TIMBER AND RECREATION 143 



PRIORITIES . . . Foresters establish for any given area a planned priority 

 of use. Here, they say, lumbering shall be the dominant activity; here 

 lumbering and grazing shall be codominant; and here is where the pleasure 

 seekers may have first claim. It is all tentative; they know that, but it is 

 earth-born of need. 



The typical national forest is not a solidly timbered area. Topographic 

 and soil variations break it into a complex pattern of valley, plateau, moun- 

 taintop, canyon, stream, and lake. The vegetative cover may be heavy tim- 

 ber, second growth, subalpine or scrub forest, grass, or brush. Within this 

 pattern, the commercial timber productive area may make up approxi- 

 mately 50 percent of the whole. This is distributed variously, sometimes in 

 large solid blocks, but often in belts and stringers up the stream valleys. 



The various classes of land are in general so intermingled, as nature has 

 laid them down, that management must treat them as one harmonious 

 whole, giving each portion the use or uses which it best serves, whether it 

 be timber production, grazing, or recreation, or, as is usually the case, a 

 combination of several uses. No one use can be planned without considera- 

 tion of the others. 



Commercial timber does not on the average occupy more than half of 

 the national-forest area. The possible conflict between timber cutting and 

 recreation is at once limited to this extent. Actually the possibility of impor- 

 tant conflict is much more sharply limited because the heavily concentrated 

 forms of recreational use of the national forests involve a relatively small 

 portion of the whole forest area. People drive the roads, fish the streams, 

 and camp or picnic by the streamside or lakeside. Beyond this concentra- 

 tion, which is chiefly in the stream valleys, is the more general distribution of 

 a smaller population of hunters, hikers, horseback riders, and berry pickers. 



The important thing at present is to set up the necessary zones for special 

 treatment. It is easy to cut a 500-year-old tree, but it takes a long time to 

 restore it. The approximate average life of a coast Douglas fir is 600 years, 

 a western white pine 350 years, a western larch 500 years, a white oak 350 

 years, a lodgepole pine 200 years, a ponderosa pine 500 years, a tulip poplar 

 250 years. The time involved in the life of such trees is so long that it is vital 

 for ample areas of them to be preserved. 



