1170 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Some of them doubtless will be donated to the United States; others 

 can be acquired by giving in exchange other national-forest lands of 

 lesser public importance and value or equal values of national-forest 

 stumpage. The net value at which they would be obtainable is 

 therefore largely conjectural. 



So far as the western public domain States are concerned, the only 

 hitherto prevailing policy and program of forest-land acquisition has 

 been that of exchanges of national-forest land and/or stumpage for 

 privately owned lands within the national forests, or in some in- 

 stances within adjacent areas defined by special acts of Congress. 

 Since 1908, Congress has enacted 56 laws of more or less general 

 application and 13 laws specifically describing the lands subject to 

 exchange, under which exchanges can be made. Under these various 

 laws a total of 830 separate exchanges have been made, involving 

 Federal acquisition of 1,205,100 acres of land valued at $4,773,519, 

 and the grant in exchange therefore of 390,415 acres of national-forest 

 land valued at $1,795,099 and 858,268 M board feet of national-forest 

 stumpage valued at $2,377,820. The net gain in national-forest area 

 thus has been 814,685 acres, but the gain in timber-productive area 

 has been greater than that since nearly all of the offered land was 

 timber-productive soil while much of the selected land was of low 

 forest value and desired primarily for grazing use. 



The cumulative record of land exchanges by States is contained in 

 table 2. Included in the table are exchanges made with the States 

 of California, Michigan, and Nebraska, whereby the respective State 

 and Federal holdings were consolidated in units susceptible of most 

 effective and economical management. The table does not include 

 earlier agreements with the States of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, South 

 Dakota, and Washington, under which these States relinquished 

 1,200,980 acres within the national forests, and selected 275,000 acres 

 of other public domain lands, plus 924,362 acres eliminated from the 

 national forests to permit such selection. 



However, the exchange authority does not fully meet the present 

 need. To begin with, the commodity most desired in exchange for 

 privately owned lands is salable national-forest stumpage, and the 

 employment of large volumes of such stumpage necessarily curtails 

 receipts to the Treasury and the shares thereof paid to the counties 

 embracing national forests. To avoid injustice to those counties, 

 the rule has been adopted that the value of the national-forest stump- 

 age granted in exchange for private lands during any given year shall 

 not markedly exceed 10 percent of the value of the stumpage 

 sold for cash. Under this policy curtailed national-forest timber- 

 sale activity means also the curtailment of private-land acquisition 

 through exchange. The other adverse feature of the land-exchange 

 policy is that it does not meet the needs of the owners of large 

 bodies of heavily timbered operable lands, who would be willing 

 enough to dispose of their properties for cash but have no desire to 

 exchange them for national-forest lands of similar character and 

 value. Due to this fact only a minor part of the lands hitherto 

 acquired through exchanges support large volumes of currently 

 merchantable timber. 



