FORESTRY IN VERMONT 



49 



rector Mather voices the needs of the new department 

 in the words, "We must develop a fine body of trained 

 and public-spirited young men to carry on the park work 

 to its great destiny." 



The Park Service needs, and must get, men of the same 

 general character, single-minded devotion to public work, 

 and high efficiency as has always characterized the Forest 

 Service. But the Park Service and the Forest Service should 

 remain separate just as the National Parks must always 

 remain distinct from the National Forests. 



National Parks are created for one definite purpose, 

 to preserve untouched the beauties of natural scenery, 

 with its forests, waterfalls, and wild life. In National 

 Forests the same care is shown to protect small areas 

 whose value for scenic purposes outweighs that of the 

 lumber that may be cut from the trees. But on the 160,- 

 000,000 acres of National Forests, the immense timber, 

 grazing and power resources are not to be locked up to 

 serve the single purpose of scenery. A proper balance 

 of uses for the best good of all is attained. 



On the parks this policy cannot and should not be adopted. 

 Parks are areas of such transcendent interest, such strik- 

 ing beauty, that the desecrating touch of commercialism 

 must not be permitted to defile by unsightly logging, by 

 sheep or cattle grazing, or by power houses and trans- 

 mission lines the picture of the primitive wilderness. Let 

 the American public beware of insidious attempts to under- 

 mine this policy, and by introducing grazing, logging and 

 power development, to so cheapen and destroy the unique 

 character of our parks that they will no longer differ from 

 National Forests, and the necessity for distinctive manage- 

 ment will disappear altogether. 



There is real danger of this degradation of the park 

 standard. Most unfortunately, the new park law al- 



ready sanctions commercial grazing in the parks, and 

 permits of timber cutting under the gtuse of protection 

 from insect ravages. If the public desires to protect the 

 National Parks and preserve them as nature planned 

 them, two things must be demanded — the absolute pro- 

 hibition of all commercial uses, and the establishment of 

 a non-political and efficient park management equal to 

 that of the Forest Service and as free from pressure on 

 the part of place hunters and politicians. 



The specific danger to the whole movement lies in the 

 temptation to create large numbers of new parks, which 

 have but little of distinctive merit to justify the sacrifice of 

 the commercial resources which lie within them — and then, 

 in order to satisfy the local public to permit these resources 

 to be used on a system practically identical with and du- 

 plicating that already established by the Forest Service. 

 Let us hold our ideals so clearly that we shall compel their 

 adoption. National Parks shall not be cmnmercialized. 

 If scenic features are not sufficiently valuable to the 

 local public to justify the sacrifice of timber grass and 

 waterpower development, they shall remain as National 

 Forests. If the sacrifice is offset by the greater value of 

 the public good, then let the park be declared. 



Practically every acre of land suitable for new National 

 Parks is already included in some National Forest. New 

 parks do not mean new areas reserved, but merely a new 

 jurisdiction and policy to supplant an already established 

 management. 



Let us not mix commercial developments with park 

 vises. In this way only can we preserve our National 

 Parks, and maintain the present natural distinction be- 

 tween both policy and administration of National Parks 

 and National Forests. 



FORESTRY IN VERMONT 



By Roderic M. Olzendam, Secretary of the Forestry Association of Vermont 



VERMONT, like so many of her sister states, has 

 suffered in the past and will suffer severely in the 

 future because she has allowed the heavily timbered 

 slopes of her mountains to be stripped and slaughtered, 

 burned and slashed, while the people sat complacently by, 

 never giving even so much as a passing thought to the needs 

 of the generations of Vermonters yet unborn. The ex- 

 treme seriousness of this situation becomes readily apparent 

 when one considers fully the fact that the total area of 

 forest and waste land in the State of Vermont is 3,719,000 

 acres, or 64% of the total area of the commonwealth. 



Realizing that some active aggressive and powerful 

 force must be brought to bear in interesting the people of 

 Vermont in forest conser\'ation, a small group of influential 

 men organized the Forestry Association of Vermont in 1904, 

 having as its object the preservation and proper handling of 

 this large forest area for the benefit of all the people of the 

 State and their descendants. Filled with a sincere and 

 genuinely unselfish desire to promote the welfare of their 

 commonwealth, these men met frequently and gave un- 

 sparingly of their valuable time and ability to the cause of 



conservation. It is to these men that the State looks with 

 thankfulness and pride for the progress of forestry in Ver- 

 mont. The results which have followed their singular fore- 

 thought are gratifying. 



For four years prior to 1908 there had been a Forest 

 Commissioner, not a technically trained man, but in 1908 

 by act of the legislature the State Forestry Department 

 was established. There were several reasons which 

 convinced the legislature that this action was necessary. 

 One of the foremost reasons was the serious forest-fire 

 situation in 1908 when a great many fires seared and black- 

 ened the mountain sides of Vermont and other States. 

 That the action was justifiable from the standpoint of the 

 forest-fire problem alone is evident when one considers that 

 the expense to the State for fighting fires in the seven years 

 1909-1916, inclusive, has been less than for the one year 

 1908, even though there have been several seasons just as 

 dry and just as dangerous. This result is attributable to 

 the facts that the Forestry Department has become thor- 

 oughly organized under a technically trained State For- 

 ester and his assistants, one of whom is the State Fire 



