1424 A NATIONAL PLAN FOB AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Eradication of recently introduced diseases that have eluded the 

 quarantines must be done cooperatively by Federal and State agencies. 

 A disease that endangers the forests of several States may be first 

 introduced in a State that has relatively little forest, and which con- 

 sequently has so little interest in the disease that it cannot be expected 

 to finance eradication ; but since Federal officers cannot legally enforce 

 eradication, State authority, and therefore State cooperation, is 

 needed. To eradicate a new disease completely it must be detected 

 promptly and attacked immediately by experienced men. The only 

 way in which this can be made possible is by maintaining not only 

 the research workers previously mentioned but also more control 

 workers on forest diseases than are absolutely needed in ordinary 

 times. Such a force would improve the chances for locating promptly 

 the new diseases that come in, and if maintained by the Federal 

 Government would serve as a framework for quick development of 

 any eradication force that may be needed for a specific disease in any 

 part of the country. A skeleton control force kept up by the Bureau 

 of Plant Industry as a measure of preparedness for eradication work 

 could very profitably be used at times when no emergency threatens 

 in scouting for new diseases or in such service work in disease control 

 as is described under the following heading. 



For introduced diseases so well established by the time they are 

 detected that complete eradication is not practicable, an organized 

 campaign will sometimes be necessary to delay the spread of the 

 disease or to control its effects locally before it has time to do serious 

 damage. This should include the prevention by Federal action of 

 shipment of nursery stock or other infectious material from infected 

 States to States still uninfected. In the case of such naturalized 

 diseases for which investigation develops practicable methods of local 

 control, there should also be developed at the earliest practicable 

 moment a service force of the sort described in the following para- 

 graphs. 



SERVICE FORCE FOR CONTROL APPLICATION 



For the local control of native diseases or established foreign 

 diseases there is little warrant for active governmental participation. 

 Such control work is a function of the individual landowner. There 

 is furthermore at the present time relatively little place for extension 

 activities of the usual type for disseminating information of forest- 

 disease control. The methods of lectures, group demonstrations, and 

 popular publications employed in the extension of information on 

 diseases of crop plants are not adapted to getting forest-disease con- 

 trol practices into use. The details of practical application of control 

 principles have not yet been worked out far enough to allow issuing 

 rules of thumb that would be easily grasped and that would apply 

 generally to the timber lands of a region or even of a single locality. 

 Stands differ from each other in tree species, in age, in stand density, 

 and in the diseases present, so that it is doubtful if group extension 

 methods can ever be applied without a good deal of modification. In 

 order to get the available knowledge in forest pathology into large- 

 scale use with reasonable promptness, there is need for direct contact 

 between the timber owner and a technically trained service man in 

 State or Federal employ. Such contacts are particularly necessary 

 if the farmer and small sawmill operator are to get the benefit of 



