| OCR Text |
Show 655.000 Seedling Trees To Be Planted Jack B. Shumate, Forest Supervisor, Super-visor, Dixie National Forest, announced an-nounced this week that 655,000 seedling trees will be planted plant-ed within the Dixie National Nation-al Forest this spring. The trees wLll be planted by Forest Service personnel on 1600 acres of cut-over cut-over or burned-over timber land. Tree species include ponderosa pine, Engelmann spruce, and Douglas fir. The seedlings were produced at the Lucky Peak Forest Service nursery at Boise, Idaho, from seed collected on the Dixie National Na-tional Forest in 19G1 and 1902. The nursery produces approximately approxi-mately six million seedlings annually an-nually for the 18 National Forests For-ests of the Intermountain Region, with production costs averaging about one ond one-half cents per tree. Funds to finance the Forest Service planting program come from appropriations by the U. S. Congress and also from collections collec-tions made from the sale of tim-ber. tim-ber. Mr. Shumate stated that since 1962 over 2700 acres of ponderosa pine have been planted on the Dixie National Forest. This year's program will be the la;'est undertaken un-dertaken to date with Forest Service Ser-vice crews on each of the eight Ranger Districts partkip.'ting. Only ponderosa pine wa jibiUed in past years; this years program pro-gram will Include 100,000 Engle-mann Engle-mann spruce and Douglas Fir scheduled for the high elevations of the Markagunt and Aquarius Plateaus. The seedlings will grow to saw-timber size in approximately approxim-ately 160 years. Mr. Shumate explaned that the primary purpose for planting is to restock forest land where natural na-tural regeneration Is slow or has not occurred. On some forest areas the ideal conditions of weather, seed, and other factors necessary neces-sary for natural regenration may occur only a few times in a century. cen-tury. Nature alone may require more than 100 years to fully re- establish trees on land deforest-'ed deforest-'ed by fire. Insects, disease, or J logging. Planting can shorten this period to only a few years' time thus insuring sustained timber production while dimin-! dimin-! ishing the threat of serious watershed wat-ershed deterioration. |
