THE FOREST 187 



mill. Many more dollars were used to pay for heavy machinery 

 to work this timber. It has built up communities of mill work' 

 ers and lumbermen. When the supply of timber is gone in a 

 few years, the investment in the machinery will be wiped out, 

 and the workers who have depended on the mill will have to 

 find new jobs, if there are any. On the areas which the com' 

 pany has cut, nothing is left standing but worthless brush. 

 Many times fires have swept over the cut-over regions, destroy 

 ing the fertility of the soil and the few young trees. 



SUSTAINED YIELD MANAGEMENT 



Two things give a key to the solution of this problem, fire 

 protection and proper timber management. To protect the for- 

 ests from fire, the cut-over lands as well as the uncut timber 

 must be watched constantly in dry times. The heavy slash left 

 on the ground after cutting must be safely disposed of. During 

 periods of high hazard the land must be patrolled so that fire 

 wardens can put out fires before they spread. The second part 

 of proper timber management is a system of cutting that will 

 keep the forest growing. This is called "sustained yield man' 

 agement." Sustained yield management means harvesting the 

 mature trees in such a way as to protect the younger trees and 

 permit the natural reseeding of the forest. By this system the 

 ripe trees are cut as they mature, and the younger trees are 

 left to mature. Forestry, as a business enterprise, depends on 

 sustained yield management. 



When a lumberman has a forest which is permanently pro' 

 ductive, he has what amounts to an efficient forest factory. 

 And just as a cotton mill that runs all the time is more profit 

 able than one that must shut down frequently, so a forest that 

 yields merchantable timber without interruption is more profit 

 able than one which can be cut only once in a generation. 



The basis of sustained yield is this fact. The amount of tmv 

 ber cut from the forest annually or periodically must not ex' 



