A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 1643 



tages for pulp and paper making appear sufficient to allow of success- 

 ful competition with other large pulp and paper manufacturing 

 localities in the United States and foreign countries. 



The Forest Service will manage these pulpwood forests under an 

 adequate system of sustained yield and also limit the development of 

 the local pulp and paper industry to a total woodusing capacity that 

 can be supplied indefinitely through the growth. Studies made to 

 date indicate a forest rotation period of 90 years with an output of 

 wood within the first rotation period sufficient to produce 1 million 

 tons of newsprint paper yearly. The second and subsequent periods 

 should have a materially higher output as the new forests grown 

 under management should be heavier in volume per acre than the 



E resent virgin forest with its extensive overmature and somewhat 

 roken stands. 



The average yearly consumption of newsprint in the past five 

 years in the United States has been 3,500,000 tons, of which 2,180,000 

 tons, or 62 percent, was produced in Canada and other foreign 

 countries. With a possible sustained output of 1,000,000 tons 

 Alaska can be a material factor both in contributing to the total 

 available supply for the United States and in increasing the percent- 

 age of the country's requirements which is produced on home soil. 

 The pulp and paper industry has not yet been established in Alaska. 



THE INTERIOR FOREST 



The timber on the dense forest areas of the interior consists of a 

 mixed stand of any two or all of the three species, white spruce, white 

 birch and cottonwood. Most of the trees are less than 12 inches in 

 diameter and the average is not over 8 inches. White spruce fre- 

 quently reaches a diameter of 18 to 24 inches, which is sufficiently 

 large for sawlogs, but as these larger trees occur as individuals 

 scattered throughout the smaller timber and as the principal forest 

 products are and will continue to be material in the round and in 

 corewood form, the volume of standing timber is best expressed in 

 cords. The average stand per acre is estimated as 10 cords, giving a 

 total volume of 400 million cords for the estimated area, 40 million 

 acres. No satisfactory estimate can be made of the usable material 

 available in the very extensive type consisting of scattered trees and 

 brush and the total volume of the interior forest should be considered 

 as that given above for the dense stands. 



Timber cutting has been confined to supplying material for local 

 purposes and while the aggregate so far removed from the forest has 

 been large it is a negligible percentage of the total available. At 

 the same time, fires and heavy cutting around some of the settle- 

 ments have about exhausted the supply of readily accessible material 

 at those places. 



The per capita consumption of timber in interior Alaska is very 

 high even for a frontier country as practically all activities are heavy 

 wood users. One of the principal uses is for fuel during the long and 

 intensely cold winters. Wood-burning river steamers t and mining 

 operations also make unusually heavy demands. Sawmill utilization 

 is small with one plant at Fairbanks cutting 25,000 board feet daily 

 during the summer season and three other commercial plants of much 

 smaller size operating intermittently. Many small portable mills are 



