and tractors can go over timberlands for the higher 
quality logs that can stand the expense of long hauls. 
They will also be influenced by the greatly in- 
creased area of operable timberland in the region 
made available through the low initial investment 
involved in tractor logging, and by the fact that 
existing lumber-manufacturing centers on water, 
such as Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Bellingham, 
Hoquiam, Aberdeen, Longview, and Portland, 
not only have better facilities for marketing and 
shipping wood products, including waste, but have 
an advantage in possibilities for integrating wood- 
using industries. Many of the present plants have 
been largely or entirely depreciated. Changes in 
location involved would in some cases be no greater 
than those that would result from continuance of 
present trends under the liquidation policy; for 
many sawmill owners it has already become a 
problem whether to mill logs coming from their 
holdings at existing mills or to establish new mills 
nearer the source of log supply. 
Regardless of whether sustained-yield practices 
are adopted in the near future, many communities 
in western Washington and northwestern Oregon 
will in the future have less saw timber on which to 
draw than they have had in the past. In consider- 
ing the region-wide aspects of forest management 
it would seem expedient to set up sustained-yield 
units on the basis of allowable annual cut in the 
future period when the ideal balance constituting 
sustained yield has been realized, at the same time 
calculating allowable cut for the intervening period. 
If existing laws requiring that publicly-owned 
timber offered for sale be sold to the highest bidder 
were modified, sustained yield could be inaug- 
urated in the region through cooperative arrange- 
ments whereby the products of specified public 
and private forest areas would be committed to 
certain mills. Such arrangements would tend 
toward constant supplies of raw material for the 
mills and economic stability for the communities 
in which the mills are located. 
ease of transporting logs by water, however, 
In view of the 
objections could be raised to freezing into a fixed 
pattern the distribution of publicly owned timber 
in the northern part of the region. 
Although these cooperative arrangements would 
not be planned specifically to result in normal age 
121 
distribution on each individual property involved, 
some of them might do so, particularly if selective 
logging were employed. The agreement might 
then be terminated. Thereafter, each of the indi- 
vidual properties could be managed under an indi- 
vidual sustained-yield plan and its product sold 
periodically to the highest bidder, and the annual 
production of the wood-using industry or industries 
that had been involved in the agreement could be 
scaled to the raw material obtainable on the basis 
of free competition. Community stability would 
then rest on the assurance that a regular supply of 
raw material would be produced in the various for- 
est units in the region and that this material would 
be sold in open competition to the mills and com- 
munities qualified by virtue of proper location, 
efficient management, and other economic factors 
to pay the top price. 
Ultimate sustained-yield capacity has been calcu- 
lated for each of the forest units set up by the Forest 
Survey, and also the average rates of cutting that, 
starting with the present areas of old-growth tim- 
ber, second growth, and cut-over lands, would 
bring about a balance of cut and growth within a 
period varying from 90 to 150 years. The calcula- 
tions were restricted to unreserved commercial con- 
ifer forest land. Sustained yield probably will not be 
put into effect for areas so large as the survey units; 
but comparison of these figures with past and current 
rates of cutting depletion show in a general way the 
extent to which the forest-survey units and the major 
forest districts are being either overcut or undercut. 
Before these allowable rates of cutting could be cal- 
culated, however, certain premises had to be set up. 
Undoubtedly future practice will be better than past 
and the calculations were based on that assumption, 
although with no attempt to allow for the inevitable 
economic changés which will occur in the future. 
The premises are as follows: That there will be 
prompt attainment of normal distribution of age 
classes; that utilization will be reasonably complete 
in the future; that all timber on commercial conifer 
land will be marketable; that existing mature stands 
will be cut first; that there will be an increase in 
stocking in understocked stands at the rate of about 4 
percent per decade; that areas cut over will restock 
within the next decade; and that future cuttings will 
restock to approximately 75 percent of normal. 
