Cutting on National Forests of Pacific Coast. 381 



year at once, or we can wait 20 or 30 years. If we waited 20 or 

 30 years, as has been advocated by some, we could not remove 

 over one hundred milHon feet a year without depleting the sup- 

 plies of the more distant future, and creating an improper dis- 

 tribution of age classes in the first rotation under management, 

 which could not be corrected until the second rotation under 

 management. I take it that the foresters who will be in control 

 30 years hence will not contemplate over-cutting then any more 

 than we would now, and that therefore, we might just as well 

 take from the Forest the three billion feet that can be cut in the 

 next 30 years without injury to the future, as to leave it there to 

 decay, which is exactly what must happen if it is not cut. 



Let us now examine the effect on the distant future. While 

 it is evident that the immediate future will be neither harmed 

 nor benefited by cutting now to the limit of the Forest, it can also 

 be shown that the distant future (say 100 years hence) will be 

 benefited by present cutting, providing cut over areas are im- 

 mediately regenerated, which follows as a matter of course, on 

 a National Forest. This benefit will come through increased 

 wood supplies due to the fact that large areas of decadent stands 

 now contain only from 20 to 30 thousand board feet of poor 

 hemlock to the acre, due to Douglas fir having dropped out 

 through long absence of fire, although these stands are often times 

 on the best quality of forest producing soil. If these stands are 

 removed and the area is immediately reforested with Douglas fir, 

 the Douglas fir stands 100 years old will contain fifty thousand 

 feet or more to the acre as against the 20 or 30 thousand of 

 hemlock, if the present decadent stands are stored up till that 

 time, as will have to be done with some of them for 100 years and 

 more if a sustained annual yield be followed through the first 

 rotation and cutting does not begin until 30 years hence. 



The net results, therefore, of failure to cut to the limit of the 

 Forest at the present time will be that while it makes no differ- 

 ence in the amount of produce yielded by the Forests in the im- 

 mediate future, (20 to 30 years hence) there will be irrevocably 

 lost all timber which we fail to cut less than the sustained annual 

 yield, which will be a heavy present loss without any benefit to 

 any future generation. There will also be a loss in volume pro- 

 duction, which will be felt in the distant future, (100 years 

 hence) due to old decadent stands not having been replaced by 



