836 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Some of the tax-reverted lands have been reserved and placed under 

 administration as State parks and State game refuges; but the aggre- 

 gate required for these purposes does not materially alter the situa- 

 tion. In the 1929-30 biennial report of the Michigan Department of 

 Conservation, the State forester, after pointing out that the total 

 area in forests, parks, and game refuges comprised only 39 percent of 

 the entire amount of land held by the State, went on to say: 



Compared to the millions of acres of similar lands within our borders on which 

 the crop must be timber or nothing, it is but an insignificant part. Obviously 

 it is so nearly a negligible quantity with respect to the whole that unless enor- 

 mously expanded it can have no appreciable effect toward the solution of the 

 situation in general. This condition is neither local nor confined to present 

 State lands, but involves a vastly greater acreage, more or less State-wide. It is 

 variously estimated that there are between 10 million and 20 million acres of 

 just such land as has reverted to the State that are ill-adapted for anything but 

 tree growth. A conservative figure would be 15 million acres. Whatever the 

 area, it is of such magnitude that it constitutes the most important task in con- 

 servation confronting Michigan today. It is a big problem which must be met 

 in a big way sooner or later, and the sooner the better. Michigan must think 

 of State forests in terms of millions of acres instead of thousands. 



This enormous twilight zone of artificially created near-desert, 

 which will not stay in private ownership, which the people of the 

 State have through their legislature authorized their administrative 

 officers to take charge of and place in State forests and similar reser- 

 vations, but which can be restored to productiveness only through 

 very considerable expenditures that must extend over many years 

 before substantial money returns can be looked for, creates the out- 

 standing problem of forestry and land utilization in the Lake States. 

 Only to a minor degree does the Federal policy of acquisition for the 

 building up of national forest lighten the prospective burden on the 

 States. In view of the complexity as well as the magnitude of the 

 unsolved problem of what the States should, can, and will do with 

 their new public domain as it enlarges, definite assumptions regarding 

 the extent to which the lands now tax-reverted are on the way to 

 being placed under administration would be premature. 



In Wisconsin the problem presented by tax-reverting lands is given 

 a somewhat different form by the fact that title passes to the counties. 

 In consequence the State has adopted a policy of financial aid to 

 encourage county forests. Wisconsin's county forest system is dis- 

 cussed in the section of this report entitled "Community Forests." 

 The point to be noted here is that the development of county forests 

 is in Wisconsin a part of the program adopted by the State for placing 

 in public forests lands abandoned by private owners as not worth 

 paying taxes on. Wisconsin has in State forests 111,100 acres, with 

 320,000 acres more in process of acquisition, and in county forests 

 460,521 acres. The two must be considered together if the effort 

 that the State is making to meet its forest land situation is to be 

 fairly judged. 



Of the area in county forests 292,981 acres, or 64 percent, is not 

 under actual management. In addition, the counties are said to 

 own 1,440,000 acres of forest land which has not been placed in 

 county forests. The law authorizing them is still new. Since for 

 every acre included in a county forest the county draws from the 

 State treasury 10 cents annually and the township 10 cents more, a 

 strong incentive to give the lands the designation is set up. But 



