644 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



permanent crop agriculture can be developed is immutably dependent 

 on complete conservation and utilization of the water resource. 

 Conservation and utilization of the water resource is limited by the 

 degree to which watershed conditions that will insure the greatest 

 flow of usable water are maintained and the extent to which engi- 

 neering works to impound and hold unseasonable water flows are 

 financed. Proper management of the public-domain watershed lands 

 is part of this problem. 



Maintenance of the vegetative cover is of prime importance in 

 stream-flow regulation. Not only does the forest or other vegetative 

 cover exert a very direct influence on the timeliness and quantity of 

 the annual flow from the watershed, but it is the only practical means 

 of controlling at the source the silting of reservoirs and irrigation 

 works in general through the processes of erosion. On comparatively 

 level agricultural lands erosion can, of course, be held in check by 

 terracing, check dams, and proper crop rotations. Such measures 

 are, however, of limited application on the immense area of watershed 

 lands in the West. On these lands the stability of the soil depends 

 almost entirely on the effectiveness of the forest or other vegetative 

 cover. 



The preceding discussion has pointed out that the forested public- 

 domain lands have not been placed under management. Obviously 

 the present condition of the lands is ill suited to the protection of 

 watershed values. Unregulated cutting of timber, lack of control of 

 forest fires, and excessive and untimely use of the forage resource 

 together contribute to the destruction of the vegetative cover and 

 correspondingly affect adversely its natural function of controlling 

 stream flow and erosion. Past use of these lands has been entirely 

 without regard for the watershed problem and has so impaired water- 

 shed values that only through years of wise, careful management can 

 this resource be rebuilt to something approaching its original useful- 

 ness. 



DISPOSAL PLAN 



President Hoover, recognizing the urgent need for a final solution 

 of the public-land problem, in 1929 appointed the Commission on the 

 Conservation and Administration of the Public Domain. At the re- 

 quest of this Commission the Forest Service prepared and on Novem- 

 ber 8, 1930, submitted detailed recommendations covering (1) por- 

 tions of the area that should be added to existing national forests or 

 included in new national-forest units, hereafter called class 1 ; (2) por- 

 tions that should be given national-forest status without intent of 

 immediate administration but for eventual use as nuclei around which 

 to build up logical administrative units, or be available for exchange 

 for private lands needed to consolidate permanent public properties, 

 hereafter called class 2; and (3) portions that should, in public in- 

 terest, be placed under some form of public control in units desig- 

 nated otherwise than as national forests, hereafter called class 3. 

 (Class 3 is included in the present report only because of the water- 

 shed-protective function of the 10,065,506 acres of timberland and 

 the large area of nonforested watershed lands which it includes.) 

 The recommendations of the Forest Service regarding disposal of the 

 public domain were stated in that report as follows: 



