296 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



source of income, but as long as they are protected they will be of great 

 benefit to the regions in which they "^ lie. (2) Areas covered with juniper, 

 pinon and scrub oak which do not carry four thousand feet to the acre but 

 do maintain a valuable supply of mine timber and wood for domestic use. It 

 would be a serious injury to the country in which these are found to have 

 them cut over and yet they have no considerable commercial value and the 

 government is doing a service to the localities in maintaining and protecting 

 them. (3) There are further extensive areas of half-grown and scattering 

 growth, useful, yielding some return and having a protective and an increasing 

 commercial value. These, of course, would have the protection of the govern- 

 ment removed by the adoption of a provision like the Heyburn amendment. 



Then there are burns found in patches thi-ough all the forests. Some of them 

 are open grass lands. In many one hundred and sixty acre tracts these 

 would be sufficient to lower the average timber stand per acre so as to throw 

 out the whole tract, even though much of it might contain good commercial 

 timber. These open tracts which have carried forests are potential forest 

 lands but they are not bearing their four thousand feet of timber and the 

 amendment would throw them out. 



All lands undergoing or awaiting reforestation, natural or artificial, 

 would be eliminated, although one of the most important elements of the 

 forests. Likewise lands from which timber sales have been made, since the 

 stand is usually cut down below four thousand feet, would be lost to the 

 forests. 



To remove all these classes of land would reduce the area of the national 

 forests by millions of acres, but this is not the worst result of such a drastic 

 course. Tracts in the classes we have described, together with bare mountain 

 tops and other intervals in the forest growth, would make the national forests 

 things of shreds and patches, impossible of administration. Consider for 

 example the important problem of grazing control which is now being so well 

 worked out. This could no longer be maintained if the national forests were 

 disintegrated. Conditions would be produced which existed in some degree 

 when the forests were first forming. It has been the study of the Service to 

 consolidate and perfect the forests as administrative units. The results of 

 this constructive work would be lost permanently if such a plan as that of the 

 senior senator from Idaho should carry. 



To describe its consequences shows the absurdity of such legislation and we 

 do not believe there is much danger of such action being taken; but it is the 

 kind of insidious attack which requires publicity to insure its defeat, and 

 there is always a chance that some proposal of the kind will be advanced when 

 legislation is being rushed through and there is little time to expose it. This 

 warning seems all the more necessary since there has already been intro- 

 duced into the present Congress a House joint resolution providing: 



That the President be, and he hereby is, authorized and directed to eliminate all 

 nontimbered agricultural lands from the forest reserves, from reclamation projects 

 where there is no immediate prospect of such lands being used for reclamation purposes, 

 and from withdrawals for power sites where such withdrawals are excessive, and to 

 restore such lands so eliminated to entry under the homestead laws. 



The author of this resolution which aims in less explicit terms at the same 

 end as Senator Heyburn's amendment, is Mr. Lafferty, a new representative 

 from Oregon, who came in under the progressive banner, which proves that 

 forest conservation cannot depend upon the progressives for loyal and intelli- 

 gent support. Representative Lafferty is also the author of a bill for turning 

 over to the states in trust the national forest lands. This measure we shall 

 consider at a later time, but the resolution above cited is too near the color of 

 the Heyburn amendment to be passed over in this connection. 



