86 A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 



These and other problems of private forestry and private forest lands 

 existed before the beginning of the current depression. The depres- 

 sion has intensified them and forced them into the picture more 

 prominently than ever before. 



PROBLEMS OF PUBLIC FORESTRY 



Public forestry also has its discouraging problems. The need for 

 greatly enlarged public forests, in order to protect public values and 

 to care for lands from which private ownership is withdrawing, has 

 in but a few places been recognized and provided for as a systemati- 

 cally financed public enterprise. The costs of protecting the existing 

 public forests against fire and other damaging agents, of developing 

 these properties with roads and trails, and of improving the forest 

 stands by planting and cultural work, are higher than was at first 

 estimated. Many public appropriating bodies have been unwilling 

 or unable to finance the job. At a time when all forms of public 

 expenditures are subjected to critical reexamination and scrutiny, the 

 forestry task of the Nation, requiring not less but much greater expend- 

 iture of public money, may well appall by its sheer magnitude. A 

 natural defense against the number, size, and cost of the currently 

 suggested solutions is to question whether it is worth while to 

 rehabilitate and manage the forests of the United States. 



There are several schools of thought as to what should be done. 

 The very diversity of the proposed public measures is in itself a source 

 of confusion. The demand for a great increase in public forests is 

 apparently in conflict with the theory that forest lands should remain 

 in private ownership so that they may be taxed. In some States, 

 insistence that public ownership of forest lands must lie in the State 

 prevents Federal ownership and management, regardless of the need 

 and regardless of the progress the State is able to make. 



The need for either State or Federal ownership is questioned by 

 those who believe that the problem can be solved through appropriate 

 public assistance to private owners, or, on the other hand, through 

 public regulation of private owners. Quite readily, diversity of pro- 

 posed solutions means no actual solution. Yet it is safe to assert 

 that if one simple formula would solve the multitude of forest problems 

 they would already have been solved. 



CURRENT DIFFICULTIES ARE RESULT OF OUR FOREST HISTORY 



The difficulties of today are in part the result of the entire history 

 of public land laws and their administration, and of careless and 

 unplanned practices of forest-land use. All the growing momentum 

 of a long-continued and unplanned distribution and liquidation of 

 American forest lands has culminated under the sudden pressure of 

 economic distress, to produce the discouraging situation which the 

 forest landowner and the public are now facing. 



To attempt solution of the very real and pressing forest problems by 

 assessing an exact measure of blame on some particular agency or 

 group, or by arguing moral responsibility for improvement of the 

 situation, seems futile. It is well to recognize clearly the steps which 

 have led up to the problem that exists, so that past errors, now 

 recognized, may not be perpetuated. 



