736 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



definite program of further acquisition. Rhode Island's total 

 expenditures on her forestry work from State appropriations is equiv- 

 alent to 8.7 cents per acre of forested land; Connecticut's, 11.6 cents; 

 Massachusetts', 13.1 cents. While Rhode Island has had a commis- 

 sioner of forestry or similar officer since 1907, the position has never 

 been filled by a technically trained forester. With substantially the 

 same basic reasons for a policy of forestry as exists in Connecticut, the 

 interest in Rhode Island has been slight relatively, and progress until 

 recently exceedingly lagging. 



The commissioner of conservation in Massachusetts is ex-officio 

 State forester. He is appointed by the Governor, with the consent 

 of the council, for a 3-year period. He appoints his subordinates from 

 a civil-service register. Fire suppression is a function of town 

 wardens, who are nominated by the selectmen of each town and, if 

 satisfactory, are appointed by the State forester. The towns shoulder 

 the entire cost of forest-fire suppression. 



In Connecticut the State forester is chosen by a commission of seven 

 members, six of whom are appointed by the Governor, with the for- 

 ester of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station serving 

 ex officio. The State forester hires such assistants as the commission 

 judges necessary. He chooses his own fire wardens without reference 

 to the towns, pays all initial costs of fire suppression, and charges half 

 of it back to the counties in which the fires occurred. 



Space forbids going into any such detail regarding the dissimilar- 

 ity of forest policies outside of New England, when States in the same 

 general region and with the same general problems are compared. 

 All that need be done is to point out swiftly a few striking examples. 



For the first example, a comparison of New York, Pennsylvania, 

 and New Jersey may be made. In both New York and Pennsylvania 

 the acquisition and administration of forest lands has been the leading 

 State activity and the most outstanding part of the forest policy from 

 the time that these States began to have a forest policy and in both 

 cases that goes back into the nineteenth century. New Jersey, on 

 the other hand, has had no acquisition policy at all comparable in 

 scope or purpose until within relatively recent years. The acquisition 

 policy of New York, however, has had chiefly in view the protection 

 of the scenic, recreational, and water resources embraced in the 

 Adirondack and Catskill Mountain regions; and to safeguard fully 

 the forests of the State-owned land in these regions, New York has 

 considered it wise to write into its constitution a provision specifying 

 that no timber on the State lands within the Adirondack and Catskill 

 Parks may be sold, removed, or destroyed. Pennsylvania embarked 

 on its acquisition policy to bring back to productiveness at least a 

 part of the great area formerly covered with fine forests which had 

 become worthless through forest devastation, and aims to grow 

 commercial timber on these lands, now amounting to about 1,600,000 

 acres. New York is unique, also, among all the States in the fact that 

 she has lately adopted a policy of acquisition to take over and reforest 

 abandoned and submarginal farm lands, at a total cost of $20,000,000. 



Again, we may compare Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. 

 Maryland and Virginia have both for a long term of years maintained 

 State forestry departments headed by technical foresters, with fire 

 protection as their primary duty but with extension and general 

 informational and educational activities also included. In addition, 



