876 A NATIONAL PLAN FOB AMERICAN FORESTRY 



the most part burned after cutting, where but little of the land has 

 potential uses other than timber growing. The area of public owner- 

 ship is already large and clearly is growing larger. 



TABLE 5. Ownership and delinquency of land in Pend Oreille County, Wash., 1932 



Of the total delinquent area not foreclosed (68,960 acres) 35 per- 

 cent is 5 years delinquent, 11 percent 4 years, 12 percent 3 years, 18 

 percent 2 years, and 25 percent 1 year, showing that the serious 

 delinquency situation is of long standing and not the result of the 

 current business depression. 



LAKE STATES 



The northern portion of the Lake States was at one time an almost 

 continuous forest of conifers. Extensive lumbering operations fol- 

 lowed by repeated fires have wiped it almost clean of merchantable 

 timber and left much of it in a wholly unproductive condition. 



Although the bulk of the forest land in the Lake States is now in 

 private ownership, a revolutionary change in the situation seems to 

 be imminent. This is evident in the extensive tax delinquency in the 

 cut-over counties and by the failure of any considerable number of 

 owners to take advantage of the reforestation tax laws aimed to keep 

 land in private hands for timber growing. From 18 to 20 million 

 acres of forest land is delinquent and virtually abandoned, a "new 

 public domain" embracing 35 percent of the forest area of the three 

 States. It is predicted that if the present trend continues for another 

 10 years practically 50 percent of the forest area will be in public 

 ownership. 



The widespread tax delinquency in the northern portion of the 

 Lake States is largely due to using the natural resources without 

 thought of continuous production, resulting in the closing down of 

 industries dependent upon wood and a consequent enormous shrink- 

 age in taxable values. It is due also to a considerable extent to a 

 wrong appraisal of future trends in agriculture which has resulted in 

 the colonization of land unsuited to agriculture and the expenditure 

 of large sums of public money for roads, schools, ditches, etc., in the 

 belief that most of the land would soon be taken up in farms. 



In Wisconsin are some 16 million acres of commercial forest land, 

 or close to one half the total area of the State. Except for possibly a 

 half million acres of virgin forest in the northern part and another 

 half million in the south, all are cut over and badly burned. The half 

 million acres in the south are in farm woodlands. In the 16 northern 

 forest counties of Wisconsin it is estimated that there is now 5 million 



