FINAL ACT OF SECOND PAN AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS. 69 



the general principles of conservation, the resolution was presented to 

 and passed by the Section. 



The Second Sectional Resolution deals with public ownership of forest 

 lands and is as follows: 



The experience of nearly all countries has shown that the private owner- 

 ship of mountainous forests, on lands unsuited to agriculture, endangers 

 the public welfare. The burdens of private ownership during the long 

 periods necessary to grow forest crops often lead to wasteful and uneconom- 

 ical utilization of the forests and failure to conserve and renew them. Aside 

 from loss of present and future timber resources, the destruction or deple- 

 tion of mountain forests vitally affects the flow of streams and other physical 

 conditions bearing directly upon the general economic welfare. There- 

 fore, as the investigation of forest conditions progresses, it is important for 

 the American countries to consider to what extent public ownership of 

 their forest resources may be necessary to utilize and conserve them 

 effectively. 



The movement for the conservation of forests in the United States is 

 practically based upon the recognition of the need of governmental owner- 

 ship and control of natural resources. This is now the established policy 

 of the United States and of nearly all European countries, particularly 

 in the matter of forest resources. The South American countries are 

 now going through the same process of disposing of their vast public 

 domains as the United States went through in the sixties and seventies. 

 The irreparable mistake of such indiscriminate disposition by the United 

 States of its public domain is evident and admitted, and the newer coun- 

 tries of America have now the opportunity to avoid this mistake by 

 retaining their public domain in public hands. The Section felt that it 

 would not have fulfilled its object if it had failed to point out this 

 cardinal principle of the movement for the conservation of natural 

 resources. 



The Third Sectional Resolution, with reference to forest education, is 

 thus worded: 



The vast extent and enormous value of the tropical forests in the coun- 

 tries of the Western Hemisphere make it imperative that a school of tropical 

 forestry for instruction in the scientific treatment and exploitation of such 

 timber lands be established, preferably in a Central or South American 

 country. 



There are large tropical forests in nearly all of the American Republics, 

 yet there is not at present a single school which devotes any atten- 

 tion to tropical forestry. Neither the reconnoissance of the tropical 

 forests nor the establishment of efficient methods of wood utilization 

 can be accomplished without a corps of foresters, trained in dealing with 



