10 



MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS. 



THE STATE'S PROBLEM 



WITH TAX LANDS 



(By Charles W. Blair, of Grand Rapids, be- 

 fore Michigan Forestry Association meeting 

 at Battle Creek.) 



The questions that are vital today in Michi- 

 gan in connection with the State's holdings of 

 Forfeited Tax Land and with Forestry and , 

 State Forest Reserves fall for classification 

 under three general heads. 



1. The location and establishment of State 

 Forest Reserves by utilizing therefor the 

 State's holdings of forfeited tax land; and the 

 disposition of the balance of the forfeited tax 

 land by sale or otherwise. 



2. The State's attitude regarding the For- 

 est, or Brush-land, Fire Question. 



3. Administrative reforms to promote 

 economy and efficiency in the handling of State 

 Forest Reserves and the Fire Question. 



At this time I shall consider only problems 

 which fall under the first head. 



In this State and in the country at large, it! 

 may safely be stated that public opinion has 

 arrived at the settled conviction that public 

 welfare requires a beginning to be made at 

 once in the work of providing forest resources 

 for the future; and the conviction is about as 

 well fixed in the public mind that 't will r<- j 

 quire action by the state to provide such for- 

 est resources as will be sufficient for future ; 

 needs, and therefore that it is incumbent upon | 

 the state, without longer delay, to set apart j 

 State Forest Reserves. This 'does ifot neces- 

 sarily, nor in my opinion probably, mean that 

 the State of Michigan should now embark 

 upon large ventures of artificial planting; it 

 means rather that, adopting measures adequate 

 for due protection against forest fires, trespass 

 and the waste and destruction of young forest 

 growth, and relying chiefly upon natural re- 

 generation, rather than upon artificial planting, 

 we should look to reforestation by nature of 

 the cut over lands of the north, and should 

 make use of the State's holdings of such lands 

 for State Reserves, and by our laws and pub- 

 lic action should encourage individuals to make 

 like use of their cut over lands. In this way, 

 we may expect to provide forest areas of suffi- 

 cient extent to meet the needs of the future 

 for lumber and forest products and to bring 

 those incidental benefits to streams and stream 

 flow, and to agriculture and climatic condi- 

 tions, that are known to result from a wise 

 balance between forest land and areas from 

 which the forest cover is excluded by cultiva- 

 tion or other use. 



State Forest Reserves. 



Accepting the view that the State should 

 now establish State Forest Reserves as defin- 

 itely adopted by public opinion, certain facts 

 and conclusions may safely be accepted as 

 naturally and inevitably following. These are 

 as follows: 



1. Plain business principles dictate that for 

 the establishment of State Reserves, the State 

 shall make use of such land as it now has 

 rather than purchase other land for the pur- 

 poses. Pennsylvania has purchased over 800,- 

 000 acres for forest reserves, New York over 

 1,000,000. and several other states have made 

 similar puchases; but in all these cases the 

 land was purchased because the state did not 

 have any land of its own which it could use as 

 Forest Reserves. Hence such Forest Reserves 

 as the State shall establish must be erected out 

 of the Tax Homestead Land and the State 

 Tax Land; for that is the only land the state 

 owns which is legally available, or sufficient in 

 quantity. 



There are at least four prominent reasons 

 why it is well to make the radical change in 

 our present land system which is called for 

 by the use of the forfeited tax land for State 

 Forest Reserves. These are as follows: 



(a) The need of the State for forest re- 

 sources is conceded by all. That need is vital 

 t-i the welfare of the future. We have land 



for the forests necessary to supply the need 

 in question. Is it wise, doing nothing to sat- 

 isfy the need, to sell a great natural resource 

 so as to raise a little money? Is it wiser for 

 the State to raise money by the sale of its 

 natural resources or by taxation? 



(b) Our land system leads to rapid deterio- 

 ration in the direction of desert conditions 

 throughout the vast area of the cut over land. 

 The capacity to reforest naturally is being an- 

 nihilated rapidl}'. Shall we allow this great 

 natural resource to be dissipated, and bring 

 the State to the condition in which forest 

 raising will be impossible only by incurring 

 the great additional money cost of planting 

 artificially? 



(c) The continuance of present conditions 

 involves a continuance of the fire evil. Exist- 

 ing conditions in the cut over land country 

 foster that state of mind which is probably 

 the chief obstacle to maintenance of any sys- 

 tem that can successfully suppress and con- 

 trol forest fires, viz.: total disregard for young 

 forest growth that has not reached merchant- 

 able size, by keeping the vast areas of cut over 

 land from 'reforesting naturally; by treating 

 this land as a thing only for exploitation by 

 speculators, hungry for the little profit there 

 is in the seed trees and eager to tempt men 

 to settle on the culls and dregs that have, by 

 the operation of the tax law for a generation, 

 been sifted out as the land in the locality 

 which is least worth the taxes levied upon it, 

 in all these ways the difficulty of the fire 

 problem are indefinitely increased and the re- 

 sult of the present land system is the contin- 

 uance of the derelict and dangerous condition 

 of these cut over lands and the fostering of a 

 public opinion which makes fire protection for 

 them impossible. 



Michigan Realizes Mere Pittance. 



