PLAN OF RELATION OF FOREST REGULATION TO 

 FOREST COMMUNITIES 



By M. H. Wolff, 

 Supervisor Coeur d'Alene National Forest, U. S. Forest Service 



The Coeur d'Alene National Forest in Northern Idaho is, in common 

 with most National Forests, mountainous and unquestionably absolute 

 forest land. The boundaries of the forest make it roughly an isoscles 

 triangular in shape, with a base running east and west, and the apex 

 pointing almost due north. Along the western leg is a chain of three 

 lakes, one of them quite large, which lie approximately at the foot of 

 the heights marking the boundary, and a few miles to the west of it. 

 The eastern leg is the summit of a high and rough divide, which is 

 part of the boundary between the States of Montana and Idaho. The 

 base is practically bounded by the Coeur d'Alene River and its South 

 Fork. 



With its mouth at about the center of the base is the North Fork 

 of the Coeur d'Alene River, which, with its headwaters at the north 

 end of the forest, flows southeasterly, roughly paralleling the eastern 

 boundary of the forest until about the median point of that boundary, 

 from which it flows in a general southwesterly direction toward its 

 mouth. It has numerous tributaries, of which the principal one, prac- 

 tically as long and flowing approximately in the same direction as the 

 first part of the North Fork itself, is the Little North Fork River. 



Along the western boundary is a rather heavily settled region where 

 the principal industries are farming and lumbering. Just to the west is 

 the fertile region around the important city of Spokane, in the State of 

 Washington. The mountains of the forest form part of the eastern 

 limits of this agricultural region. Close to the forest between the 

 lakes and the boundary is a relatively dense agricultural population, 

 slowly developing cut-over lands into farms. 



A large timber growing territory is tributary to Coeur d'Alene Lake, 



by virtue of its feeders — the Coeur d'Alene and St. Joe Rivers. At 



present on that lake are sawmills capable of cutting 250,000 to 350,000 



thousand feet of lumber annually. Originally, the timber was close at 



486 



