NOTES AND COMMENTS 



With the summer season at the door, we are called upon to reflect 

 on the benefits which the policy of National Forests as recreation 

 grounds, so wisely administered by Mr. Graves, has bestowed, and will 

 bestow, upon many thousands of our citizens. The Forest Service 

 is to be congratulated on the broad attitude it has taken in this respect, 

 in seeing that not only direct material, and generally economic, in- 

 terests may be subserved by the Forests, but that, without interfering 

 with their economic usefulness they can be properly utilized for 

 esthetic and health purposes. 



The fact that this can be done and is recognized and realized by 

 the Forest Service needs to be strongly emphasized in order to check 

 rationally the movement which has been gathering momentum for 

 some time, of creating National Parks — luxury forests — which serve 

 only one purpose. 



We have no quarrel with the existing National Parks ; we can af- 

 ford the economic waste that might be involved in a park management, 

 such as we have become accustomed to in the Adirondack Park. But 

 in these days, when the conservation of natural resources has become 

 almost an obsession of the nation, it is as well to realize that the park 

 or recreation value can be secured without sacrificing the material 

 value. That this is so has been amply proved in Germany, where 

 every National Forest is also a playground — with restrictions, to be 

 sure, which are forced by the density of population. 



To those who are wedded to the park idea we recommend Mi. 

 Graves' convincing article in American Forestry for March, 1917, 

 giving some details of the development of National Forests on the 

 recreation line, w^hich shows them in some respects superior to parks. 

 Some 25,000 miles of trails and 3,000 miles of roads, which are built 

 in the first place for economic purposes and fire protection, make these 

 playgrounds accessible to the one and a half million persons (other 

 estimators make it 2,000,000), who, according to Mr. Graves' estimate, 

 in one year visited them. Nearly 700,000 visitors were estimated as 

 having used the National Forests for recreation in Colorado alone. 

 And this is only a beginning, which under the wise policy of the 

 Forest Service in developing accommodations systematically is bound 

 to multiply enormously. We need not add that fish and game preserva- 

 tion, or rather increase, forms also part of the all-round utilization 

 policy. 



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