public forest lands would be desirable in the further- 
ance of sustained-yield management in this region. 
Reblocking of federally owned timberland is feasi- 
ble. A merging of State and county-owned timber- 
land under unified administration is desirable. If 
the latter is not possible, at least a uniform set of 
policies, rules, and regulations should be adopted 
for the handling of all county-owned and State- 
owned timberland. 
Public Acquisition Programs 
Because of lack of funds, Federal and State ac- 
quisitions of forest land in this region have been too 
small to alter materially the production policy of 
the lumber industry. Forest Service acquisition 
has been largely a matter of trading merchantable 
timber on national forests for cut-over lands in the 
near vicinity of the national forests, and has been 
scattered throughout the western part of the two 
States. Oregon created the Elliott State Forest by 
exchanging scattered State lands within national 
forests for a solid block of national-forest land. 
Washington has blocked up its two major mature- 
timber areas by the same method, one in Jefferson 
and one in Snohomish County, and is blocking up 
an area of cut-over land in the central part of the 
State. In the latter case the State had purchased 
about 40,000 acres by the fall of 1936, at a cost of 50 
cents per acre, using utility bonds bearing 1 percent 
interest. It is planned that this particular State 
forest shall ultimately be extended to include ap- 
proximately 100,000 acres. Under legislation that 
provides for transfer of tax-reverted land in Wash- 
ington from counties to State ownership, about 
300,000 acres was transferred as of August 1938 and 
an additional 50,000 acres later in 1938. 
The Federal Government may be considered to 
have two purposes in acquiring additional forest 
land, (1) consolidation of Federal ownership within 
the existing national-forest boundaries and (2) 
promotion of sustained-yield management on all 
forest lands. The existing national forests, in the 
region contain approximately 2 million acres of 
alienated land, by far the larger part of which is 
best suited to multiple-use forest management. 
Acquisition of this land would be logical, for ad- 
ministrative efficiency. The second purpose has 
greater significance and should receive primary con- 
sideration in an acquisition program. In many 
133 
cases establishment of new national-forest units 
(both additions to existing national forests and new 
forests) through acquisition will be necessary to ob- 
tain sustained-yield management even on a basis of 
cooperation with private timber companies, unless 
outright subsidization is resorted to. 
Enlarged public acquisition of second-growth and 
mature timber is advocated by many lumbermen 
because it would tend to stabilize stumpage prices, 
check the liquidation of private timber at excessive 
rates of cutting, and tend to hold back the cutting of 
second-growth timber, much of which is now in its 
period of maximum growth and which will be 
needed more in the future, when the present old- 
growth stands approach exhaustion. Overproduc- 
tion because of “‘distressed’’ stumpage has been a 
chronic problem of the West Coast lumber industry 
for the last 15 years; timber purchases to establish 
sustained-yield management will assist in solving it, 
From the public point of view, emphasis should be 
placed on purchases that will make industrial de- 
velopments permanent rather than upon those 
that will merely reduce the quantity of timber in 
unstable ownership. 
The region contains 173 billion board feet of 
timber of availability class I in private ownership. 
If this timber were cut at a rate of about 7% billion 
feet per year, it would last about 23 years. ‘The- 
oretically it will all be cut before much class II 
or class III timber is cut. Actually this probably 
will not happen; but it can be assumed that not 
much class II and III timber will be cut until 
nearly all the class I timber is gone, which would 
mean that timber of classes I] and III would 
have to wait from 20 to 25 years to begin to be 
marketed. At the present time the pressure to 
liquidate results for the most part in cutting of 
class I timber, since that is the only kind for which 
the return is greater than the cost of operation. 
The class III timber in private ownership is so 
limited in extent and so remote from markets that 
it will have but little influence on liquidation of 
private stumpage. It is gradually passing into 
county ownership through tax delinquency, and 
this trend may be expected to continue. Any 
purchases by Federal agencies of class III timber- 
land should be for special purposes, such as recrea- 
tion or stream protection, rather than for manage- 
ment for timber production. 
