State

The Green World of Peter Hanlon Overseeing the trees, super trees, u i ltl f loners, and 5.000.000 visitors in our national forests. By LEON N. SILER Half a billion or so trees. a million and more acres of highly scenic land, innumerable miles of running water, camping and picnicking spots by the hundreds, wildlife of almost every variety — they’re all in the domain presided over by Peter J. Hanlon. He is the supervisor of the four North Carolina national forests: Croa- tan, Uwharric, Pisgah and Nantahala. listing them from cast to west over a stretch of 450 miles. It’s a jurisdiction representing an original investment by Uncle Sam of something like $8,1 10,- 000. The holdings, exclusive of the improvements which Uncle has made, arc worth dozens of times that in to¬ day’s real estate market. Uncle isn’t going to sell Hanlon's domain out from under him. of course. If he tried to, the outcry that would go up from campers and picnickers and fishermen and hunters and hikers and general conservationists, or people who arc just fond of the out of doors, would quickly put other demonstrators of this demonstrating age to shame. Timber marketing is one of the im¬ portant items in the catalog of Super¬ visor Hanlon's responsibilities, and it yielded a cash return of about a million dollars last year on the public invest¬ ment in the four forests. A fourth of the amount realized from the annual tree-cropping goes to the counties in which there is national forest land, prorated according to the national for¬ est acreage. Here ii о look о? a delightful wolerwoy in Crooton Notionol Forest, south of No* Bern. Three rccrcotion oreos in Crootan attroct many visitors eoch ycor. IQ When Peter Honlon come to North Caroline ten years ago from Syrocusc, N. Y. by woy of for¬ estry duties in Pcnnsylvonio, Virgmo ond West Virginio, he ocquired quite a domoin: Four no¬ tionol forests containing 1,127,697 ocres — ond mony other things. Honlon, by the woy, wos recently named "N. C. Conserrotionist of the Ycor" and received on oword from the Wildlife Federation and Scars Roebuck Foundation. Hanlon has estimated that if ade¬ quate funds were made available to provide more work roads through the forests and to further improve the quality of the tree stands, four times as much saleable timber could be pro¬ duced. The demand from the lumber and related industries is unending. Improvement of the tree stands has been under way for some time on a necessarily limited scale. At the Forest Service's Beech Creek Seed Orchard near Murphy, pine seed arc being pro¬ duced from which will be grown trees with an increased wood yield, fewer and smaller knots, and straightcr grain. These super trees will help meet con¬ stantly increasing timber demands in years to come. There is no haphazard tree-cutting in the four forests. Experts see to it that cutting is authorized only when it will aid future growth, and will not cause erosion of slopes or the deteriora¬ tion of watersheds or adversely affect wildlife populations. The money realized from timber sales doesn’t go into the Forest Ser¬ vice’s pocket. If it did, a lot of the service’s financial problems would be solved. Instead, it goes into a Treasury Department catch-all called the "gen¬ eral fund." Incidentally, those dollars people paid last year and the year before for THE STATE. March 15. 1970