656 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



A third means to this objective is provision for cooperation in 

 getting investigative results applied on privately owned lands, or 

 still broader, of furthering the practice of forestry on privately owned 

 lands. Both the regional administrative organizations and the 

 regional forest experiment stations have a very definite responsibility 

 in these fields, although that of the former units is mainly to ad- 

 minister national forests and that of the latter is for research. In 

 short, there is an overlapping of responsibilities in the relationships 

 to the private owner and to the public in general which requires 

 correlation. It is difficult to draw any clear-cut line between these 

 responsibilities, although it has been clearly recognized that the 

 major responsibility rests on the administration organization. With 

 segregation of administration and research, as worked out by the 

 Forest Service, satisfactory public contacts, including extension, 

 must depend for success upon the good sense of the local Forest 

 Service representatives directly concerned and upon a reasonable 

 amount of give and take. The competitive element in the situation 

 rightly handled has been and should continue to be stimulating and 

 wholesome rather than injurious. 



Still another means toward this objective is that both the admin- 

 istrative and research organizations contribute to major Forest 

 Service policies. To this end major policies, regional and national, 

 whether they involve administration of the national forests, relation- 

 ships with private owners, or the conduct of research, ordinarily 

 receive joint consideration. 



Endless circumstances throw the administrative and research 

 groups together in Washington and the field. Joint committees 

 select on the national forests the areas for experimental forests and 

 ranges and natural areas. The handling of experimental forests and 

 ranges after selection is in some respects a cooperative undertaking. 

 The committees which recommend programs for future research 

 review the results of past research even before they are put into 

 report form. Both research and applied forestry go forward simul- 

 taneously on many national forests. Junior foresters and junior 

 range examiners are sometimes loaned from the administrative 

 organization to research units. There is some exchange of personnel 

 between the two classes of work, with the present trend mainly from 

 administration to research, and of younger men for whom some 

 administrative experience is a splendid background for a subsequent 

 investigative career. 



A final means to the objective of having administration and research 

 foster and reinforce each other is afforded by the opportunity for 

 having the two groups join forces in the occasional large undertakings 

 that affect the whole forestry movement and that require for their 

 most effective handling the knowledge, background, and experience of 

 both groups. Congressional requests such as the Capper Senate 

 resolution of 1920 and the Copeland Senate resolution of 1932, 

 which require the broadest kind of consideration of the entire forestry 

 field and the formulation of programs to meet outstanding national 

 problems, illustrate undertakings of this character. 



MOST EFFECTIVE FIELD UNITS 



With the obligation for work on national and regional problems 

 requiring investigations in all or nearly all forest regions of a country 



