A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 



189 



TABLE 9. Ownership of stands of cordwood on cordwood areas in the United States, 



by regions Continued 



AVAILABILITY OF TIMBER STANDS 



The statistics for timber stands given in the preceding discussion 

 are by no means to be interpreted as measuring the quantity of 

 timber supplies available for cutting. Two major considerations 

 materially reduce these stand figures when they are expressed in 

 terms of available supply. One consideration is the necessity for 

 maintaining a growing stock or forest capital consistent with the 

 sustained yield of forest products to be obtained. The higher the 

 rotation age the larger the volume of this growing stock must be. If, 

 for example, saw timber is the object of management the growing 

 stock must be greater than it would be if pulpwood and other small 

 material only are to be grown. If, as is the case with most of the 

 eastern regions, the growing stock is already too small it should be 

 built up. Cutting, then, should be restricted to improvement opera- 

 tions, except as the presence of mature stands may require a more 

 extensive cut, or pressing social or economic conditions of the locality 

 concerned may justify the sacrifice of future yields. This growing 

 stock relationship to available supplies will be further discussed in the 

 subsection on Timber Growth. 



The second major consideration is that of economic availability. 

 After the requirements of adequate growing stock have been satisfied, 

 or even where they are not, there is still the question whether a par- 

 ticular stand can be cut now or prospectively with a profit or at least 

 without financial loss. Economic availability depends upon such 

 things as volume of timber per acre, its size and quality, the pro- 

 portion of inferior species, logging difficulties, length of haul to mill, 

 the cost of milling and of getting the manufactured product to market, 

 and the price that can be obtained for the product. 



There is but little thoroughly reliable information on present 

 economic availability. Such information as there is, however, war- 

 rants the broad judgment that but little more than half of the esti- 

 mated 1,668 billion board feet of saw timber in the United States can 

 be cut profitably on the basis of the operating costs and mill lumber 

 prices of recent years (fig. 9), or would on this basis have a positive 

 conversion value. 



The limits of economic availability are ever changing. As the 

 more accessible and desirable stands have been cut out, logging and 



