A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 829 



Table 8 shows that the State forest lands which have been set aside 

 for forest and park purposes and placed under some degree of organized 

 administration for these purposes aggregate 7,078,058 acres, out of a 

 total of 13,218,164 acres of forest lands owned by the States. The 

 latter total is equal to 2.66 percent of the entire commercial forest 

 area of the States. It must be said, however, that the amount of land 

 actually in State ownership is in many cases undetermined, and in 

 some States highly conjectural. State lands comprise in the main 

 granted lands, tax-reverted lands, and lands acquired through gift, 

 exchange, or purchase. Granted lands are seldom specifically located 

 by the law upon its enactment. The States must usually obtain them 

 through selection to satisfy quantity or indemnity grants, or through 

 identification when the public lands survey reaches them (as in the 

 case of school lands), or through establishment of their character, as 

 in the case of swamp lands. States which still hold title or unsatisfied 

 claims to substantial amounts of granted public lands are very likely 

 not to know just how much forest land they have or will have. Still 

 more is this true for tax-reverted lands. The law and procedure 

 relating to redemption and resale of delinquent tax lands, to the 

 forfeiture of title, and to the taking over of title by the State or county 

 vary greatly. Except in the relatively few States which have definitely 

 embarked upon a policy designed to discover, segregate, and place 

 under permanent public administration in suitable units tax-reverting 

 lands chiefly valuable for forest purposes, both the extent and the 

 status of these lands are frequently indeterminate. They form a 

 twilight zone between State or county ownership and private owner- 

 ship, of very large aggregate proportions. With the pronounced 

 present trend toward further abandonment of cut-over lands by 

 private owners, this zone is broadening. 



The subject of the breakdown of private ownership is dealt with in 

 a separate section of this report. No attempt is there made to indicate 

 the acreage of tax-forfeited land in all the States, nor to estimate its 

 total amount. The whole field is one of uncertainties. In only a 

 relatively few of the States in which tax forfeiture is extensive is 

 precise knowledge of the situation available. In 29 States title reverts 

 to the counties or towns, with no central source of information on tax 

 delinquency. Not all of the remaining States know accurately the 

 acreage of lands which have reached the stage of title forfeiture, and 

 the provisions and administration of the State laws relating to for- 

 feiture are often so lenient that a clear title is not obtained by the 

 State for a long period, if at all. 



In fact, recognition of the necessity for any other course than a 

 temporary taking over of title as a means of passing the land back 

 into private ownership has in most States not begun. The whole 

 procedure is nearly everywhere based on the assumption that either 

 through redemption by the former owner or through sale to a new 

 owner the land can be got back on the tax rolls, and that of course it 

 should be got back as the only way to provide for its productive use. 

 The result of all this is that land abandonment through nonpayment 

 of taxes has built up and is in process of further building up an aggre- 

 gate of many millions of acres of "no man's land." The former owner 

 has quit, and all efforts to keep the land in permanent private owner- 

 ship will probably be unavailing, yet the State either has not taken 

 over the title or, if it has, has done so only as a supposed means of 



