Introduction 



Ninety-two percent of the 

 200.3 million acres of 

 commercial timberland in the 

 South is non-Federal. The 

 national forests in the USDA 

 Forest Service's Southern 

 Region represent 11.4 million 

 acres of commercial 

 timberland. Given the 

 relatively small land base of 

 these national forests, what 

 impact, if any, has Forest 

 Service administration made 

 here? How has national 

 forest administration 

 influenced the revival of the 

 South's timber resource? 



While cause-and-effect 

 conclusions are difficult to 

 document, we can approach 

 these questions by examining 

 what the national forest lands 

 in the South looked like at 

 the time they were acquired, 

 what has been accomplished 

 under the agency's 

 management, and what 

 developments took place 

 concurrently on non-Federal 

 lands. 



To delineate the area under 

 study: the Southern Region's 

 35 national forests 

 (administered by 15 Forest 

 Supervisors) are located in 

 13 States (Alabama, 

 Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, 

 Kentucky, Louisiana, 



Mississippi, North Carolina, 

 Oklahoma, South Carolina, 

 Tennessee, Texas, and 

 Virginia). 2 Because Virginia 

 and Kentucky did not become 

 part of the Southern Region 

 until 1966, references 

 predating their inclusion will 

 embrace only the forests in 

 the remaining 1 1 States. 



Unlike the large, consolidated 

 blocks of land that make up 

 the national forests in the 

 Western United States, the 

 South's national forests are 

 characterized by fragmented 

 ownership patterns in which 

 private and Federal lands 

 interface within forest 

 boundaries. The primary 

 reason for this is that most 

 of the Southern Region's 

 holdings were purchased 

 parcel by parcel, initially for 

 the purpose of watershed 

 protection and later for timber 

 production, recreation, and 

 other uses. 



There were four main sources 

 of the lands purchased by 

 the Forest Service in the 



2 The Caribbean National Forest was 

 under Southern Region 

 administration from 1934 to 1944 

 and from 1975 to the present. 

 However, its holdings will not be 

 discussed in this study. 



