A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 831 



quantity is subject to great fluctuation unless there is careful and 

 skillful control of the various factors on which depend the abundance 

 of any particular species of wild life within a particular area. Wild- 

 life administration is the exercise of this control. 



Sufficient food, suitable cover, freedom from molestation or dis- 

 turbance, especially in the breeding season, and a check on losses 

 beyond the number that will be replaced by the natural increase are 

 the principal requirements for maintaining valuable wild life in rea- 

 sonable abundance. Good game management calls for seeing to it 

 that any given area is neither understocked nor overstocked. If 

 understocked, full use of the potentialities of the area is not made. 

 If overstocked, the wild-life population suffers in the same ways as 

 does an overcrowded human population. Starvation and disease 

 may then make terrible inroads upon the number, cutting it back to a 

 point far below the normal for the area. To permit the conditions 

 which produce overstocking is inhumane. Wise game administration 

 aims at main taming the right balance ; and this necessitates some means 

 of disposing of the surplus production as the optimum conditions are 

 reached. 



State forests have proved of great value as a means of keeping up 

 the supply of game, fish, and fur-bearing animals. The maintenance 

 of the native wild-life resource has been in some States one of the 

 important objectives of the State forest policy. In furtherance of this 

 purpose, many States have made portions of their forests game refuges, 

 and some forest lands have been and are being acquired primarily 

 or solely as game refuges or public hunting grounds. Several States 

 use for this purpose receipts from game and fish licenses. 



In short, State administration of forest lands includes the adminis- 

 tration of an undetermined but by no means negligible acreage as an 

 adjunct to game management. The desire of sportsmen for public 

 hunting grounds and game refuges will probably lead to more extensive 

 acquisitions by the States of lands with these ends in view. Where 

 the lands are suited to use for other forest purposes consistently with 

 the primary object of increasing the game supply or the area open to 

 the public for hunting, presumably their dual use will be provided for. 

 In any event, forest lands acquired or set aside for game production 

 deserve to be rated along with State forests and State parks, as lands 

 held under the same broad policy of permanent State ownership and 

 administration for the service of public needs. 



THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN STATE FORESTS AND STATE PARKS 



Federal policy and administrative organization establish a clear 

 line of demarcation between national forests and national parks. 

 The establishment of this distinction, however, has been a gradual 

 process. Many people still do not recognize it. The essence of the 

 Federal distinction is that national-forest administration aims at a 

 coordinated use of the various resources, material and immaterial, 

 which each area affords. The public values involved are appraised 

 and weighed one against another, to the end that through carefully 

 planned adjustments of one form of use to other forms the greatest 

 net total of public benefits may be realized. In application, this 

 principle may mean that limited areas are devoted to a single exclu- 

 sive use, because that use is the most important and in the particular 



