PRIVATE FOREST OWNERS 



By a. D. HOPKINS 



Of the Bureau of Entomology 



X BELIEVE that the American Forestry Association is capable of render- 

 ing great service to the cause of forest conservation in this country-. I 

 believe that the people of the country who are directly interested in 

 the forest resources have had enough information on the need and importance 

 of conservation. They have been sufficiently warned of the dire consequences 

 of forest destruction, inundation and erosion. Indeed, there has been too much 

 agitation and activity in the interests of certain restricted federal and State 

 forest legislation, and not enough in the interest of the private owner, who 

 is willing to be converted to the natural ideas, if he could be made to see 

 that they would contribute to the wealth of his county or his State, and, at 

 the same time, pay him. 



The private owners want the facts about the best methods to protect 

 and increase and utilize forest crops. In other words, they want to know 

 what to do and how to do it, and if it will pay. These are the people who 

 are in need of information and instruction on the essential facts and princijjles 

 of successful forest management. The officials of public forests are supposed 

 to know all of those and to be competent to select and carry out the proper 

 conservation policy for the forests in their charge. 



Therefore, they are not so much in need of the association, but think 

 that all others who are working on the scientific and practical problems of 

 forest protection or forest management, with a view of demonstrating to the 

 private owners the improved methods which would be to their advantage, 

 should have the association back of them. The products of the privately owned 

 forest are relatively as important to the people of the country as are the 

 products of the privately owned farms, and, therefore, the owner of a forest 

 deserves the same help as that so liberally extended to the owner of the farm. 

 A large part of the appropriation for forest insect work in the Bureau of 

 Entomology at present is being directed to demonstration of methods of 

 control and to practical instructions by practical men in the field for the 

 direct benefit of groups of i)rivate owners in different sections of the country. 

 By dint of very hard work we have met with some success; with the moral 

 backing of an association such as the American Forestry Association, our task 

 would be greatly simplified. 



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