A NATIONAL PLAN FOE AMERICAN FORESTRY 



873 



Rather it becomes necessary to picture the tax delinquency situa- 

 tion for a few important forest regions that have been studied inten- 

 sively. These examples of tax reversion and delinquency speak 

 eloquently of the very real breakdown of private ownership in these 

 several regions. 



THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST 



OREGON 



In Oregon lands may be foreclosed by the county when three 

 years delinquent if there is no tax certificate purchaser, and there- 

 after they become the property of the county, either to be sold or 

 held. An act of the 1931 State Legislature makes it possible for 

 forest lands to be deeded by the counties to the State for State forests. 



Table 1 illustrates foreclosure and delinquency conditions in five 

 counties that have recently been studied intensively. They are all in 

 rather rough topography in the heart of the heavily timbered Douglas 

 fir type of the northwestern part of the State, and have been and are 

 now the seat of active logging operations characterized by absolute 

 clean cutting and subsequent broadcast slash burning. A very little 

 of the cut-over land is salable to settlers, and most of it is considered 

 to have no prospective value for agriculture or any purpose other than 

 timber production. In these five counties, out of 2,228,445 acres in 

 the forest zone, 181,928 have already been foreclosed for taxes and 

 are held by the counties. Nearly 200 thousand acres more were 

 two or more years delinquent on January 1, 1931. 



TABLE 1. Tax delinquency of lands in five typical northwestern Oregon counties 



in 1932 



1 Mostly forest land, as studied; not the total area of the county. 

 1 County owned. 



s Amounts are not cumulative, but each represents delinquency commencing in the year indicated, 

 acreages shown were still delinquent in 1932; those paid up are omitted. 



All 



To indicate the progressive increase in both short- and long-term 

 delinquency since 1921, the percentages of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 year 

 delinquency within the forest zone of two of the northwestern Oregon 

 counties are presented in table 2. 



