A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 1259 



have followed substantially the same course giving public aid to 

 private owners and at the same time acquiring State forests. 



But in another respect State policies have gone beyond the Federal 

 forest policy in the attempt to solve the forest problem. In many 

 States laws have been passed regulating the use of private forest 

 lands in various particulars. This departure has, however, been 

 hardly more than tentative. In no State are there complete laws 

 designed to insure good condition of forest lands, and many existing 

 laws are not enforced. The Federal Government had made no 

 effort to regulate the use of private forest land. After careful study 

 of this method, it has thus far elected to expand Federal aid instead. 

 Public regulation has thus been applied to only a limited degree in 

 this country, although other nations use it widely. 



During this period of trying out alternative methods, opposition 

 to public ownership has more and more centered on the idea that 

 private ownership of forest land was essential because through 

 taxation it supplied the revenues for local government. Private 

 ownership is not, however, the only way in which local government 

 may draw on forest land for current income. Two plans have been 

 worked out to make publicly owned forest land contribute its fair 

 share. The most widely applied of these is the national-forest 

 plan under which 25 percent of the gross income is returned to 

 the counties from which it was derived, in lieu of taxes. 



Under the other plan, on some of the State forests, notably in 

 Pennsylvania, a flat rate per acre per year is returned to the county. 



The public ownership method has thus been adopted very widely 

 because the other methods have been found to fail in guaranteeing 

 permanently acceptable condition of forest lands. Public owner- 

 ship of forest lands is then often a last resort device to protect public 

 interests from damages resulting from abuse by private owners. 



PUBLIC OWNERSHIP AS COMPLEMENTARY TO PRIVATE 

 OWNERSHIP 



Public forests have been established and managed under appropri- 

 ate legal sanction by Federal, State, and local governments for the 

 following purposes : 



(1) To protect watersheds from damages resulting from mis- 

 treatment by private owners. Public ownership of protection 

 forests of high importance is commonly recognized as a necessity 

 where the desired condition of forest land cannot be obtained under 

 private ownership without undue friction. This may be either 

 because of conflict between public and real or supposed private 

 interests, or because private owners withdraw from ownership and 

 refuse to keep the land. The watershed section of this report 

 details areas and regions in which critical watershed problems now 

 exist. 



(2) The provision on forest lands of recreational and related 

 facilities open to the public has become recognized as a public func- 

 tion, accomplished through ownership of the land. Use of forest 

 lands for such purposes commonly cannot be harmonized with the 

 needs of private owners. This report (see section on "The Forest 

 for Recreation") recommends publicly owned forest recreation areas 

 to ^ the extent of 45 million acres, a very considerable part of which 

 coincides with areas of high watershed importance suggested for 



