PUBLIC ACQUISITION OR CONTROL? 

 By E. I. Terry 



If the necessary legislation could be secured I believe that the 

 Pinchot Committee plan for controlling private timberlands would 

 prove more effective than any other so far proposed and I would vote 

 for it in preference to the Forest Service plan. But I do not believe 

 that any plan for the public control of private lands on an extensive 

 scale can ever be effectively or satisfactorily carried out in this 

 country. 



I believe that the main objective of our forest policy should be of a 

 different character, namely : The public acquisition of tzvo-thirds of 

 the private timber lands of the country (exclusive of farm woodlots) 

 in a period of forty years. I do not insist that two-thirds is the exact 

 amount of timber land that should be acquired or that forty years is 

 the correct period of acquisition, but state the objective thus definitely 

 as a concrete illustration. My personal conviction is that two-thirds is 

 the minimum acreage that should be acquired in the shortest practicable 

 time. If after deliberate examination it were deemed feasible to ac- 

 quire the proposed amount in thirty years or even less, so much the 

 better. But the gradual acquiring of a definite proportion of the 

 private timber lands of the country during a pre-determined period of 

 acquisition should be the objective. 



According to the best statistics available there are in round numbers 

 235 million acres in timber holdings larger than woodlots. One hun- 

 dred and sixty million acres is slightly more than two-thirds of that 

 amount, and in my opinion might well be set as the minimum for 

 iacquisition. Added to the present 100 million acres of public forest 

 land would give a total of 260 million acres in public ownership, or 

 about one-half of the total forest area of the country. That is none 

 too large a percentage to be held in public ownership. 



The National Government should be empowered to acquire the land 

 alone, if necessary, but should co-operate with every State that should 

 express its desire and show itself prepared to co-operate in the work. 

 In all such cases, the land acquired within any State could be retained 

 by the ^tate or divided between the State and Federal Government ac- 

 cording to a pre-determined agreement. The procedure should be 

 based upon a land classification in each of the principal forest regions, 

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