Sales of timber from lands belonging to Indian tribes and individual Indians brought the owners a record high income of $12,388,000 in the fiscal year 1960, or 23 percent more than the 1959 income, the Department of the Interior announced today.
The volume of timber cut under contract was also at the record level of 597 million board feet, an increase of 63 million board feet over the 1959 total. Not included in these figures are the data for Klamath Indian Reservation, in Oregon, where sales are affected by the approaching termination of all Federal trust responsibility.
Sawmills owned by four Indian tribal groups--the Menominee of Wisconsin, :the Red Lake Chippewa of Minnesota, the Navajo of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, and the White River Apache of Arizona--converted to lumber about 50 million board feet of the total cut.
Over the country as a whole, there are nearly six million acres of commercially valuable Indian timberland, exclusive of the Klamath Reservation. Eighty-two percent is owned by tribal groups and the balance by individual Indians.
The record of commercial logging operations on Indian lands extends back over a hundred years. The concept of sustained yield and multiple-use became controlling factors in the management of these forests at the turn of the century.
The forests are factors in the economy of many Indian tribes and individual Indians. They provide cash income to the Indians from sales of the standing timber, and employment in the timber harvest. The timber sales, under sustained yield management, are also a stabilizing influence on the dependent wood using industries and the communities that serve them.
