A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



1109 



TABLE 3. Approximate effect of Federal administration of national forests upon 

 costs of State and county government and private land management within and 

 adjacent to the national forests for the fiscal years 1923-27 Continued 



PROBABLE COSTS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT WITHOUT NATIONAL 



FORESTS 



The next step in the study was to approximate the costs which 

 would have had to be borne by the State, the county, and private 

 owners of land, if the national forests did not exist. This was a 

 matter of great difficulty because of the lack of definite information 

 as to the intensity of protection and administration which would 

 under such circumstances prevail. Some reporting officers assumed 

 that if the national forests did not exist, the prevailing standard of 

 protection, management, and improvement would be maintained by 

 other public and private agencies and based their estimates of cost 

 accordingly. Other reporting officers assumed that if the national 

 forests did not exist the lands comprising them would be subject to 

 the indifference and neglect which characterizes many comparable 

 areas not within the national forests, and consequently included in 

 their estimates only the obviously necessary minimum requirements, 

 making no provision for a continuance of constructive standards of 

 forest and watershed protection and management. Some reporting 

 officers assumed that in the absence of the present indirect benefits 

 from national-forest protection, owners of private land would supply, 

 at their own expense, substitute protection against fire, insects, or 

 disease; while others reasoned that the private landowners would 

 merely pay their proportionate share, in the form of taxes, of such 

 additional forest protection as the State or county might provide. 



Such figures as were secured, therefore, were incomplete and broadly 

 approximate. With that qualification they also are presented in 

 table 3. They indicate that if national forests had not existed the 

 annual average of $10,469,206 actually expended by States, counties, 

 and private owners, under prevailing circumstances would have been 

 increased to an estimated expenditure of $18,832,961, or an additional 

 sum of $8,363,755. The fact that this estimated increase in cost is 



