will be an important factor in the situation. In- 
creasing county ownership not only of cut-over 
land but, in southern Oregon, of commercial tim- 
berland is one of the obstacles to continued holding 
of land by private individuals. It is impossible to 
foretell at this time the future timber-sale policies 
of the 38 counties in the region. Variation in 
policy among counties is one of the main reasons 
why tax-delingeunt forest land should revert to 
the State rather than to the county. So long as 
counties continue to sell timberland, whether 
second growth or old growth, at prices below the 
average price at which private owners can sell, or 
even below the assessed value of private timberland, 
sustained-yield practice by private owners will be 
hindered. 
Areas Favorable for Private Ownership 
As a general rule the opportunities for sustained- 
yield management of private timberland are greater 
for the pulpwood-producing areas of the coastal 
belt of Washington and Oregon than for areas 
suitable only for growing saw timber. Very prob- 
ably, much more than half the forest land held by 
private owners for continuous timber production 
will be located in the spruce-hemlock zone in 
western Clallam, western Jefferson, Grays Harbor, 
and Pacific Counties, Wash., and in western 
Clatsop, Tillamook, and Lincoln Counties, Oreg. 
Saw-timber areas equally attractive for the invest- 
ment of private capital exist, but are limited in 
extent. Present plans of a few large operators 
indicate that considerable saw-timber area may be 
operated on a continuous-production basis. It is 
likely that much saw-timber-producing land bor- 
dering large agricultural areas will be privately 
operated for continuous production. 
The pulpwood-producing areas are practically 
all of very high site quality, mostly sites I and II. 
They are now covered with good stands of pulp 
species. By and large, the topography and ground 
conditions are such that logging is not difficult, 
and offer better possibilities for light selection cut- 
ting than those of most Douglas-fir areas in other 
parts of the region. The spruce-hemlock zone has 
a lower fire hazard, at least from the standpoint of 
climatic factors, than exists elsewhere in the region. 
Here the opportunity for integrated management 
1S?) 
is good, the better grade high value logs going to 
the saw and veneer mills and the less valuable 
logs used for pulp. 
Until now pulp manufacturers in the Douglas-fir 
region, with few exceptions, have owned relatively 
little forest land in proportion to their investments 
in plants and to their annual wood requirements. 
On the whole, the pulp industry has ridden along 
on the back of the lumber industry so far as obtain- 
ing supplies of raw material is concerned. In the 
course of logging for Douglas-fir and ‘‘cedar’’ sawlogs 
the lumber industry produces more hemlock. logs 
than are needed for the sawmills, and the pulp in- 
dustry has depended to a large extent on these open- 
market hemlock logs. Relatively small areas of 
timberland owned by pulp companies have been 
used as sources of logs with which to depress the 
open-market price of hemlock logs. When the 
types in which Douglas-fir and ‘“‘cedar”’ occur in quan- 
tities sufficient to justify logging for sawlogs are cut 
out—a condition that will soon be reached in north- 
ern Washington—logging for hemlock alone will 
begin: when this time comes the pulp companies 
will probably have to obtain their raw material 
through logging operations of which pulpwood sup- 
plies are the main object, and may find it necessary 
to own and control more timberland than they do 
now. 
Integrated utilization, low fire hazard, high an- 
nual growth per acre, not much agricultural devel- 
opment or many public improvements to date and 
therefore no cause for high-tax rates, make these 
areas in the spruce-hemlock zone more promising 
for continuous production and ownership by priv- 
ate capital than any other areas in the region. 
Current Trend to County Ownership 
Most of the changes in ownership of forest land 
now taking place in this region are resulting from 
county foreclosure of tax-delinquent lands. On 
January 1, 1934, about 657,000 acres of land was 
county-owned, of which 630,000 acres was forest 
land. Since then the area of land foreclosed by 
Oregon counties has been increasing each year. A 
comparison of the county-owned-land situation in 
eight counties of Oregon in 1932-33 and 1935-36 
(table 41) shows that in this short period the acre- 
age foreclosed by the counties more than doubled, 
