. Economic implications for management of structural retention on harvest units at the Blue River Ranger District, Willamette National Forest, Oregon . -L I 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 Year 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 Figure 6—Average stumpage value per acre sold, 1980-90, for sales with more than 2 million board feet, Blue River Ranger District, Willamette National Forest. Reduced economic returns resulting from a shift in managment toward structural retention are most apparent for an individual acre. Overall, timber value in real dollars per acre has recovered from the 1982 recession (fig. 6)
. Economic implications for management of structural retention on harvest units at the Blue River Ranger District, Willamette National Forest, Oregon . -L I 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 Year 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 Figure 6—Average stumpage value per acre sold, 1980-90, for sales with more than 2 million board feet, Blue River Ranger District, Willamette National Forest. Reduced economic returns resulting from a shift in managment toward structural retention are most apparent for an individual acre. Overall, timber value in real dollars per acre has recovered from the 1982 recession (fig. 6); however, per-acre timber yields for major timber sales, as projected from Forest Service cruise surveys, show that production per acre has been declining since the mid-1980s (fig. 7). This trend may be partly due to the amount of timber foregone as the result of green tree retention, snag retention, and creation of down woody material. Other factors also may be at work though. Harvesting stands from less productive sites or sites without high volumes of old-growth trees may be contributing the major portion of decline in timber yield per acre because the decline began in 1987, before timber sales that included structural retention were initiated. In the short time that management for retention of green trees, snags, and down wood at harvest has been implemented at the Blue River RD, considerable, but in many respects poorly defined, changes have begun to alter costs and benefits of Forest Service timber sales for individual forest stands and the District as a whole (see table 5). Some of these changes are due to costs of management for structural retention; other changes can be ascribed to concurrent events. Greatest short-term changes brought about by structural retention involve increased costs for logging operations, increased costs for timber sale administration by Forest Service personnel, and the currently foregone value in residual trees. 14
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