CHAPTER 10 



OUR NATIONAL FORESTS 



When you help to preserve our forests or to plant new ones you are 

 acting the part of good citizens THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



THE National Forests, owned and operated by the Federal 

 Government, present the greatest single demonstration we 

 have today of what the practice of forestry can accomplish 

 when applied over large areas. Small areas of forest exist, par- 

 ticularly in the east, where more intensive examples of forestry 

 may be found than on the National Forests. The Harvard For- 

 est in Massachusetts, the Yale Forest in New Hampshire, the 

 Charles Lathrop Pack Demonstration Forests all these are 

 profoundly instructive examples of what forestry can do, to' 

 make profitable and productive small tracts of woodland. But, 

 in the creation and successful administration of those one hun- 

 dred and sixty million acres of public timber land by the 

 Forest Service of the Federal Government, we have the great- 

 est single step forward that has been made in the history of 

 American forestry. 



The withdrawal of these forests for public use not only saved 

 the timber within their boundaries from private exploitation, 

 but provided a practical demonstration of the practice of for- 

 estry and the results of forestry in every important timber 

 region in the United States. Not without a struggle were these 



in 



