adequate measures of reforestation and protection can be taken. 

 The sensible course, therefore, is to get the areas under immediate 

 management of the best type possible, and thus begin working at once 

 toward the attainment of the ideal, which can be reached only at a 

 much later period. 



Bearing in mind that the areas under discussion consist of economic 

 units, each of which is capable of sustaining a logging operation, saw- 

 mill or other wood-using ])lant of efficient size in continuous operation 

 indefinitely, I assume it to be a.xiomatic that each of these areas should 

 be put under regulated sustained annual yield management. It has 

 been abundantly shown in llic past that only this type of management 

 will secure the largest i)roduct and the greatest tinancial return from 

 the forest, just as it has also been shown that only under this type of 

 management can the interests of the worker he served through ])crnia- 



