30 



MISSISSIPPI S FOREST RESOURCES AND INDUSTRIES 



it follows contract limitations of cutting is one of the 

 most obvious means of achieving satisfactory timber 

 management. 



Supei"\dsion by professional foresters is limited to a 

 tenth of the privately owned forest. Foresters are 

 employed primarily by large forest-products concerns, 

 and it is chiefly the technical management used by 

 foresters which is responsible for the better manage- 

 ment characteristic of these firms. 



Nontechnical supenision of cutting by the owners 

 themselves is the practice on more than a third of the 

 forest. Although the management ratings associated 

 with such supervision are much poorer than those 

 obtained where a forester supervises, they are superior 

 to the ratings on unsupervised land. Unsupervised 

 cutting, which is associated with the poorest manage- 

 ment, is still the rule on more than half the privately 

 owned forest land in Mississippi. 



Cutting-diameter Limits 



Even where there was no technical supervision of the 

 cutting, it was found that the establishment of cutting- 

 dianieter limits sometimes reduced forest deterioration. 

 In Mississippi, cutting diameters are included in at 

 least half the logging contracts, but the limits are 

 frequently no more than an estimate of the limits of 

 merchantability. As such, they are ineffective in 

 avoiding forest deterioration. Large diameter limits, 

 however, provide for more residual trees and a greater 

 likelihood of an improving resource. They help par- 

 ticularly in pine stands, where tree quality is to a 

 considerable degree a function of tree size (fig. 30). 

 Diameter limits are mostly ineffective in hardwood 



stands because much of the larger timber may be of 

 low quality and tree species may be of overriding 

 significance. 



Since small trees are usually preferred for pulpwood, 

 the use of cutting-diameter limits for pulpwood may 

 lead to greater forest deterioration than In logging for 

 larger products (fig. 31, A). Pulp companies, some 

 of the other forest-products firms, and a few other 

 landowners use pulpwood cutting as a silvlcultural 

 tool on their own lands, and the pulp companies 

 extend timber-marking services to some landowners 

 (fig. 31, jB). Yet, few forest landowners understand 

 or are in a position to Insist that pulpwood cutting be 

 used as a silvicultural tool. In consequence, manage- 

 ment usually averages poorer on properties cut for 

 pulpwood than on properties cut for sawlogs and other 

 larger timber products. 



Seed Trees 



Mississippi's Forest Harvesting Act. which became 

 effective in June 1944, prohibits commercial cutting in 

 pine or pIne-hardwood stands unless there is left on 

 each acre a minimum of four 10-Inch pine seed trees 

 with well formed crowns, or one hundred 4-inch pine 

 trees. In hardwood stands, analogous restrictions 

 apply except that six seed trees are required. These 

 requirements insure, at best, only fair cutting prac- 

 tices, but if fully observed they would improve timber 

 management considerably more than they have. 



In the few years of its operation, the act has un- 

 doubtedly improved cutting practice in Mississippi. 

 One estimate is that on forest properties totaling 1.5 

 million acres, merchantable trees have been left stand- 



PERCE 

 FOREST 



50 



as 







NT OF 

 AREA 



9 INCHES 



AND 



LESS 





50 



25 







10-13 



INCHES 





50 



25 









14 INCHES 



AND MORE 











1 











































1 



. 











'" '1 

















1 



















„...; 





E 



G F P VP 



E G F P VP D 



EG F P VP D 



Figure 30. — Management rating of pine forest land as determined by selected minimum cutting diameters, 1947 ~4S. {E^ excellent, G=good, 



F=fair, P=poor, VP=verv poor, D^=destructive.) 



