A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 835 



public forests have set up the Lake States twilight zone of lands which 

 are being more or less definitely held with a view to this form of 

 use, but which are not as yet under actual administration nor as 

 yet sufficiently blocked up, oftentimes, to provide practicable units 

 of administration. 



The first of the three States to adopt a policy looking to the reser- 

 vation and administration for forest purposes of tax-reverted lands 

 was Michigan, with a law enacted in 1909. Some years previously 

 more than a million acres of tax-forfeited lands had been in the 

 hands of the State but had largely gone back, at least temporarily, 

 into private ownership through their purchase by speculators, who 

 had sold them off as farmlands to unwary victims. A public domain 

 commission was therefore created to segregate the lands really 

 suited to agriculture and set aside the rest for forestry purposes. 

 The reservation of not less than 200,000 acres was made mandatory 

 by the law. But locally, public sentiment was adverse to heavy 

 withdrawals from private acquisition, preferring that the land should 

 be open to homesteading in the hope of more settlers; and the com- 

 mission limited itself to reserving a total of 235,194 acres in small 

 bodies scattered through 54 counties. Gradually, however, the prin- 

 ciple of classification has come to be generally accepted in Michigan. 

 A law passed in 1929 requires that all tax-reverted lands shall be turned 

 over to the conservation commission, with a view to their consolida- 

 tion into State forests or other public reservations unless they are 

 found suitable for homesteading. 



At the present time the State has 12 established State forest units, 

 with a gross area of approximately 1,400,000 acres. Within these 

 units the State owns or has in process of acquisition 863,113 acres, 

 and its ownership has been increased through exchanges, purchases, 

 and donations as well as through tax reversion. But the prospective 

 burden which will be imposed upon the State if it carries through the 

 policy of reforesting, protecting, and otherwise caring for the great 

 areas of virtually worthless lands that are in sight is so great that it 

 is a good deal of a question how far to pursue the course marked out. 

 Tax reversion has been adding new lands to the State's holdings at 

 the rate of a quarter of a million acres a year, and this rate will prob- 

 ably be greatly accelerated in the immediate future through the effects 

 of the business depression. In 1931, the last full year for which 

 figures are at hand, 32,040 acres of land within the State forests were 

 reforested through planting, while the nonrestocking land in these 

 forests is estimated to aggregate 220,000 acres and the poorly restock- 

 ing an additional 204,000 acres. The depression has halted expendi- 

 tures for further planting and land purchases. There is doubt in 

 some quarters as to whether the results of reforestation will justify 

 the cost, at least on the lands of poorest quality; there has been con- 

 siderable hesitancy about turning over to the conservation com- 

 mission, as the law requires, lands which might be got back on the 

 tax rolls through resale; and the commission itself has been hesitant 

 to carry through the policy of placing under forestry administration 

 to the fullest extent the lands over which it has jurisdiction, lest the 

 approriations necessary for the administration of more State forests 

 may not be forthcoming. The acreage of tax-reverted lands which 

 the commission is how holding, with its disposition not as yet definitely 

 determined, is much greater than the acreage of State-owned land 

 within the established forests. 



