338 



Yearbook, of Agriculture 1949 



be used in situations where the stability 

 of a community could not be assured 

 under the usual procedures of selling 

 timber. Units of this kind are called 

 Federal sustained-yield units. 



Timber sold from these dedicated 

 areas must be given at least primary 

 processing within the community that 

 needs the support. In all instances an 

 effort will be made to support local 

 secondary wood-using industries in 

 existence at the time the unit is estab- 

 lished or to encourage the establish- 

 ment of secondary utilization processes 

 in communities that do not have them. 

 The Federal-unit program thus can be 

 made to contribute most to the accom- 

 plishment of the objectives of the act 

 by broadening the employment base. 



The law also permits the selection 

 and designation of qualified operators 

 in Federal units who will be allowed 

 to purchase the national forest timber 

 from the area without competitive 

 bidding. In most communities that de- 

 pend primarily on Federal timber, 

 however, there are already more wood- 

 processing plants than can be sup- 

 ported by the sustained allowable cut 

 of the available public forest lands. 

 Under such conditions there is no dis- 

 tinct advantage to the community in 

 designating one of the plants as the 

 exclusive beneficiary of the act. Con- 

 sequently, in such situations it is plan- 

 ned that the timber will be offered for 

 sale under regular bidding procedure 

 with the stipulation that manufactur- 

 ing take place in the community in- 

 tended to be supported. Competition 

 for the timber will be limited to pur- 

 chasers who can meet the local proc- 

 essing requirements. 



Only one Federal unit has been es- 

 tablished so far under the authority of 

 this phase of the act. It is known as 

 the Vallecitos Sustained- Yield Unit 

 and is situated on the Carson National 

 Forest in New Mexico. The formal 

 declaration establishing the unit was 

 executed by the Chief of the Forest 

 Service on January 21, 1948. Its pur- 

 pose is to provide the incentive for the 

 establishment of suitable milling and 



remanufacturing facilities to handle 

 the small cut that the unit will yield 

 in order to provide supplemental em- 

 ployment for the community of ranch- 

 ers residing in and near the village of 

 Vallecitos. Assurance of a stable supply 

 of raw forest products was needed to 

 induce the establishment of remanu- 

 facturing facilities and make the level 

 of local employment more consistent 

 with the needs of the people of the 

 community. 



As in the case of cooperative units, 

 the extent to which the Federal-unit 

 program may find application in the 

 administration of the national forest 

 system cannot be predicted. The op- 

 portunities for beneficial action seem 

 to be wider than in the cooperative- 

 unit field. Because the Federal-unit 

 program does not require contracts 

 with private forest-land owners, fewer 

 conflicting interests need to be re- 

 solved. It is designed only to direct 

 the ordinary management programs 

 for Federal forest lands so as to give 

 the greatest help to dependent com- 

 munities. 



In the Pacific Northwest region and 

 California an estimated maximum of 

 30 percent of the total allowable an- 

 nual cut from national forest lands 

 may be dedicated ultimately to local 

 dependent communities under the 

 Federal-unit phase of the act. Exten- 

 sive use of the plan in the northern 

 Rocky Mountains does not seem likely. 

 In the Southwest, the act may be 

 applied beneficially in establishing Fed- 

 eral units for numerous small com- 

 munities, as in Vallecitos. It should do 

 good in situations in which national 

 forest timber has been contributing 

 nothing or less than it could to com- 

 munity stability. 



But these two phases of the Sus- 

 tained-Yield Unit Act the cooper- 

 ative unit authority and the Federal- 

 unit program can assure important 

 public benefits. They can improve the 

 practices of using and processing wood ; 

 they can steady employment; they can 

 give benefits that flow from industrial 

 and community stability. They are, 



