THE INFLUENCE OF FORESTS ON 

 CLIMATE AND FLOODS 



IN DECEMBER, while the hearing-s 

 on the appropriations for the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture were being heM 

 by the House Committee on Agriculture, 

 Prof. Willis L. Moore, chief of the 

 Weather Bureau, made some statements 

 on the above subject to the committee, 

 and these, at the request of the com- 

 mittee were later expanded into a printed 

 report and sent out all over the country. 

 The press was also urged to give it as 

 much publicity as possible. This ac- 

 tion was so timed as to make it appear 

 like an attempt to discredit the pro- 

 posed Appalachian forest legislation, 

 and such was no doubt its intention. 

 No other motive could explain such a 

 studied effort at this time. 



As Mr. Moore is a government official 

 and other officials of coordinate bureaus, 

 better qualified to deal with this subject, 

 are estopped from discussing it by the 

 present rules of the executive depart- 

 ments, this method of campaigning is 

 somewhat one-sided and unfair. In or- 

 der that the case, which is one ot vast 

 and increasing importance to the coun- 

 try, should be fairly presented, we have 

 requested certain experts of recognized 

 authority in their special fields to dis- 

 cuss the Moore report directly. We 

 are fortunately able to present this 

 month three papers by a forester, a 

 geologist, aufl an engineer,each of whom 

 has given this subject long and care- 

 ful study. — The Editors. 



THE APPALACHIAN FORESTS AND 

 THE MOORE REPORT 



By FILIBERT ROTH, Professor of Forestry in the University of 

 Michigan 



THE friends of forestry, the advo- 

 cates of conservation, and with 

 them the people of the United States, 

 east and west, north and south alike. 

 are before Congress with a simple 

 and modest request asking for a law 

 which shall preserve the forests of the 

 Appalachians, both north (WHiite Moun- 

 tains) and south. 



The reasons for this request are pri- 

 marily : 



1. All the lands of these mountains 

 are in private hands and the forests 

 are cut by man and devastated by fires 

 as fast as the owners find it practicable 

 and profitable to do so. 



2. This devastation of our forests in 

 the eastern United States has converted 



millions of acres of forest into unsightly 

 and unused waste lands ; it has ruined 

 whole countries in the level districts of 

 the Lake region ; it has ruined entire 

 mountain ridges in Pennsylvania ; it 

 has ruined thousands of acres of the 

 very mountains under consideration and 

 is to-day extending clear up to timber 

 line in that most famous of all our 

 mountain tracts, the Presidential Range, 

 stretching its hideous hand of pillage 

 and destruction up the slopes of Mts. 

 ^ladison, Jefferson and Washington, 

 the erand old domes, dear to millions of 

 our people. 



3. Unless the government interferes, 

 this devastation will continue w'ith in- 

 creasing rapidity and it will be but 

 few years when practically all of these 

 n:ountain lands will be denuded of their 

 protective forest cover. 



4. This denudation of the mountains 

 in many places has resulted in a com- 



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