Summary of Proposed Gunnison National Forest Timber Management Plan

Summary

The plan objective is to provide continued direction in managment and administration of timber resources. The plan is a functional expansion of the Forest Multiple Use Plan. The actions and objectives of the plan are coordinated with other resources of the Forest through an Environ- mental Impact Statement. Although the planning period is ten years, the total planning horizon used to achieve regulation of commercial forest land is two growing ro- tations or 280 years. This regulation is planned by a computerized method of developing long-range management plans, called RAM (Resource Allocation Method). The proposed Timber Management Plan is based on timber data collected from 417 sample locations. The commercial forest was determined to be 919,561 acres of land capable of producing in excess of 20 cubic feet of wood per acre per year. Of this total, 276,608 acres are currently reserved or deferred from timber management activities because of wilder- ness classification or study for potential wilderness classification. The total volume of trees on commercial forest land is 5.6 billion board feet. Trees are growing at the rate of 68 million board feet per year, with a mortality rate of 18 million board feet per year. In order to achieve forest regulation, an equal distribution of timber