AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 



Thirtieth Annual Meeting in Washington 

 JANUARY 12 AND 13, 1911 



^^E^HE thirtieth annual meeting of the American Forestry Association con- 

 1_J vened at the New Willard Hotel in Washington on the 12th of January. 

 ^^"^ President Guild presided during the meetings which wei-e held on that 

 and the following day. 



The Secretary, Edwin A. Start, read the annual report of the Directors : 



ANNUAL REPORT OP THE DIRECTORS FOR 1910 



The work of the year just closed was without startling results, but It was a year 

 of solid accomplishment in certain much needed directions. 



The sudden development of the general conservation movement was somewhat con- 

 fusing to the people of the United States and it is not surprising that in seeking for the 

 real substance of a large ideal policy whose immediate and definite aims were not clearly 

 defined, there was a certain amount of groping for bearings. This association was for 

 a time involved In the general haziness as to ultimate objects, and the extent and 

 importance of the work that brought it into being was temporarily lost sight of. Sober 

 second thought, backed by the counsel of many of its wisest members, showed that it 

 would best serve its purpose through attention in a clearly defined way to a definite 

 object that was its own. The center and source of the conservation movement was 

 forestry. Forestry is still the most complex and widely related of all the fields of con- 

 servation. It was through the study of forestry and its relation to the country that the 

 whole problem of our national resources came to be understood. No portion of these 

 resources holds a more important place than the forests. They are inseparably linked 

 with soils and waters which depend upon them in a great measure, and as a product of 

 the soil nothing exceeds the forest in value and in necessity to human welfare. Forests, 

 like agricultural crops, belong to the renewable class of products and their maintenance 

 involves much more complicated and permanent problems than the non-renewable 

 products like minerals, oil and gas. 



This could not be better expressed than in the introduction to the report of the 

 Proceedings of the Conference of Governors in the White House in May, 1908. The 

 editor of that report says that the germ of the idea of the conference took form in an 

 address by President Roosevelt before the Society of American Foresters in 1903. He 

 then quotes Mr. Roosevelt's address as follows: 



"Your attention must be directed to the preservation of the forests, not as an end 

 in itself, but as a means of preserving the prosperity of the nation. * * * In the 

 arid region of the west agriculture depends first of all upon the available water supply. 

 In such a region forest protection alone can maintain the stream flow necessary for 

 irrigation and can prevent the great and destructive floods so ruinous to communities 

 farther down the same streams. * * * The relation between forests and the whole 

 mineral industry is an extremely intimate one. The very existence of lumbering * * * 

 depends upon the success of our work as a nation in putting practical forestry into 

 effective operation. As it is with mining and lumbering, so it is in only a less degree 

 with transportation, manufactures, and commerce in general. The relation of all these 

 industries to forestry is of the most intimate and dependent kind." 

 The editor of the report further says: 



"With continued development of the forest policy, the interdependence of woodlands 

 and waterways yearly became more evident; and it also became increasingly clear that 



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