TIMBER GROWING IN DOUGLAS FIR REGIGN 5 
The Forest Service earnestiy asks the forest landowners of the 
United States to determine for themselves, with the same care with 
which they would approach any other business problem, whether 
timber growing does not offer a commercial opportunity which 
should be grasped. It commends this series of bulletins to them, 
not as a complete or authoritative scheme that can forthwith be 
followed with profit in their own woods, but as a starting point in 
utilizing the opportunities that forestry may held out. 
GENERAL SITUATION IN THE DOUGLAS FIR REGION 
To grow successive crops of timber on a forest property, what must 
be done in the woods? It is the purpose of the foilowing pages to 
answer this question for the Douglas fir region. The discussion wiil 
be concerned with what must be done in the woods; it will not be 
concerned with what must be done in legislative halls or through 
corporate business reorganization to put into effect and finance the 
measures recommended. In considering these woods measures essen- 
tial for forest renewal and forest protection, their cost and praciica- 
bility will always be carefully weighed, for forestry, like any applied 
science, is a business. 
THE FOREST AND FOREST TYPES 
The Douglas fir region lies between the Pacific Ocean and the 
crest of the Cascade Range in western Washington and Oregon from 
British Columbia approximately to the California line. Except for 
a few meadows, prairies, and mountain barrens, the entire region was 
once forest clad. In the density of its forests, in the huge size of its 
trees, in the luxuriance of growth, this region is in the front rank. 
Its present timber production is large, and it promises continued 
large yields of virgin softwood timber for many years. 
Speaking broadly, this is still a primeval forest region. Of the 
28,000,000 acres of original forest, only about 4,000,000 acres have 
been logged. A little in addition has been siashed and burned off for 
agricultural use. ‘The rest is in a state of nature. By no means, 
however, is every acre of natural woods bearing the quota of timber 
it might. It is estimated that on the advent of the white man the 
whole region was not bearing more than a third of the timber the 
land is capable of producing. ‘The average stand for the region as a 
whole was probably under 30,000 feet per acre, whereas mature 
virgin timber ought to run 106,000 feet per acre. Many acres were 
denuded or bearing small young timber, and others were thinned out 
and patchy because of the inroads of fire. 
Serious fires from time immemorial have wrought great havoc in 
the virgin forest, which when destroyed has usually been replaced 
by a “second-growth”’ forest of young timber. Thus there is in 
this region timber of various ages. ‘There are whole townships of 
immature timber. The existence of so great an acreage of young 
forests has a very important bearing on the future stability of the 
lumber industry of the region. : 
Extensive lumbering operations are as yet almost wholly m mature 
timber, and it should be understood that the discussion herem of the 
methods of cutting and of the measures necessary for timber growing 
