EDITORIAL 



577 



Sacrificing the Indian Forests 



PRESS dispatches of August 20 and 

 21 from Spokane, Wash., brings 

 the following word : 



Fanned by high winds in the mountains, 

 a fire with a five-mile front has been eating 

 its way through the choicest white fir and 

 tamarack forests on the Coeur d'Alene In- 

 dian reservation in Idaho for forty-eight 

 hours unchecked by a thousand men, who 

 are fighting the blaze. 



Blinding smoke from the green timber 

 clouds the north and south ends of the re- 

 gion, hiding parties of fire fighters. * * * 

 Farmers, homesteaders, and every available 

 able-bodied man in Rockford, a town of 1,500 

 inhabitants; Plummer, a town of 500, and 

 many settlements in the timber adjoining 

 Lake Coeur d'Alene are fighting for their 

 lives, homes and families. 



The total loss is estimated at $1,500,000. 

 The Biackwell Lumber Company has hold- 

 ings valued at $5,000,000 in this territory, and 

 the 400 employees in lumber camps of this 

 firm have turned from their work to battle 

 with the blaze. 



Here, it seems, we have one of the 

 fruits of "strict construction." The 

 forests on the Indian reservations are 

 under the control of the Land Office of 

 the Department of the Interior. This 

 office does not maintain trained for- 

 esters, hence it is not prepared to handle 

 forests or prevent fires. 



Realizing this, Secretaries Wilson 

 and Garfi'eld, on January 22, 1908, 

 agreed upon a plan of cooperation 

 whereby the Forest Service should ad- 

 minister the forests on the Indian reser- 

 vations, the salaries and expenses to 

 be paid by the Indian Office. 



As shown by a letter from Forester 

 Pinchot to Secretary Wilson, dated 

 July 23, 1909, the plan worked ad- 

 mirably and was saving untold millions 

 to the Government and its wards. One 

 fact out of many illustrates : At the 

 very time the Forest Service established 

 a force on the Coeur d'Alene reserva- 

 tion, a fire which "would not have got- 

 ten started had an efficient protective 

 force been patroling the reservation, 

 was burning with a front six miles 

 wide." 



Under the Forest Service manage- 

 ment fires were prevented, timber was 

 advantageously harvested and marketed. 



and the entire administration of the 

 Indian forests underwent a beneficent 

 revolution. 



When Secretary Ballinger assumed 

 charge of the Interior Office he agreed 

 that the cooperative plan with the For- 

 est Service should continue. Later, 

 however, his representative called it ofif. 

 The Indian forests are now being ad- 

 ministered by the Indian Office. 



A statement given out by the Depart- 

 ment of the Interior on July 28, states 

 that that department requested that it 

 "be enabled to avail itself * * * of for- 

 est experts to advise and aid the em- 

 ployees of the Indian Office in the care 

 or disposition of timber." Forester. 

 Pinchot in his letter to Secretary Wil- 

 son, above mentioned, states that "the 

 Service will be prepared, so far as may 

 be consistent with the performance of 

 other duties entrusted to it, to advise 

 regarding the care of forests within the 

 Indian reservations." He states, how- 

 ever, that "the absence of men in the 

 Indian Office technically qualified to 

 carry out the advice given will neces- 

 sarily deprive it of the greater part of 

 its value." And the Forest Service 

 states that the plan proposed by the In- 

 terior Office would involve little more 

 than the return to an ineffective plan 

 whereby that bureau cooperated in an 

 advisory capacity with the Indian Office 

 before the definite cooperation of Janu- 

 ary 22, 1908, was agreed upon. 



This systematic cooperation between 

 the two offices was discontinued by the 

 Department of the Interior because "in 

 contravention of law and of well settled 

 principles." 



It should be noted that the question 

 of law was considered by Secretaries 

 Wilson and Garfield before the plan 

 was adopted, and that Secretary Bal- 

 linger accepted the plan. In addition, 

 it should not be overlooked that the 

 Wilson-Garfield cooperation was not 

 unique. Cooperation substantially simi- 

 lar now exists between the Departments 

 of Interior and War on the national 

 parks, and almost identical between the 

 Forest Service and the Geological Sur- 

 vey in the examination of mining 

 claims. 



