Heppner Working j
Circle Timber !
Situation Analyzed
By Boyd L. Rasussen, Forester and
Carl Evin.j, Supervisor
Uniafilla National Forest
The privately owned timber that
supplies sawmills in the vicinity of
Heppner, Hardman and Kinzua is
by no means inexhaustible. Within
the next five years three of the five
sawmills operating in the Heppner
Working Circle will Have cut out
all the private timber they now
control. The other two mills can
maintain production until about
1957 when the private, timber ' they
now control will also have been cut
out. Since production from the Hepp
ner Working Circle accelerated by
the war time demand for maxi
mum production of lumber has
three times its entire sustained ca
pacity, it appears that the private
timber will be liquidated rapidly.
This prediction can be made with
even greater justification in view
of the probable demand for build
ng materials expected to develop
during the post war period.
In order to have up to date in
formation in the ' timber resources
in the Heppner. Working Circle,
the Forest Service in 1944 made an
analysis of the situation in the area
which supplies Wheeler and Mor
row county sawmills with timber.
This sudy which includes all of the
timbered areas in that part of the
Blue mountains lying west of Pot
amus creek and Arbuckle mountain
I and north of the John Day river
indicates that 1,443,000,000 board
feet of ponderosa pine sawtimber
and 360,000,000 board feet of Doug
las fir, white fir, Engelmann spruce
and western larch the so-called mi
nor species, remain uncut in both
private and public ownership. Of
the ponderosa pine volume, 53 per
cent is on land controlled by pri
vate owners, 4& percent by the For
est service and 1 percent by other
public agencies. Forty-five percent
.of the minor species, located main
ly in the less accessible places, is
found on national forest land. At
first glance it appears that there
should be plenty of timber for ev
eryone. However, this is not the
case. When it is considered that the
ive sawmills cutting timber from
this unit in 1944 produced 68,200,000
board fleet of lumber, the supply
discloses that actually there is by
begins to look small. The survey
ne means enough for any long per
iod.
The private and publicly owned
lands which supply these five mills
with logs are- capable of annually
supporting a cut of 20.8 million
board feet of ponderosa pine and 4 .3
million feet of minor species, a to
tal of 25.1 million board feet. Op
erating at full capacity under war
necessity, these mills in 1944, in
stead of adhering to this allowable
annual average, cut 64 million
board feet of ponderosa pine him
ber and 4.2 million board feet of
Douglas fir, western larch and
white fir. The current annual cut
of ponderosa pine alone is therefore
about three times as great as
would be allowable on a sustained
yield basis. Since most of the cut
is from privately owned ' timber
lands, the sustained yield capacity
of the private holdings is being ra
pidly reduced.
Keeping in mind the five saw
mills and the large volume of tim
ber they requre each year, let us
for the moment confine our atten
tion to the timber now in private
ownership and look more closely
at what is happening there. If all
of the 761 million board feet of
ponderosa pine timber and all of
the 151 million board feet of minor
species in private ownership were
equally avalable to the existing
mills at their 1944 rate of cutting,
it could all be cut in about 13
years. This is an alarming figure
since, as most people realize, 13
years in terms of tree growth or in
the life of an industry is but a short
time.
Fifty-nine percent of ths private
timber is controlled by existing I
sawmills, the remainng 41 percent
being uncontrolled. The uncon
trolled timber, much of it located
at low elevations on the fringe of
the Forest in places difficult to log
CaaUaaai fag Ma
Heppner Gazette Times, February 2.8, 1946 5
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