CURRENT ANNUAL SAW-TIMBER CUT 
BY SPECIES GROUPS COMPARED WITH 
ALLOWABLE ANNUAL CUT IF MANAGE- 
MENT AND DEVELOPMENT REQUIRE - 
MENTS ARE MET ---- MONTANA 
PONDEROSA AND WHITE PINE 
(million board feet) 
22 
LARCH AND DOUGLAS-FIR 
(million board feet) 
OTHER SPECIES 
(million board feet) 
AVERAGE CUT 1948 CONDITIONAL 
1939 -48 CUT ALLOWABLE 
CUT 
FicurE 31. 
COMPARISON OF CUT OF PONDEROSA PINE 
WITH ALLOWABLE CUT OF THAT SPECIES 7 
WESTERN MONTANA. 1925-1948 
ACTUAL CUT 
y 
a 
Si! 
Wee 
CONDITIONAL ALLOWABLE 
CUT BASED ON TIMBER 
STAND IN 1949 
i MILLION’ BOARD FEET -" Lumber ta/ 
FIGURE 32. 
extent by the uncut surpluses east of the Divide, 
that fact does not solve the problem in western 
Montana. 
In several localities the overcutting of ponderosa 
pine has been especially severe. In Ravalli County, 
for example, the cut during the decade 1936 to 
1945 was almost three times higher than the allow- 
able cut (fig. 33). The inevitable result will be 
drastically curtailed production of ponderosa pine 
for a long time. 
Only a few general statistics by ownership are 
available. They are presented in table 1, which 
shows that the conditional allowable cut of saw 
timber on the national forests is in all instances 
higher than the present cut. However, the na- 
tional-forest cut of ponderosa pine and western 
white pine in western Montana is about as high 
as it should go, and the larch and Douglas-fir cut 
is also approaching the ceiling. There is consider- 
able room for expanding the cut of other species. 
On the national forests of eastern Montana, the 
present cut of saw timber of all species is only a 
fraction of the conditional allowable cut. 
The situation of the other ownerships is different. 
In eastern Montana the timber cut outside the 
national forests could be doubled. But, in western 
Montana the ponderosa pine,” larch, and Douglas- 
12 The volume of western white pine outside the national 
forests is too small to permit an accurate over-all comparison 
of actual and allowable cut. 
38 Forest Resource Report No. 5 U. S. Department of Agriculture 
