Canadian Forestry Journal, Ma}), 1919 



203 



A BUSINESS PLAN FOR WESTERN FORESTS 



How United States Government Placed all its 



Natural Forests Under Forestry Control — 



An Analogy for Canada 



"When the Dominion Forestry Branch 

 was first organized, the Dominion Gov- 

 ernment's obvious intention was to give 

 the then 'Superintendent of Forestry' 

 supervision of hcensed timber berths. 

 This has become a dead letter. The 

 timber berths are operated by the 'Tim- 

 ber and Grazing Branch' of the Depart- 

 ment of Interior, and on these large 

 areas (approximately 6,680 sq. miles) 

 there is little, if any, attempt to impose 

 those forestry regulations which alone 

 can maintain these areas as sources of 

 timber supply." —March issue, Canadian 

 Forestry Journal. 



With the foregoing as its text, the Journal 

 wishes to carry its point one step further. The 

 claim that the forestry operations on the public- 

 owned timber lands governed by the Dominion 

 Government should be subject to the Dominion 

 Forestry Branch has been sounded so frequently 

 in days ante-dating the present Government as 

 to remove our protest from even the suspicion 

 of politics. What is wrong to-day has been 

 wrong for many years. The correcting of this 

 wrong IS a matter of high public importance. 

 What has been allowed to occur on the timber 

 berth operations divorced from any supervision 

 by the Government's timber conservation de- 

 partment (the Forestry Branch) is no whit dif- 

 ferent from what occurs on the Crown timber 

 lands of Ontario. Whether in Ontario or Sas- 

 katchewan, the public interest is not served by 

 further toleration of a destructive policy in 

 respect to the timber properties. 



Is Reveniue Collecting Enough? 



The United States faced a situation closely 

 analagous to that now obtaining in the Depart- 

 ment of the Interior of Canada. Washington, 

 like Ottawa, maintained two branches to deal 

 with national forests. Like Ottawa, one branch 

 identified itself with constructive forestry, while 

 the other looked upon the forests under its 

 charge as a silver mine to be gouged out and 



abar>doned. It collected revenue; the operators 

 collected the timber. Eventually at Washington 

 this destructive scheme, that no market gard- 

 ener would have put up with for ten days, was 

 abandoned and the whole of the national forests 

 were placed under the authority of the United 

 States Forest Service. The end that has been 

 achieved in the United States is precisely what 

 the Canadian Forestry Association and the 

 Commission of Conservation have been contend- 

 ing for during many years. 



To give our nine thousand readers a clearer 

 idea of how the United States reached the goal 

 and what public purpose was served by the re- 

 form, the Canadian Forestry Journal wrote Col. 

 Henry Solon Graves, Chief Forester of the 

 United States. His reply follows: 



"I am very glad to comply with the request 

 in your letter of April 30 to give you a brief 

 statement in regard to the benefits of the com- 

 bination of the administration of the National 

 Forests of the United States and the technical 

 Bureau charged with investigations in forestry, 

 lumbering, forest fires, etc. 



Forests Minus Foresters. 



"It was not until 1891 that recognition was 

 given to the need of holding forest lands in Fed- 

 eral ownership for the purpose of timber pro- 

 duction and watershed protection. In that year 

 an act was passed by Congress, authorizing the 

 reservation of portions of the public domain, 

 partly or wholly covered with trees or under- 

 growth, as Forest Reservations. It was not until 

 1897 that provision for the administration of 

 these Forest Reserves was made and not until 

 1899 that actual administration was attempted. 

 This administration was placed in the General 

 Land Office of the Department of the Interior, 

 the function of which up to that time had been 

 to survey and dispose of the public lands of the 

 United Slates. During the next six years the 

 administration of these Forest Reserves, especi- 

 ally the handling of the timber resources on 

 them, was handled with increasing difficulty, 

 owing to the need of the practice of forestry 



