A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



1115 



TABLE 4. Study of actual taxability of private lands and potential taxability in 

 States containing national forests Continued 



3 Area, value, and tax yield are based on area adapted to private ownership. Yield per acre is figured on 

 total acreage of national forests in States. 



4 Applies to all 18 national forest counties. 

 8 Data not available. 



Economic facts and trends during the past five years largely have 

 invalidated the 1927 determinations. A true realization of the eco- 

 nomic potentialities of such types of wild land markedly has reduced 

 the incentive to convert such lands to private ownership and to assume 

 the attendant obligations of annual tax payments, special assessments, 

 protection costs, interest charges, and other cost items. For example, 

 western livestock growers now realize that ownership of range lands, 

 other than those of highest productivity or greater strategic control, 

 at the prices and subject to the taxes prevailing during the past 

 decade, spells insolvency more frequently than profit. Owners of 

 certain types of forest lands have reached the same conclusions. 

 This fact adequately is confirmed by the tremendous increase in tax 

 delinquency manifest in recent years and discussed in another section 

 of this report. It is further confirmed by the present disinclination 

 to appropriate any appreciable part of the 173 million acres of public 

 lands which remain unreserved and unappropriated. A current 

 study of the degree to which the national-forest lands are adapted 

 to private ownership and management and capable of permanently 

 contributing to costs of local government through annual taxation 

 would yield results far less optimistic than those pictured in table 4. 

 The economic capcity of the less productive lands to yield returns 



