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People don't realize, and just as in medicine, many of the reasons 

 forest practices are carried out. For instance, clear-cutting, which 

 everyone or the environmental organizations use as a tool to beat 

 the whole forestry problem, is a tool that is necessary; for instance, 

 if you want to change a species composition, if you want to promote 

 a certain type of wildlife. Some wildlife uses highbrows, some uses 

 lowbrows. It depends on the species and what you are trying to do. 



Oaks are vital in our area. They are vital because it is a beau- 

 tiful timber, first of all. It is a wood that people love, and it is in 

 high demand. And, secondly, it is important because of the mast, 

 m-a-s-t, which is the nuts, the fruit, that so many of our wildlife 

 species need to exist. 



Now, if you talk about old growth, that we can't cut any old 

 growth, and you talk about your clear-cut, look what is happening 

 with oak decline in the Appalachian areas. If you take a Spanish 

 oak, for instance, along a ridge here, which is there, it is going to 

 grow, its life span is going to be about 80 years. Now, that is not 

 very old for old growth. 



If you let that tree die and you have an acorn, you are relying 

 on acorn plants that fall from it, you will lose the species altogether 

 because red maple and locust will grow so much faster, it will kill 

 out the oak species. So over a period of time, you will lose the oak 

 in that whole range if you aren't harvesting. 



However, if you go in and harvest, you can get a sprout back 

 from the roots while that tree is still alive that will outrace the red 

 maple or locust, and you will keep an oak supply. So the proper 

 management tool would be to go in and cut it. It might be clear- 

 cutting, it might be selective cutting, but to harvest that timber so 

 that you are going to have vigorous, young, more disease resistant 

 oak seedlings coming along for future generations. 



Now, this doesn't happen in a day or two so it is hard to watch 

 if you are just someone walking in the forest on the weekend and 

 coming back out. But it is essential for forest health if you main- 

 tain that supply. It is going to become more critical because in this 

 country before we first came here, there were a very scattered 

 number of people. 



We are farming more land. We needed more land for people to 

 live. And so the forests that we have, especially our Federal and 

 State forests, must be managed. You cannot just let it stay because 

 we have so little of it in a sense. There is a third of the United 

 States that is public land, but not all of that is forest. 



But we must manage as a growing population comes along and 

 both for forest health and to provide this renewable resource that 

 fills so many of our needs — from chemical needs, every facet. If you 

 stand around your home and touch the things that wood have pro- 

 vided, you would be amazed. And we are going to have to find re- 

 placements for that, and most of that will come from finite re- 

 sources if we totally destroy our ability to use the renewable re- 

 source of wood. 



If you talk to any school, our best universities go there, go to ex- 

 perimental stations. The Forest Service has numbers of experi- 

 mental stations that have been in existence for almost 100 years. 

 It is impossible to come away without seeing the need for manage- 

 ment in our forests. 



