3. The necessity of withholding land, the disposition of which is provided for by existing laws. In this class are water power or irrigation sites, and mineral or medicinal springs.

4. Exceptional value for the land for special uses not above enumerated, as for example, for town sites purposes, hotel sites, &c. The disposition of such cases will be handled finally in the forester's office with reference to such authority as may exist at the time action is taken.

When lands in the National Forests are finally classified and segregated, their status is permanently established.

CHAPTER IX.

WORKING PLANS AND FOREST MANAGEMENT.

AMERICAN DEVELOPMENTS.

The European working plan is the instrument of a complex forest organisation. It is essentially and intensively silvicultural. It revolves around the problems of sustained yield and regulation of the cut.

The instrument itself is not so much characterised by this complexity as the situation it reflects the elaborately developed application of the records, teachings, and experiences of centuries of fixed traditions and favourable conditions-conditions too of low wages and high prices which do not and can never exist in Australia.

Forests in Europe are managed almost as intensively as vegetable patches. They are well protected and well organised. They are divided into small working units by complete systems of roads and "rides," and their history and that of every section and almost every tree is known and put on record from year to year. Silvical data are abundant and increment yield and volume figures are available for every unit.

The degree of abnormality has been reduced by long-continued tending and already the forests approximate closely to the "normal," i.e., ideal forest which the Australian Forest Services have yet to develop in the years to come from their present disordered wildwoods.

As a matter of fact, working plans are nothing more than orderly records of information available and the deduced ideas of the manager with regard to the future working of the forest.

After all, no business can be controlled effectively without system, and no system can be maintained effectively without being reduced to written records for the dual benefit of present and future users.

This is the basic principle of scientific management and of working plans.

It matters nothing whether the forest is managed on the basis of sustained yield or without any basis in forestry technique at all. If a high phase of development has been reached, the working plan will be a formidable one; if development is only beginning, the plan will be simplicity itself.

As the forest organisation extends, so also must the working plan—its reflection. There must be a normal and coincident development of both. But it were absurd to attempt to apply to the management of the primeval forest, the working plan of the gardened one.

In the period of confused thought supervening upon the inception of forestry practice in the United States of America this very absurdity was attempted, and only now, after fifteen years' experience, are American foresters coming to a realisation of the extent of the absurdity.

This initial period was a period of European ideals, when European systems were to be introduced bodily. Working plans were the last thing in European forestry; they would be the first thing in American. Sustained yield was the basic principle of European forestry; it must be the first plank in the American platform. European working plans were silvicultural in character, so also must be the American.

Since such forest activities as grazing, improvements, fire protection, &c. were absent from European practice, and, therefore, from European working plans, they were overlooked entirely in the preparation of the American.

But since such activities were necessarily the first care of the Forest Service in its work-a-day business, effective systems of management of them were developed without realising that those systems were really chapters of a truly American working plan.

Meanwhile came a reaction against "academic" working plans as superfluous, and from 1905 to 1911, the Forest Service turned its whole-hearted attention to problems of actual protection and administration, working out step by step the details of departmental policy and practice, correcting mistakes, adjusting difficulties, aiming at absolute efficiency in all respects.

Forest survey and assessment constituted a prime need of management, and the Forest Service pressed on feverishly with this work, aiming at the satisfaction of an urgent demand for quick results, for the assessment of a maximum area at a minimum cost. Assessors were hurried from one area to another without time to complete their reports.

The elaborately designed working plan reconnaissance become nothing more than a survey and assessment for purposes of timber sales and classification. But maps and estimates of considerable value were produced in the process. Scattered forest descriptions and silvical data accumulated in reports and on files, suggestions developed with regard to silvicultural systems. Marking rules for different forest types were recommended in timber sale reports.

All this information lay unused, but when it became essential to record it in accessible form, systematisation ensued.

Time had brought a considerable codification of thought.

The National Forest Manual" laid down that "the object of working plans was to systematise the management of each forest in accordance with the cumulative experience and information which the service had acquired."

The plans were to be subdivided into seven sections in order to provide flexibility in preparation and use

(1.) General forest description.

(2.) Silviculture

(3.) Grazing.

(4.) Lands.

(5.) Protection.

(6.) Improvements.

(7.) Administration.

The Forest Service had come to a realisation that there were other activities in American forest management than the silvicultural aims monopolising the European plan.

G

Sections and parts of sections were to be " revised and made more complete and final in character as the need arose and more data became available. A satisfactory working plan must necessarily be built up gradually as more is learned about the forest or district and about the best ways of handling it." The object was to furnish the information currently needed, and its best application to the present work of the forest in the form which would be of the greatest possible assistance in each phase of administration, not only to rangers or supervisors, but also to the district forester."

Working plans had reached at last a stage of normal development.

In May, 1912, the "standard outline for forest working plans" was adopted.

Its essential purpose was to provide a framework upon which to hang the data that had accumulated in the office files and other records which would

be collected from time to time. No expense was to be incurred in specially designing plans, but the matter was to be kept in mind and dealt with as a necessary section of the administrative work.

Timber reconnaissance was to be restricted to areas in immediate demand for purchase, or which were required to complete working plans necessitated by urgent local circumstances.

The "outline" is of peculiar interest as indicating the American struggle for clearness in despite of the native passion for detail. Where the European plan is now a definite set of directions with regard to fellings, regeneration, and thinnings, the American has become both a history and a compendium. Overlooking the inaugural caution against "unnecessary detail," the authors have established the headings for a large book on every National Forest. In offering criticism, however, one may not forget that the United States Forest Service had to deal with undivided regions rather than with chess-board woodlets, and that many issues were involved besides those of pure silviculture. Nor had silviculture yet emerged as the final fact. The search for light was proceeding momentously, but the clear-cut instructions of the European working plan had not yet crystallised from the mass. The American working plan at this date represents the accumulated information which the Forest Service has acquired with regard to each of its million-acre timber

OUTLINE FOR FOREST WORKING PLANS.

