ABSTRACT
n America, the practice of forestry on public lands has generally been guided by one or another legislative version of sustained yield. Foresters who secured the legislation and implemented it hoped that sustained yield would provide for stable, forest-dependent industries leading to stable, prosperous, even "happy" rural communities. This paper examines the historical relationship between sustained yield wood production and community stability. It presents a summary history of sustained yield, with particular emphasis on the ideas of foresters, and compares those idealized constructs with the social reality of present-day forest-dependent communities. The effect of such a forest policy on community stability is made explicit in this passage from a report by the Pinchot faction to the Society of American Foresters. Sustained yield wood production was first developed in Germany between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.
