FORKSTRY AND GAME CONSERVATION 405 



First, there is the real and mutual handicap of dual authority over 

 National Forest game. The Federal Government owns the land and 

 has the men on the ground, but the State owns the game and makes the 

 laws. This has resulted in the plan of dual administration under co- 

 operative agreements. It has grown to be almost a habit to consider 

 these agreements fundamentally defective, and in the same breath to 

 assume the absence of any remedy except the complete recession of 

 the one party or the other, in either event raising the dread specter of 

 ''States rights." This assumption of three ultimate alternatives, all 

 hopeless, has naturally blasted initiative. But the writer believes the 

 assumption to be incorrect. In the course of a series of future articles, 

 it is hoped to present a new method of co-operative administration, 

 supplemented by some very simple Federal legislation, which will afford 

 a permanently workable plan. 



Second, foresters have lacked the stimulus of a strong local demand 

 for better game administration, or, stated negatively, they have to some 

 extent encountered local opposition to any administration at all. They 

 have waited ten years for this demand to grow of its own accord before 

 realizing that it is quite possible to deliberately go out and create it. 

 In New Mexico this has been done, as indeed it was done long ago in 

 connection with grazing administration, where the "will to do" was not 

 lacking. 



Third, foresters have labored under the vague fear that a real crop 

 of game might interfere with both grazing and silviculture, as if graz- 

 ing and silviculture might not also interfere with each other! The 

 principle of "highest use" has evidently been more talked about than 

 understood. 



These, then, are the three reasons for the lack of an aggressive game 

 policy on the National Forests. Assuming that they have so far made 

 effective action impossible, they have certainly not made constructive 

 thought impossible. Yet the lack of constructive thought seems, to the 

 writer, to have been the greatest single obstacle to progress in this field. 

 It is significant to recall that such really constructive ideas as that of a 

 correlated system of National Forest Game Refuges were conceived by 

 outside parties. It is the purpose of this paper to urge on foresters 

 their special responsibilit\- and special fitness for supplying constructive 

 thought, and later an actual solution of the game jiroblem on the 

 Forests. 



Foresters must consider tlu-mselves especially responsible for hand- 

 ling the game i^roblem because: (i) Their work gives them the opi)or- 

 tunity to be better acquainted with game conditions than any other 



