Timber harvesting on Indian reservations set records during the 1967 calendar' year in terms of both cash and timber volume, a final tabulation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs shows.
Cash sales exceeded 900 million board-feet and provided gross receipts of $17.9 million. This compares with a total of 527 million board-feet and $10.7 million gross sales ten years ago, and about 802 million board-feet, with $15.4 million in cash sales for 1966, and 811 million board-feet and approximately $13 million in cash sales in 1965.
The 1967 sales provided an estimated 6,300 year-long jobs in the forest industries on or near Indian reservations.
Average stumpage price was $19.85 per thousand board-feet.
In addition, Indians cut over 93 million board-feet of timber for their own use, valued at $311,000, for house logs, corral poles, fencing, and fuel wood. Hogan logs on the Navajo Reservation, alone, account for about 1 million board-feet per year.
Over the past 50 years, 27.8 billion board-feet of timber, valued at $261 million has been harvested from Indian tribal and allotted lands.
The Indian owners are working closely with the Bureau to improve forestry practices in the harvest of the timber, including replanting of cut areas, and regulating the amount of the cut to insure their tribes a sound, economic base on which they can draw forever.
