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MISC. PUBLICATION 249, U.S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 



and development purposes. Managed under multiple use plans, 

 similar on a smaller scale to those applied in the National Forests, 

 such community forests can supply numerous services to the public, 

 including facilities for outdoor recreation, habitat for wildlife, water- 

 shed protection, a reservoir of work for local unemployed, and income 

 to the community from forest products. Often the rehabilitation of a 

 tract of cut-over or burned-over land can be undertaken as a com- 

 munity enterprise. Local public forests as living memorials to war 

 dead have been proposed in some communities. 



A number of schools maintain forests which not only serve as out- 

 door classrooms for the teaching of elementary forestry, conservation, 

 and natural history, but provide an income to the schools from the 

 growing and selling of forest products. The United States Forest 

 Service is encouraging and cooperating in the establishment of com- 

 munity forests as part of a broad program of public forest development. 



A forester explains to vocational agriculture students in Arkansas about the use 

 of an increment borer to tell the age and growth rates of trees as a tool in good 

 forest management. 



The proper management of community forest properties naturally 

 requires the services of trained foresters. At present, most of the 

 community forest enterprises that are being given technical forestry 

 advice or direction obtain such service from State foresters or Federal 

 forestry agencies. There is a growing tendency, however, toward the 

 direct employment of trained foresters as community forest managers. 



