ern States have established 

 incentive programs funded 

 by severance taxes or by 

 funding from the forest 

 industries, as in Texas. 

 Many private firms have 

 also developed "tree farm 

 family" programs or related 

 efforts to work with other 

 landowners in increasing 

 timber production. 



An evaluation of the Federal 

 Forestry Incentives Pro- 

 gram, conducted by repre- 

 sentatives of the Forest 

 Service, the University of 

 Minnesota, the USDA's 

 Agricultural Stabilization 

 and Conservation Service, 

 and several State forestry 

 agencies, have indicated 

 that this assistance program 

 has been a cost-effective 

 way to increase timber 

 yields on nonindustrial 

 forests (Risbrudt and Ellef- 

 son 1983). Investments in 

 such measures as site 

 preparation and planting, 

 precommercoial thinning, 

 and cull tree removal were 

 estimated to yield more 

 than an 8-percent real rate 

 of return while producing 

 significant increases in 

 future yields of timber. In 

 addition, soil and water 

 conservation, wildlife habi- 

 tat, recreation, and esthetics 



were enhanced in varying 

 degree. 



Economic aspects of forest 

 management in both pine 

 and hardwood types have 

 been given considerable 

 attention by researchers in 

 the South. In the 1930's, 

 W.E. Bond and associates 

 issued the first in a series 

 of reports on the costs and 

 returns of sustained-yield 

 forestry in southern pine 

 types (Bond and others 

 1937). W.A. Duerr and S. 

 Guttenberg developed 

 guidelines for determining 

 the financial maturity of 

 timber (e.g., Duerr and 

 others 1956). Various analy- 

 ses of economic aspects of 

 timber management, fire 

 control, or other phases of 

 forestry also have been 

 conducted as part of broad- 

 er silvicultural investigations. 



Application of operations 

 research techniques to 

 sawmill operations demon- 

 strated how profits might 

 be maximized by changing 

 production or marketing 

 factors (Row and others 

 1 965). Methods of computer 

 analysis were also devel- 

 oped for logging operations 

 to help estimate the most 

 profitable timber-harvesting 



46 



