652 A NATIONAL PLAN FOB AMERICAN FORESTRY 



the production of water crops or the combination of water, timber, 

 and forage crops; to bring about the productive use of forest ranges 

 for the grazing of domestic livestock where consistent with timber 

 growing and watershed requirements; to put the forest in a position 

 to meet the growing needs for recreation; to obtain full recognition 

 of its function as a home for wild life; and in general to make forest 

 lands and forests render the largest possible economic and social 

 service. 



2. The Federal obligation and hence that of the Forest Service for 

 the part of this research consisting primarily of national, interstate, 

 and regional problems regardless of land ownership, and also of 

 more local problems of the federally owned national forests. 



The Federal obligation is based upon the need for making the 

 national forests, which constitute more than one sixth of our total 

 area of forest lands, of maximum public service. It is based upon 

 the possibility of insuring profitable use for the five sixths of the 

 forest land now largely in private ownership. It is based upon the 

 need for finding more profitable use in forests for an area of submar- 

 ginal agricultural land which may aggregate as much as 80,000,000 

 acres. It is based upon the fact that many forest problems have 

 important national, interstate, and regional aspects. It is based 

 upon a growing appreciation of the size and complexity of the entire 

 forestry enterprise, upon a critical time element, and upon the need 

 for national leadership which the Federal Government alone can 

 furnish. In short, the Federal obligation has many things in com- 

 mon with that in agriculture proper which is the justification for a 

 large amount of work in the Department of Agriculture. The con- 

 centration of much of the Federal forest research in the Forest Service 

 is the direct result of the concentration in the Forest Service in large 

 part of the responsibility for the forestry activities of the National 

 Government. 



3. That, most satisfactorily to meet the need for forest research 

 and the Federal obligation for a part of it, as well as most satisfac- 

 torily to meet the needs of national-forest administration, research 

 activities in the Forest Service must be consolidated and adminis- 

 trative and research activities must be segregated; that research 

 work and personnel must be given a status equal to those of other 

 Forest Service activities; that the activities concerned "should be so 

 organized and related that each will reinforce and foster the other." 



Research of a general or extensive character was one of the earliest 

 if not the first activity of the organization which, in 1905 with the 

 transfer of the national forests from the Department of the Interior 

 to the Department of Agriculture, became the Forest Service. Dur- 

 ing the 10 years following the transfer, the great task of placing the 

 national forests under administration so completely absorbed the 

 thought and activities of the Forest Service personnel that research 

 was very largely ignored. By 1915 it had become almost wholly 

 submerged in the effort to administer the national forests. It was 

 scattered in several branches, the primary responsibility of which was 

 national-forest administration. Research in silvics, for example, was 

 in the branch of forest management; range investigations were in 

 the branch of grazing; field stations except the Forest Products 

 Laboratory and the range stations reported to administrative officers 

 in charge of national-forest districts; separate stations were main- 



