The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1905-02-08
TIMBER CUTTING IN MINNESOTA.
The Work on the Pine Trees in the Mimi
esota National Forest.

When completely established the
Minnesota National Forest Reserve
will contain about 225, 900 acres.
| OF this area los, 900 acres have al
ready been selected by the govern
ment. Under the terms of the Nor
ris law 95 per cent OF the pine tim
Der thereon must be cut. This pine
has been cut and the work of cutting
was actively prosecuted last year.
Nine logging camps were estab
lished. and the cutting began early
in August. Two camps, which
worked under system of summer
railroad logging, shut down for the
season in November. The other
seven camps, in which winter log
ging is being done, is still running.
The most interesting of the sever
al operations, from a forester. S
standpoint, was on sections Is, Is,
II, and 81 OF township 145, r 80.
Section Is was established to have
the heaviest stand of timber in the
former Indian reservation. The
very dense growth made it especi-
ally difficult to carry out with the
best results the law requiring 8 per
cent of the timber to be left stand
ing for reseeding or reforesting the
land. When trees grew so close to-
gether that, after telling, the ground
is almost completely hidden by their
trunks, it is no easy matter to Sc
lect single trees or small groups of
trees so situated that their neigh
bors can be felled without hurting
them. This was, however done.
The first work undertaken in the
four sections mentioned, after locat-
ing the two summer camps, was
opening up and grading the road
beds for the logging railroads.
These roadbeds were cut through
the heaviest stands of timber, and it
is noteworthy that they required
the cutting down of strip OF forest
considerably narrower than wag
on road would have involved.
From 785 acres OF these four sections
there were cut between Aug 8 and
November 10 some 1871, 785 board
feet of white and Norway pine.
From all except 100 acres OF this
area the brush and debris smaller
than inches in diameter were
cleared and built into compact piles
as the logging progressed. These
piles were burned between October
% and December 90. The brush
and debris on the remaining 100
acres were piled and will be burned
at suitable time in the spring. So
carefully was the burning done
that even In and around section 16
it was completed without injury to
the per cent of seed trees reser-
we'd. The area covered by the fires
by which the brush and debris
were destroyed was only about z
per cent of the cut-over land.
The contractors running the sew
en- winter camps are also doing their
cutting, hauling, and brush burning
under the inspection of the Bureau
of Forest Fab of these camps
operated over larger area this sea-
son than did the two camps already
mentioned. The timber purchas-
ers have until July, 1908, to finish
the cutting and removal of the tim
Der from the sections already sold.
Although the regulations for con-
sentative numbering were new to
the lum bermen, they have been ap-
piled effectively. Not only have the
relations between the Bureau offic.
ials in charge of the work and the
loggers been entirely friendly, but
radical change in the attitude Of
the lumber interests of this region
towards forestry has taken place
as the result of a better under.
standing of it's methods and it's pur.
poses.
An important result of the last
season S work was the practica,
demonstration that it is most effec.
tive and most economical to pile and
burn brush and debris, so far as
practicable, as fast as the logging
proceeds, When the burning car
not be Immediately done, the brush
should be kept cleaned up and com
pactly piled close behind the log.