Pronghorn antelope are among the most valued wildlife species found on the national land reserve. Providing not only hunting, the antelope's presence is a tourist attraction. Managing Ou by Eugene V. Zumwalt Chief, Division of Forest Management A hundred or a hundred and fifty years actually isn't a very long time in the life of a forest. Many of the trees growing on Bureau of Land Management forests were sturdy saplings when civilization first touched our western lands, and were young giants when the General Land Office was established in 1812. There are millions of trees on BLM lands-in forests totalling an area the size of Texas. These forest lands are scattered through all the Western States-including Alaska-with a complex ownership pattern ranging from huge blocks to isolated tracts of only a few acres. Forest plans and management activities, devised for both forest giants and young seedlings, constitute one of the prime administrative functions of BLM's for esters. More than 400 professional foresters are em ployed, some of whom have received national recogni tion for their professional accomplishments. Many good terms can be used to describe BLM's forestry program-multiple use, sustained yield, intensive and extensive forest management, forest conservation and balanced resource management. Sometimes these terms mean different things to different people. The terms as used by BLM in speaking of its forests mean an action program and planning concept, in which lands are classified for the highest use. Any single classification must be modified to recognize other potential uses that can be made of a forest property. Thus we recognize that our forests produce wildlife. recreation, and watershed protection as well as timber. The O&C Lands BLM's chief forest assets, from the standpoint of rapid growth and intensive forest management, are land grants in western Oregon which were returned to the Federal Government in 1916. rest Resources One grant-the O&C lands-was made to the Oregon and California Railroad Company for building a raiload from California to Portland, Oreg. Another grant was to the Southern Oregon Company, to aid in contructing a military road from Coos Bay to Roseburg, Oreg. The O&C and Coos Bay Wagon Road lands, containing some 2.1 million acres, are rated as some of he prime public forest properties in the world. Log production from the Oregon lands is phenomeal-equal to a huge truck load of logs every 212 minutes, 24 hours a day, continuously! This returns a daily gross income of nearly $100,000-shared between the counties and the U.S. Treasury. This young stand of Douglas fir is an example of the excellent timber found on the O&C lands of western Oregon. BLM's forest managers rate these lands as among the best public forest properties in the world. compiled figures show that the Bureau has jurisdiction over approximately one-third of the public forest acreage, and one-fourth of the volume of federally owned timber. These figures do not include the noncommercial forest areas. The public, for generations to come, is the ultimate beneficiary of the forest and woodland crops grown on public lands. BLM's timber management programs are geared to speed forest products to market while providing resource renewal through the most advanced reforestation techniques. Timber sale programs are administered to encourage the primary purchaser to make full use of the product; BLM's sales practices induce the purchaser to remove all materials that might possibly have value. As new means are discovered for promoting fuller utilization of forest resources, they will be immediately put to use. The next century will bring new and improved techniques for processing wood products, and also a variety of products now beyond the realm of imagination. Greater demands will be made on our forest resources; more on forests than almost any other source of raw materials because wood is a renewable natural re source. Many foresee the woods operation of tomorrow as one where trees are fed into a pipeline in the form of fiber. Then the fibers would be reassembled or treated during the manufacturing process to create thousands of end products. BLM looks forward to such advanced technological changes and is already making plans that include the necessary program changes to meet continuing progress. |