Management of Lodgepole Pine 177 



of the country as a whole, and where the slopes are comparatively 

 steep ; thus the Lodgepole forests are of unusually great import- 

 ance for watershed protection. They should, therefore, be man- 

 aged in such a way as to maintain a high efficiency in regulating 

 stream flow. These forests should also be managed so as to 

 produce a maximum amount of timber of desirable size. A 

 study of the yield and rate of growth of Lodgepole indicates that 

 under average conditions a rotation of approximately 140 years 

 is satisfactory. 



METHODS OF MANAGEMENT 



Before discussing the system of cutting now in use it will be 

 instructive to consider the systems which have been used in the 

 past. Butte, Montana, the great copper camp, offers the best 

 market in the Lodgepole region. In addition to about ten million 

 board feet of "stull" timber, mainly over 8 inches in diameter, this 

 market, together with the Anaconda smelter, uses annually about 

 130,000 lagging poles (16 feet long with a 2 to 3 inch top), about 

 40,000 converter poles (26 feet long with a three to four inch 

 top), and four or five thousand cords of wood. This market has 

 permitted very close utilization of the timber cut on the French 

 Gulch sale, on the Deerlodge National Forest, which supplies 

 most of the material just mentioned ; thus it has been possible at 

 French Gulch to use any system of cutting in Lodgepole which has 

 seemed worthy of trial — and many have been used. 



For a month or two at the beginning of the sale the selection 

 system of cutting was used on one small area, and in other places 

 a single seed tree system. In October, 1906, the first definite 

 marking rules were promulgated. They provided for leaving 75 

 foot square groups of seed trees standing at regular intervals on 

 one-sixth of the area. These groups were thinned, leaving on the 

 entire area from 5 to 10 per cent of the original number of trees. 

 In exposed situations over 90 per cent of the trees so left have 

 been blown down, and many of the standing trees have died from 

 sun scald or the drying out of the soil. On the more sheltered 

 situations, particularly where the individual trees left had form- 

 erly been growing in a somewhat open stand, the windfall was 

 much less. Where the trees were very tall and slim, the result 

 of growing in crowded stands, as was the case over most of the 



