REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. 67 



use only through public ownership. The vast denuded areas in the 

 northern Lake States and in parts of the southern pineries offer 

 particularly urgent fields for the application of this policy. 



FEDERALLY OWNED LANDS SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN FORESTS. 



The extension of public forests is not wholly a matter of acquiring 

 lands now privately owned. There are some five and one-half mil- 

 lion acres of unreserved public lands in the continental United 

 States chiefly valuable for timber production or watershed protection. 

 There are 600,000 acres of similar land within military reservations 

 adapted to administration for forest production without conflict 

 with its present use by the Army. There are extensive forest hold- 

 ings in State ownership still in process of destructive lumbering or 

 distribution into private lands. The reversion of delinquent tax 

 lands, stripped of their timber, is on the increase. A national policy 

 of forestry calls for measures that will place all of these public lands 

 under permanent Federal or State management designed to con- 

 serve their capacity for timber production. 



Occasional additions to the national forests embracing public tim- 

 berlands hitherto unreserved are made by specific acts of Congress. 

 This piecemeal attack upon a problem of such general national im- 

 portance is tardy and inadequate. Other special measures have been 

 before Congress from time to time with reference to the forested 

 lands in military reservations, but thus far have failed of enactment. 



Responsibility rests upon the National Government to do its full 

 part in meeting our shortage of timber growth, particularly by plac- 

 ing lands which the Government already owns under the right form 

 of administration. This should be done in a complete and compre- 

 hensive way. The President should be authorized by law to place 

 within the national forests any unreserved public lands chiefly valu- 

 able for the production of timber or the protection of watersheds; 

 and he should be further authorized by law to place within national 

 forests any portions of military reservations chiefly valuable for the 

 production of timber, subject to the unhampered use of such areas for 

 military purposes as may be needed. 



In order to provide reasonably for the extension of the national 

 forests by purchase on areas where the public interests will be best 

 served by this form of ownership, including denuded lands whose 



