A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 1169 



17,850,668 acres comprising lands in State, county, or private 

 ownership. 



Not all of the federally owned timber-bearing lands are in national 

 forests. Considerable areas are in national parks. Lesser areas are 

 embraced in national monuments and reclamation withdrawals. 

 Lands formerly comprising parts of the grants to the Oregon & Cali- 

 fornia Railroad Co. and the Coos Bay Wagon Road Co., which were 

 revested in the United States under the act of June 9, 1916, aggregate 

 nearly 2% million acres chiefly valuable for timber production and 

 streamflow protection. In addition to the areas thus reserved for 

 various purposes other than forestry there remains an appreciable 

 area of unreserved and unappropriated public domain which supports 

 or has supported timber of commercial value or of great importance 

 for watershed protection. It would be wholly consistent with pre- 

 vailing Federal policies of land management to permanently add such 

 unreserved and unappropriated public lands to the national forests 

 so as to safeguard their future values for timber production and 

 streamflow stabilization. ^ That, however, is a matter of congressional 

 or Executive action outside of the scope of the acquisition program. 



As above indicated the 121 national forests in the western United 

 States contain 17,850,668 acres in ownerships other than Federal. 

 Prior to the creation of the national forests title to much of the 

 choicest and most productive timberlands had been established by the 

 operation of State or other land grants and by private appropriation. 

 These lands seldom occur in solid bodies of large extent but as a general 

 rule are widely interspersed among the national-forest lands to which 

 they normally bear an integral relationship. A certain part of the 

 privately owned land clearly is best adapted to private management 

 for grazing, agricultural, recreational, or other uses or services within 

 the field of private initiative. Approximately 10 to 12 million acres 

 of it is most valuable for timber production and should be under the 

 same protection and management as the intermingled national-forest 

 lands. Some of this land has been depleted of its timber value by 

 logging, fires, insects, disease, or windthrow, or a combination of two 

 or more such causes ; much of it still supports heavy stands of timber 

 of commercial size and quality which could most economically be 

 utilized in conjunction with the public timber in the same unit. 



The boundaries of the national forests in the western public-land 

 States frequently were dictated by the lines of private ownership and 

 thus fall far short of encompassing the natural limits of the timbered 

 areas of which they are parts. In consequence there are outside of 

 but contiguous to the national forests millions of acres of other timber- 

 productive lands, in part cut over, in part still bearing virgin stands 

 of timber, which likewise are integral parts of the national-forest units. 

 They should be governed by the same plans and principles of manage- 

 ment and utilization, subject to the same systems of protection and 

 physical development. Their jointure with the publicly owned prop- 

 erties would mean the highest and best use and development of both 

 properties; the mitigation of the condition of unrestrained and de- 

 structive exploitation, so detrimental to related national-forest lands, 

 which otherwise seems inevitable under prevailing circumstances. 



The fullest realization of the public purposes and values of the 

 national forests depends upon the degree to which these intermingled 

 or related lands come under the same administration and management. 