(d) The State is getting a mere pittance 

 for these lands; an average of 80c per acre, 

 including those homesteaded, and about $1.08 

 for those sold. The Commission of Inquiry's 

 report confirms what is common knowledge in 

 the north, that the timber values of the lands 

 bought by the coterie of speculators who pur- 

 chase the greater part of all the land sold 

 through the Land Office is absurdly out of 

 proportion to the paltry price realized by the 

 State. 



Much more has been said in the newspapers 

 about this point than about the others; but 

 in reality it is the least important of the four, 

 for it is but a question of the moment only, 

 and not terribly serious to the State in its 

 present consequences, whether a few dollars 

 are lost by bad bargains. This is insignificant 

 as compared with the fruits of the folly of 

 parting with the only land the State owns, 

 which can be used for State Reserves; it is 

 of little consequence as compared with the 

 grave result of destroying the natural capacity 

 of the cut over land to reforest without artifi- 

 cial aid; it is not worthy of note when com- 

 pared with the evils that will follow from per- 

 petuating conditions that tend to promote the 

 fire evil and that make it practically impossi- 

 ble to successfully cope with it. If sensation 

 is the object, it may be well enough to give 

 prominence only to this point, but if it is 

 sought to present in true light to the public 

 the important questions which confront the 

 State regarding forestry and its tax lands, this 

 point should be dealt with as a mere incident 

 and as the least important of the reasons that 

 should induce the State to take action at once 

 to convert its tax lands into State Forest Re- 

 serves. 



2. The map shows also that the State's 

 holdings of forfeited tax land consist in part of 

 isolated parcels and in part of compact, or 

 comparatively compact, bodies. It is only here 

 and there, however, that these holdings are 

 compact- Probably not over a third or a half 

 of the State's holdings in the Lower Penin- 

 sula and an even less proportion of its Upper 

 Peninsula holdings will be found to be in 

 so compact as to make them available 



for State Forest Reserves. These spots, scat- 

 tered more or less, situated here and there, 

 embrace all of the land that is within the scope 

 of our present consideration, because there is 

 nothing else which the State can use as State 

 Reserves. 



State Reserves should be such as can be effi- 

 ciently and economically administered. Each 

 must, therefore, be of very considerable mag- 

 nitude. It would be impossible to protect and 

 administer economically small parcels of land 

 situated each at a distance from the others, 

 here, there and everywhere in the State. 

 Hence, the land that is available for State For- 

 est Reserves is such only as is owned in large 

 bodies composed of contiguous, or nearly con- 

 tiguous, parcels; in other words, compact 

 holdings. 



Reserves Must Be Adequate. 



I!. A thing that is worth doing at all is 

 worth doing adequately. The aim should be, 

 therefore, to secure forests of sufficient extent 

 to adequately provide for our certain needs. A 

 provision for State reserves is, therefore, with- 

 in reasonable limits which aims to secure an 

 area of forest land sufficient in extent to as- 

 sure a reasonably ample provision of lumber 

 for the certain future needs of the State and 

 its people, and to secure at the same time the 

 incidental benefits to be expected from the 

 preservation of such a balance between forest 

 and tilled fields, as will insure, in sub- 

 stantial measure, the beneficial action on 

 stream flow, on agricultural pursuits, and on 

 climatic conditions, which is known to result 

 from adequate forest areas. 



But it is shown by the State map on which 

 the forfeited tax lands are indicated that the 

 entire State holdings of Tax Homestead Land 

 and State Tax Land are not of sufficient area, 

 even if they were available for use as State 

 Reserves, to make provision for an ample, or 

 even for an adequate, future supply of lumber 

 and other forest products; nor to insure in 

 anything like full measure the incidental bene- 

 fits resulting from a proper balance between 

 forest areas and those which are used in such 

 way as to exclude the forest cover. Hence, 

 the State may, and should, make use of all of 

 its forfeited tax land that is available for Re- 

 serves. 



4. The necessity of preserving contiguity 

 of holdings compactness requires that in 

 each reserve district all of the land owned by 

 the State in the district should be brought 

 into the reserve. This eliminates the neces- 

 sity of any inquiry as to soil characteristics. 



The Poorer Lands Should Be Used. 

 It is a sound principle that, so far as practi- 

 cable, the forests of a country should be 

 grown upon its poorer lands, leaving the bet- 

 ter lands for tillage and occupation. The lim- 

 itation, "so far as practicable," is a vital one, 

 absolutely essential for the soundness of the 

 principle. In this State that limitation in ar- 

 gument has been habitually overlooked by 

 those who assume that the cut over lands, or 

 at least a large portion of them, are not poor 

 or unworthy of tillage- If you insist on the 

 principle of confining forests to the poorer 

 lands without observing the limitation "so far 

 as practicable," you can reach but one conclu- 

 sion if you accept the theory of these people, 

 viz.: that there should be no forest land, no 

 State Reserves. In this State under present 

 conditions, it is not practicable to enforce the 

 general principle referred to in the matter of 

 locating and selecting reserves, because the 

 State has no option. There is only certain 

 land owned by the State and not enough of 

 that so located that it can be made use_of for 

 Reserves; and if Reserves are to be formed 

 in such way as will make it possible to eco- 

 nomically protect and administer them, they 

 must be compact, and hence all of the land 

 must be taken which the State owns in the 

 place where a Reserve is located. That leaves 

 no room for an inquiry whether the land is 

 good agricultural land, or whether some parts 

 or parcels of it are desirable for tillage. To 



