A NATIONAL PLAN FOB AMERICAN FORESTRY 1149 



generally beneficial consequences to private forestry already have been 

 demonstrated beyond doubt. The function of research and demon- 

 stration is facilitated by the availability of adequate areas of public 

 forest lands which can be managed for the purpose of deriving scienti- 

 fic facts rather than exclusively for monetary returns. 



The creation of public forests within zones tributary to established 

 wood-using industries and communities, especially those representing 

 large fixed capital investments such as pulp and paper plants, is 

 generally an additional assurance of permanence and stability. There 

 are few large wood-using plants or dependent communities whose 

 permanence does not vitally depend upon the systematic recreation 

 of at least a part of the forest capital necessary to the future life of 

 the enterprise. Ordinarily, existing and immediately prospective 

 timber supply is adequate only for a part of a complete forest rotation 

 or cycle of operation. Private provision of the timber products 

 necessary to bridge over the hiatus or period of deficiency may not be 

 economically practical. Barring public action, the early disintegra- 

 tion of the plant or community would be inevitable. With public 

 cooperation through public acquisition and management of a part of 

 the tributary forest land, the permanency of the plant or community 

 may be definitely assured, thus promoting continued and constructive 

 private management of that part of the forest area upon which such 

 management is financially practicable. 



Any program of public acquisition of forest land inevitably affords 

 owners of such land opportunity to relieve themselves of its ownership. 

 As now generally conducted, it does not afford them a means to unload 

 at excessive prices. Principles and methods of land appraisal and 

 purchase have now been so systematized and are so carefully con- 

 ducted that the owners of the desired lands seldom are able to capital- 

 ize the public program for purposes of unearned profit in any save a 

 minor degree. It is in some instances true that properties are not in 

 demand by other buyers, that their owners tentatively or positively 

 contemplate relinquishment through tax delinquency. But by the 

 time the owners have complied with all of the requirements of public 

 purchase, the nominal per acre value they may receive for such lands 

 constitutes a negligible net consideration and by its payment proper- 

 ties which otherwise would pass through a long period of neglect and 

 damage, with marked impairment of their productive values and 

 progressively multiplying costs of regeneration, promptly are placed 

 under efficient control and management and thus are more readily 

 and economically restored to a condition of productivity. Even where 

 it is reasonably certain that the lands eventually will revert to public 

 ownership through tax deinquency, it nevertheless may be the highest 

 public economy to allow a reasonable consideration for their early 

 conveyance to public ownership, rather than to take over badly 

 damaged lands 5 or 10 years later and expend much larger sums for 

 their reclamation. 



A program of public acquisition of forest lands, by permitting a 

 private owner to divest himself of nonoperable properties whose carry- 

 ing charges are forcing a destructive and uneconomic liquidation of 

 stumpage values, may enable that owner to constructively and 

 adequately manage a certain part of the ownership and thus aid very 

 directly in the establishment of private forestry as a stable practice. 

 Such a result promotes, with a minimum net cost, a maximum contri- 

 bution to a national program of forest conservation. 