To be effective, working plans must be designed wholly for use in forest administration. They must be concise, complete, and intensely practical. While they must be based upon the best technical data which can be obtained, and must take into account service regulations and policy and apply all specifically, they must exclude academic discussion, material with no bearing on the plan, and unnecessary detail. Unnecessary discussion may be eliminated by tabulation wherever possible, and by statements of requirements, principles, conclusions, &c., and 1, 2, 3, order. Plans will consist of a statement of

(1.) The resources of the forest with necessary description.
(2.) The conditions governing their use.

(3.) The measures to be followed in their administration and develop

ment.

Unless otherwise specifically provided, the plan should outline the general management for a long period, usually a rotation in silviculture, and in detail

for some such period as ten to fifteen years.

The varying divisions of the forest required are indicated under each section of the plan. It is intended that the outline shall be followed only so far as it applies to the local conditions covered by the plan.

I. GENERAL DESCRIPTION.

General data which relates to two or more sections of the plan, or which can be treated more logically here than under other sections. Under most headings the discussion will be a summary of important points treated in detail in other sections of the plan.

Creation. Area, past and present. Totals of alienated lands by classes. (Tabulated form.)

Physical features. (Concise. Include the information which has a distinct bearing upon or forms the basis for the provisions of the plan.)

Climate. (Data not of direct application may be placed in the appendix.) Topography. (For use in the division of the forest into working circles, as well as its bearing upon use, development, and administration of the forest.) Geology. (As it affects soils, &c.)

Soils. (In such form that statement may be applied directly in silvicultural practice, settlement, policy, &c.)

Land Classification. Forest, agriculture, grazing, barren, &c. Tabulated. Brief discussion, if necessary.)

Transportation. (Railroads, water, &c., only as it affects the administration or the development of the forest.)

Settlement. Present and probable future. (As it affects the forest and the plan.)

Industries. Mining, grazing, ranching, lumbering, &c. (Only as they have a bearing on the plan.)

II. SILVICULTURE.

TIMBER.

Estimates and detailed descriptions of timber.

Estimates by species, separately by divisions, blocks, and other natural or artificial subdivisions. Quality, and condition of timber, age classes if stand is even-aged, accessibility, information on logging, &c., as necessary, cutover areas. (Tabulation.)

Forest Types.-Composition, occurrence, distribution of age classes, and condition of timber. (Concise general descriptions, and the fundamental silvicultural requirements and principles which form the basis for the choice and application of silvicultural systems.)

Species. Concise. Treat, from the standpoint of the type and the stand rather than the individual tree, the characteristics and requirements upon which will be based conclusions regarding the species to be favoured and the relation in the management of each species to the others in the stand or type.

Climatic, soil, moisture, and light requirements.

Growth, form, volume, &c. (Tables to be included in the plan if they will be used frequently, otherwise in the appendix.)

Reproduction. Advance reproduction present. secure it.

Conditions necessary to

Value of wood. (Properties, comparative values.)

Causes of injury. Fire, insects, fungi, mistletoe, smelter fumes, weather, animals, &c. (Control under protection.)

Increment. Yield table or other data, or the method used to determine increment. Effect of thinnings on growth, &c.

TIMBER OPERATIONS.

Markets. Consumption and demand, local and general, past, present, and future. Relation to surrounding forests if any. Cut, by years, sales, and free use. (For use in the determination of working circle boundaries and in regulation.)

Prices. (To aid in stumpage appraisals.)

Methods and utilisation. (Methods in relation to preservation of proper silvicultural conditions, also as a basis for costs. Reasonable possibilities in utilisation.)

Costs. (As a basis for stumpage appraisals.)

Objects of management. Watershed protection, species of timber and classes of material, sustained annual or periodical yield, &c. (State specifically in order of importance the objects which materially affect the provisions of the plan.)

Silvicultural systems and their application. For each type. (Concise descriptions of the systems adopted and provisions for their specific application. Include brush disposal.)

Regulation of yield. Rotation, cutting cycles, &c. (Rotation of maximum volume production. Cutting cycles as short as practical considerations will allow.)

Division of the forest into necessary divisions (working circles), areas within which sustained yield, annual or periodic, is now or will ultimately be desirable, based upon markets, transportation, and topography. (This may be done elsewhere in cases where such action will simplify treatment.) Blocks and chances only when they are actually needed to assist in regulation. (Blocks -main logging units or groups of logging units. Chances-single logging units or the subdivision of blocks necessary to carry out the management.)

use.

Annual or periodic cut. The limitation of cut including sales and free Accurately for ten years, and approximately for the periods of the rotation. (Include in the plan only the essential features of the method used, and cover necessary details in the appendix. Blank table for tabulation of limitation and amounts actually cut. Sales and free use.)

Sales. (By divisions, if advisable.)

Policy. Restriction and encouragement, and location. (The plan of cutting and specific application to actual conditions of the preceding conclusions and of the service policy and regulations. Past management to be treated only as it will help in an understanding of that proposed.)

Stumpage appraisals. Maximum and minimum rates.

Administration and other features. Special force needed. (Summary for use in obtaining total forest expenditures in Section VII.)

Costs.

Free Use. (Principles applying specifically the general free use policy, especially where it is more or less vague and general. By divisions, if advisable.)