100 AN AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF AMERICAN FORESTRY. 
Limitations were established for each National Forest and were alterable 
only by the Minister. But these limitations were fixed when the sales were 
considerably less than the estimated annual increment, and when the sales 
approached the limitation the pressure brought to bear was such that resort 
was had to the specious method of combining with the limitations of one forest 
the specified cut of adjoining areas, although their outlets often were hundreds 
of miles apart. In the case of the Whitman Forest, the permitted exploitations 
of five forests were added together in order to justify a proposal to exceed the 
sustained yield of the original unit. 
The facts had not been faced squarely. 
To exploit the forest at a faster rate than it grows is tantamount to 
cashing the company’s capital to pay the dividends. 
The principle of the sustained yield is limitation of the periodic cut to 
the amount of wood accretion during the period. Is is the essential purpose 
of State forests, which are set apart to perpetuate the timber supply, and the 
chief justification for their existence as such. It is the only scheme of manage- 
ment under which ordinary business efficiency can be achieved, and mis- 
management guarded against. It is the only scheme under which forest 
industry can be established, and logging and milling plants assured a reason- 
able life, thus making, by elimination of high depreciation costs, for cheaper 
timber for the community, and providing the best form of investment. It 
makes possible permanent transportation facilities and permanent forest 
communities, and establishes labour conditions, and as such has the best social 
results—a consideration which no Australian can overlook. 
But it is another matter to persuade operators to transfer their operations 
from handy forests before they have cut them out, to inaccessible forests with 
often inaccessible markets. In the North-West of New South Wales the 
forests adjacent to railways are being overcut, while the huge over-maturing 
supplies of the Central Pilliga cannot be exploited owing to lack of transporta- 
tion facilities. To prohibit cutting on the accessible forests because 
exploitation has exceeded the wood increment, is not possible until other 
sources of supply are opened up, and to do so would destroy the timber 
industry. 
Railways and markets are necessary to the establishment of manage- 
ment on the basis of the sustained yield. It is not so much a question of what 
should be done as what can be done. 
Until railways and markets are available, sustained yield for forests 
or even working circles, to a large extent, must remain as theories. Limita- 
tions of the cut are of value in the pioneer phase, only as a standard and a 
danger signal. They should certainly be established, so that it will be possible 
to tell approximately the amount of.the overcut or undercut. 
To the Australian forester, the lack of increment data is a handicap. 
We have-no reliable information as to the rates of growth, and are at a 
disadvantage as compared with Europe or America, in that annual rings are 
no guide, and we must gather our data by prolonged observation of the trees 
themselves. 
Furthermore, it is necessary that we should have beforehand, an intimate 
knowledge of our forests, so as to ensure that cutting will be concentrated 
on overmaturing and deteriorating stands, and detailed data as to acessi- 
bility, transportation facilities, and markets, so as to safeguard the silvicul- 
tural aims against sacrifice to purely local business considerations. 
