A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 443 



aiding restoration of suitable vegetative cover, and modifying highway 

 construction to obviate unnecessary acceleration of run-off. 



At the time when most of the national forests in the upper Rio 

 Grande Basin were created, about 27 years ago, overgrazing and 

 depletion of forage cover were widespread in this drainage. Destruc- 

 tive lumbering and fires were common, also. Although excessive 

 erosion is not yet checked on all the 5,364,000 acres of forest lands 

 within the national forests of the basin the vegetative stand is now 

 declining on few national-forest areas. Not only has the regulation 

 of grazing benefited the livestock industry by providing more ade- 

 quate range feed on the greater part of the national forests, but the 

 improvement in range conditions has materially reduced the rapidity 

 of run-off and soil washing. Timber is now cut under regulation 

 and fires are controlled with little loss of forest values. 



On the 2,820,000 acres of forested public domain land in the upper 

 Rio Grande Basin, the use of which is practically unregulated, cutting 

 of trees is locally excessive, fires are often allowed to burn without 

 efforts at control, and most of the range is still deteriorating. The 

 public domain is often intermingled as alternate sections with railroad 

 grant lands or with State lands or private holdings. Under such 

 conditions it hampers attempts to control range use on these lands. 

 It should be placed under public administration. 



State lands within the national-forest boundaries are ordinarily 

 managed under cooperative agreements which assure reasonably good 

 fire protection and timber-sale administration. Those outside 

 national forests are seldom so well managed. State forested lands 

 are usually leased for grazing without any provision for maintaining 

 the range resource or for protecting watershed values. 



Cut-over lands in this basin which once had stands of saw timber 

 offer little promise of profitable timber production in private owner- 

 ship at present. Timber growth is slow, timber values are not high, 

 and current returns from grazing or other uses will hardly pay taxes, 

 fire-protection costs, arid interest on the investment. However, 

 uncut saw timber now privately owned will doubtless remain in private 

 ownership until cut. In 1931 more than half the private forest land 

 bearing stands of saw timber was protected from fire through coopera- 

 tive agreements between the owners and the State or Federal Gov- 

 ernments. 



While range management adequate for satisfactory watershed pro- 

 tection prevails on some private forested lands, on far too many such 

 holdings the range is in as bad a condition as on the public domain. 

 The large values in the agricultural valleys that are endangered by 

 these erosion conditions would warrant drastic remedial action. 

 Private lands totaling about 5,000,000 acres showing excessive deter- 

 ioration of cover on steep slopes or on soils that are readily eroded 

 should be acquired by the public within the near future, and either 

 totally protected from grazing or subjected only to drastically re- 

 stricted grazing until a suitable plant cover has been restored. 



In the vicinity of the numerous Mexican and Indian settlements 

 both within and outside the national forests, where agriculture has 

 been practiced for many years, erosion and floods have in many 

 instances decreased or eliminated irrigation farming. This has 

 resulted in increasing the intensity of other land uses such as grazing 

 over a large area around each settlement. To permit the last vestige 



