870 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



has value for grazing, for game ranges, for minerals, for prospective 

 agricultural colonization, for recreation, or for rights of way. These 

 values create a different attitude on the part of the owner from that 

 toward land that has no prospective value other than for forest 

 production. 



In addition to the cut-over land which has been stripped of its 

 commercial timber, some detached areas of uncut virgin timber or 

 second-growth timber are considered by their owners as a liability 

 which they would be glad to drop. Such lands were bought or taken 

 under the public-land laws in the heyday of timberland speculation 

 without due estimate of the cost of carrying them until they could be 

 profitably exploited. Often they are inaccessibly located or carry 

 an inferior quality of timber. Now their owners are land poor. 

 Seeing no prospect of liquidating at a profit, they choose to abandon 

 such lands, through the process of tax delinquency. 



As a result of these conditions there are many millions of acres of 

 private forest land in the United States to which the owners are no 

 longer asserting title. Taxes have been allowed to go delinquent to 

 the point of foreclosure and the lands have either come back definitely 

 into the hands of the public or have such a fugitive form of proprietor- 

 ship as to defeat any hope of timber growing. For example, in the 

 three Lake States there is in the neighborhood of 10 million acres of 

 such land; in the three Northwestern States of Idaho, Washington, 

 and Oregon, upwards of 3 million acres; and for the eight Southern 

 States the estimate is nearly 10 million acres; other regions add more 

 millions of acres to this category. 



The stability of private ownership is not uniform the country over. 

 It differs in the several forest regions according to the condition in 

 which the land is left after logging, the productive capacity of the land, 

 its accessibility, the possibility of an early yield, the prevailing taxes, 

 other carrying charges, and the local attitude of the owners. 



This section Is concerned with forest land, whether timbered or cut 

 over, used primarily for forest purposes. There is in addition a great 

 acreage of submarginal agricultural land in the forest regions on 

 which agriculture has been attempted and failed; millions of acres 

 have been abandoned in the last decade and much of it is reverting 

 gradually to forest growth. This type of land is discussed in the 

 section of this report, " The Agricultural Land Available for Forestry ". 



EVIDENCES OF THE BREAKDOWN OF PRIVATE OWNER- 

 SHIP 



Evidences of the disintegration of private ownership of forest land, 

 particularly of cut-over land, are very apparent in a number of the 

 forest regions. The situation is not new. The abandonment of 

 forest land by its owners has been going on for years. During the 

 present economic depression the burden of carrying land has been 

 very much aggravated, with the result that tax delinquency has 

 greatly increased since 1929. 



The breakdown of private forest land ownership is evident in 

 various ways : 



Tax delinquency. For the purpose of this report land is considered 

 delinquent when taxes are not paid when due. There is an enormous 

 amount of tax delinquency the country over at the present time on 

 all classes of property. It is rather important to distinguish between 



