FicurE 39.—A blowdown area on the Kootenai National Forest. 
F-464664 
Timber loss from this and other destructive forces can be 
kept at a minimum only if there is an adequate road network to permit salvage. 
than on others. The timber cut on public lands 
has climbed steadily for a number of years, but 
it can climb higher even though the opportunity 
for expansion is not uniform. As already pointed 
out, State-owned forest lands are being cut at a 
faster rate than can be sustained, the overcutting 
being especially heavy in ponderosa pine. The 
opportunity for expanding the cut is therefore on 
the national forests, which constitute 82 percent of 
the public commercial forest, but are not being 
cut to capacity. 
For many years the job of wild-land management 
on national forests has been primarily a custodial 
one of fire control, construction and mainte- 
nance of improvements, etc. There was, in fact, dur- 
ing the depression years a deliberate and considered 
effort to withhold public timber to avoid depress- 
ing the timber market. The national forests of 
Montana, therefore, entered World War II with 
a cut of roughly 62 million board feet a year. In 
response to the timber needs of the war and post- 
war period cutting was accelerated, reaching a high 
of 205 million board feet in 1948. As pointed out 
earlier, the 1948 cut was considerably below the 
conditional allowable cut for the national forests. 
It is apparent that the time has arrived when 
public forests should be more fully utilized. “The 
increased demand for public timber since World 
War II and the obviously declining private supplies 
indicate that public forest lands in Montana must 
carry much more of the production load in the 
future than they have in the past. Also, heavy 
losses that occur in an undeveloped timber resource 
are no longer acceptable. 
Public land managing agencies in Montana can- 
not now fully meet their responsibilities with regard 
to timber production, watershed protection, graz- 
ing, etc. The difficulty of proper management and 
utilization because of an inadequate road system 
has already been mentioned. While this is a para- 
mount problem, it is not the only one. There is 
need for a substantial capital investment in these 
lands. Some of that necessary capital investment 
should be used for buildings, fences, and other 
50 Forest Resource Report No. 5 U. 8. Department of Agriculture 
