A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 741 



stands). Naturally, Federal administration of so large a part of the 

 western forest land makes State policies of forest ownership and ad- 

 ministration much less urgent than they would otherwise he. The 

 principal objective of the early State forestry movements in Colorado 

 and California was to provide an agency for safeguarding the inter- 

 ests of these States in the preservation of the public domain forests; 

 and after the Federal Government entered upon the task those who 

 had led in the State movements were more than satisfied to have the 

 State interests so taken care of. At the same time, national forest 

 administration has been a positive influence for the development of 

 State forestry policies, as well as a means of meeting many of the 

 needs which in the rest of the country have placed heavy responsibili- 

 ties upon the States. 



Outside of Colorado and California, the inception of State forestry 

 activities in the West was an outgrowth ^of the need of timberland 

 owners to obtain organized protection against forest fires in regions of 

 high exposure and great investments in stumpage. First the timber- 

 land owners organized protective associations as a private activity, 

 on a voluntary membership basis; then, to make their protection more 

 effective, they sought the aid and authority of the States to extend the 

 system to intermingled and adjacent lands, State and private, which 

 needed to be covered along with the association lands. Under the 

 resulting set-up most of the cost of protecting the private timber hold- 

 ings is met by the owners, with the assistance of Federal cooperative 

 funds; and the protective organizations are built up and run mainly 

 by the associations. They work in close touch with the national 

 forest protective organizations and have taken over from the latter 

 the methods developed by the Federal Forest Service applicable to 

 their own undertaking. This general scheme of organization par- 

 ticularly characterizes the Northwestern and Pacific Coast States. 

 In certain of the other Western States, the Federal protective system 

 is directly utilized by the States under cooperative agreements with 

 the Forest Service to cover State and private lands along with national 

 forest lands, as a single undertaking. 



There is also in the West an important development of State forest 

 land administration, due largely to the example of the national forests 

 combined with the fact that a few States still have in their possession 

 large acreages of forest lands received through Federal land grants. 

 Most of the granted lands were originally scattered, but by exchanges 

 of their school lands within the national forests for solid blocks of 

 timberlands made available for their selection under exchange agree- 

 ments, Montana, Idaho, and Washington have obtained nearly 

 800,000 acres suitable for permanent administration as State forests 

 and likely to be so administered. This situation will be further ex- 

 plained and discussed later; the point to be noted here is that, in the 

 West hitherto, granted lands in the possession of the States have been 

 the chief cause of the beginning of a system of State forests. The 

 necessity for State policies to meet the problem arising from an 

 extensive breakdown of private ownership following the cutting off 

 of the original timber is only beginning to present itself definitely, 

 but is likely to bring about results in several States similar to those 

 in the Lake States at the present time. 



