A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 1549 



must be correlated with the management of other products and serv- 

 ices such as timber, forage, watershed protection, and recreation, and 

 with the management of the land itself. Land management, for ex- 

 ample, must provide the natural food, cover, protection, and other 

 environmental conditions upon which wild life is dependent. 



Unification of wild-life and forest-land management is made difficult 

 by the fact that in general the control of game is in the State, while 

 the ownership and control of land may be private, State, or Federal. 

 In this respect it differs from most if not all other products, the owner- 

 ship and control of which go with the land. This situation creates 

 three rather distinct problems depending upon the ownership of the 

 forest land : 



(1) On privately owned lands, control of game by the State without 

 unification of game and land management has resulted in lack of con- 

 sideration of game values and requirements in the handling of much 

 private land. This has led to game depletion by destroying proper 

 environmental conditions for game in some regions by overgrazing 

 and fire. The landholder has had little direct interest in game as a 

 land resource, has not had control over it, and hence in many cases 

 has in great measure failed to provide the conditions necessary for 

 its maintenance or development. He is, however, in the best position 

 to provide the proper environmental conditions. The problem is to 

 develop ways and means of inducing him to do so. 



The American game policy proposed by the American Game Associ- 

 ation at the seventeenth annual game conference in December 1930, 

 states with respect to the private landholder: 



Only the landholder can practice management efficiently, because he is the 

 only person who resides on the land and has complete authority over it. All 

 others are absentees. Absentees can provide the essentials; protection, cover, 

 and food, but only with the landholder's cooperation, and at a higher cost. 



With rare exceptions, the landholder is not yet practicing management. There 

 are three ways to induce him to do so: 



1. Buy him out, and become the landowner. 



2. Compensate him directly or indirectly for producing a game crop and for 

 the privilege of harvesting it. 



3. Cede him the title to the game, so that he will own it and can buy and sell 

 it just as he owns, buys, and sells his poultry. 



The first way is feasible on cheap lands, but prohibitive elsewhere. The second 

 is feasible anywhere. The third way is the English system, and incompatible 

 with American tradition and thought. 



Despite the fact that the second way of inducing the private land- 

 holder to practice game management seems the most feasible method 

 of meeting the requirement for unified game and land management 

 on private lands, there are some difficulties in carrying it out. The 

 individual landholder, except possibly in minor instances, can not 

 manage and control game incident to his control of the land. Game 

 is too mobile and individual holdings are often too small in area to 

 afford satisfactory units of management. Under such conditions the 

 solution appears to be in cooperative arrangements between groups 

 of individual landholders and the States, which will provide for the 

 grouping of lands for wild-life management for a common purpose, 

 contributing toward the best utilization of all the land resources. The 

 return to the landholders is through the medium of fees, which may be 

 charged for shooting on their land. 



This phase of the problem centers primarily in the East where 85.6 

 percent of the forest land is in private ownership, as contrasted with 



