THE CORE OF PUBLICLY OWNED FORESTS 9 



Small gullies have been blocked with dams of sod or loose stones or with 

 brush rip raps. More elaborate dams of rubble or masonry have been 

 built in the channels of many torrents, sometimes at intervals of a few 

 chains to check erosion and the rush of floodwater and afford soil-collect- 

 ing basins which would later be planted with trees. Rubble or masonry 

 dams or walls have been constructed at various points to stop the caving 

 of banks or check incipient land-slips or snow-slides. Hardy shrubs have 

 been set out in masses of glacial drift or the talus of a slope where the 

 ground was too unstable or too sterile to support trees. But the general 

 aim is to get the land under forest cover as soon as it can be done. French 

 foresters and engineers are agreed that an extensive mantle of forest is the 

 final solution to watershed protection. 



Expropriation of the Use of Land for Forest Enterprises. One of the 

 legal principles developed in these public forest enterprises of France sug- 

 gests a modus operandi for State or Federal projects in America where the 

 reforestation of private land is deemed necessary in the public interest. 

 It bears points of similarity to the plan already adopted by some of our 

 States to encourage the planting of private land. This principle is not 

 the purchase or condemnation of private property but the expropria- 

 tion of its tenure, or occupancy, for a sufficient period to establish forests, 

 with provision for ultimately restoring the land to its owner after it has 

 repaid the cost of the enterprise. Applied in the southwestern sand 

 plains where planting was cheap and tree growth rapid and where returns 

 from the new forest were realized in a relatively short time, this method 

 succeeded. Applied in the Alps, where reforestation was much more 

 costly and the climate much more rigorous, it amounted to practical con- 

 fiscation and failed. In both instances it bears proof of the French atti- 

 tude toward the conservation of forests and soil as a dominant public 

 interest, taking precedence over the rights of private property. 



Private Forests in Conservation Projects. Another illustration of 

 the same national viewpoint, brought out in the development of French 

 policy in dealing with sand dunes and mountain torrents, is the provision 

 of law placing all forests within the perimeters of control or restoration 

 projects, whatever their ownership, under the "regime forestier." That 

 is, such forests not merely are subject to the law preventing denudation; 

 they can be cut only in accordance with methods approved by the State 

 service. They are also accorded in full the special and stringent pro- 

 tective measures carried by the penal section of the forest code. Private 

 forests on the critical areas embraced in public conservation projects are 

 thus given a special status subject both to public control and an ex- 

 ceptional degree of public protection. 



The Core of Publicly Owned Forests. Another interesting and sug- 

 gestive fact about France is the extent to which her forestry develop- 



