5. Destructive cutting leaves the land without 
timber values and without means for natural re- 
production. 
Ratings were applied to the entire acreage of 
“operating” forest properties, taking national 
forests and other very large properties by working 
circles. In the aggregate this included about nine- 
tenths of all commercial forest land in the North 
and South and eight-tenths in the West. “Non- 
operating” included tracts not operated for tim- 
ber, those where fire or other agents had obscured 
evidences of cutting, and some remote national- 
forest lands that await access roads to ogen them 
for logging. 
More than half of all recent cutting was rated 
| “poor” or “destructive” (table 17). Less than one- 
fourth of the cutting measures up to good forestry 
standards. 
Character of cutting practices varies greatly by 
AREA 
Million acres 
CHARACTER OF CUTTING 
Good and 
better 
Good and 
zx better 
NATIONAL FORESTS 
ownership class. On the public lands cutting is 
notably better than that on private lands. Two- 
thirds of the cutting is rated good or better, only 
14 percent poor or destructive. But only about 
one-fourth of the commercial acreage and a much 
smaller fraction of potential timber growing ca- 
pacity is publicly owned. 
Moreover, on some public land there is much 
room for improvement. Good to high-order prac- 
tices have yet to be attained in 25 percent of the 
cutting on western national forests, and on much 
of the 15 million acres of other Federal lands, 
where one-fourth of the cutting is poor and de- 
structive. For the 27 million acres of State and 
local government lands, 43 percent of the cutting 
is in the latter categories (fig. 14). 
The practices on the 345 million acres of private 
timberlands carry most weight since these forests 
will remain our principal source of timber. Gen- 
AREA 
Million acres 
CHARACTER OF CUTTING 
Good and 
better ~ 
STATE AND LOCAL 
Ficure 14.—Operating area and character of cutting by ownership class, 1945. 
Forests and National Prosperity 47 
