A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 833 



obtained by the State through an exchange of its school land sections 

 scattered in the national forests for a solid body of timberland 

 formerly a part of the national-forest area. The State is not selling 

 these lands, and when it sells timber from them it does so under 

 stipulations designed to assure future timber crops. The weakness is 

 that the whole system of administration has no other support than 

 the choice of the State land administrative agency. The officers 

 constituting the land board could upset the policy at any time, 

 should they think it in the best interest of the State to do so. For 

 this reason Idaho is counted in the present report as having no 

 State forests. Yet, if a guess may be hazarded, these lands, already 

 under forestry administration, will presumably continue to be so 

 administered and will sooner or later be given the status of State 

 forests established by law. 



In Washington there are nearly 1,300,000 acres of State-owned 

 forest land, of which more than 1,000,000 acres is reserved and 

 usually classed as included in State forests. But this classification 

 is decidedly open to challenge. The State has a law somewhat like 

 that of Montana, up to a certain point. While it makes no mention 

 of watershed values and sets up no specifically designated areas, it 

 provides that lands acquired or designated by the State forest board 

 as State forest lands shall be forever reserved from sale. When 

 timber is cut from them, it must be in conformity with the require- 

 ments of that board to insure natural reforestation. The State has 

 about 403,000 acres of forest land in solid blocks obtained partly 

 through an exchange similar to that in Idaho, partly through the 

 exercise of rights of selection. In addition, various officials are 

 required to report yearly to the State forest board any State or 

 private logged-off or deforested lands coming to their notice, which 

 they regard as suitable for State forest lands or reforestation; and 

 the Commissioner of Public Lands may classify and reserve logged-off 

 State lands suitable for reforestation, whereupon it becomes the 

 duty of the Director of Conservation and Development to protect 

 and reforest them. Although, as said above, the State now has 

 under reservation more than 1,000,000 acres, up to the present time 

 the State forest board has designated as State forests only 45,757 

 acres. Yet with its more than 400,000 acres of blocked-up lands 

 obtained through Federal exchange, with its still greater area of 

 other forest lands that have been reserved for reforestation, and 

 with a definite State policy so clearly formulated legislatively, 

 Washington has gone much farther than would appear from the 

 bare statement of the acreage embraced in definite units of adminis- 

 tration. Nowhere else are the drawbacks of a sharp division between 

 "State forests" and "other State-owned forest lands" so well illus- 

 strated. Whatever the scheme of classification, if it does not bring 

 into view the extensive twilight zone of lands not actually under 

 administration as State forests but more or less definitely held with 

 a view to their future use for this purpose, its results carry misleading 

 implications. 



In these three Northwestern States, each owning large acreages of 

 forest lands which occupy a kind of halfway status between organized, 

 permanent State forests and State lands awaiting a purchaser, the 

 forest holdings are made up principally of lands which have never 

 been in private ownership, but came into the possession of the States 



