36 BULLETIN 418, U. S. DEPAKTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
MANAGEMENT OF WESTERN YELLOW PINE FORESTS. 
The economic conditions which affect the management of timber- 
land held in public ownership are so different from those which con- 
trol the management of privately owned lands that a separate dis- 
cussion of each class is necessary. The administration of public 
forests, such as those held by the Federal and State Governments, 
is aimed to secure the greatest good to all concerned for all time; 
i. e., present-day financial returns are secondary to the larger con- 
siderations of sustained profit and public welfare. Privately owned 
forests must be so administered as to yield the greatest present-day 
profits, and this usually means harvesting the maximum yield within 
the lifetime of the individual owner. Table 14 shows the proportion 
of yellow-pine timberland in Oregon held under each class of ownership. 
Table 14. — Ownership of the yellow-pine forests of Oregon, 1913. 
Character of ownership. 
Area. Volume. 
Acres. 
Per cent. Feet b. m. Per cent. 
4,448,026 
16,332 
4, 742, 148 
800, 000 
44.4 
.2 
47.4 
8.0 
34, 812, 400, 000 
51,400,000 
27,398,300,000 
9,100,000,000 
48.6 
.1 
In Federal ownership: > 
38.5 
Indian reservations 
12.8 
Total 
10, 006, 506 
100.0 i 71.362.100.000 
100.0 
' ' 
i Tc this might be added two or three hundred thousand acres in the public domain which carries four 
million feet of yellow pine, most of which is too scattered and of too inferior quality to be considered of 
commercial importance. 
FOREST MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC LANDS. 
It is the policy of the Federal Government to administer the public 
forest lands in such a way as to perpetuate the forest on all the land 
which is better suited to the production of timber than anything else, 
and to m'ake it yield for all time the greatest quantity and the best 
quality of timber. 
The perpetuation and proper utilization of the public forests of 
yellow pine, i. e., the practice of forestry on these lands, consists of 
four lines of work: (1) The protection of the virgin forest from fire; 
(2) the cutting of the mature trees in such a way that the immature 
trees will be spared from injury; (3) the intensive utilization of all 
the merchantable timber designated for cutting; and (4) the proper 
disposal of the logging debris in order to make possible the subse- 
quent protection of the stand of immature timber from fire. 
PROTECTION OF THE VIRGIN FOREST FROM FIRE. 
It has been shown that the normal yellow-pine forest in Oregon is 
many-aged and that it should have an abundance of trees of the 
younger age classes along with the old trees. Absolute fire protec- 
tion of the virgin woods is necessary, therefore, not alone to prevent the 
damage or killing of commercial trees, but to prevent depreciation in 
the future yields. 
