EDITORIAL 



133 



kind of demonstration as to the feasibility and advantages 

 of practicing forestry. 



It is of the utmost importance that the present area 

 of National Forests should not be diminished but should 

 be enlarged as rapidly as possible. The appropriation of 

 a million dollars which Congress will apparently provide 

 this year for the purchase of additional lands is alto- 

 gether inadequate and should be increased to at least 

 ten million dollars a year at the earliest opportunity. In 

 this connection it is interesting to note that Washington's 

 sister State, Oregon, which contains the largest area of 



standing timber in the United States, "recognizes the 

 desirability of maintaining the present National Forests 

 under Federal control and believes in the blocking out, 

 with certain limitations, of federal forest areas by pur- 

 chase or otherwise of absolute forest land in the interest 

 of more efficient and economical management of existing 

 forests." Increased acquisition of forest lands by the 

 Federal Government, particularly in the eastern United 

 States, is sound public policy and should be pushed vigor- 

 ously and without delay. 



INDIANA CONSIDERS NEW FORESTRY LEGISLATION 



THE General Assembly of Indiana now has before it 

 two measures drawn by the Department of Conser- 

 vation and aimed at protecting and increasing the forest 

 resources of the State. The adoption of the first of these 

 measures, dealing with the protection of farm and forest 

 lands from fire, would constitute a marked advance 

 over present practice. In brief, the bill proposes to cen- 

 tralize fire protection under the State Fire Marshal, 

 acting ex officio as chief farm and forest fire warden, 

 with the assistance of township wardens appointed by the 

 county commissioners but subject to his approval. The 

 State Forester is created ex officio assistant farm and 

 forest fire warden and is given jurisdiction over all State 

 forests, with authority to appoint as many assistant 

 wardens as in his judgment are necessary to protect the 

 State Forests and State Parks from fire. Inasmuch as 

 Indiana's State Forests and State Parks are not at pres- 

 ent extensive, the great bulk of the fire protective work is 

 thus placed in the hands of the State Fire Marshal. This 

 proposal constitutes a distinct departure from the prac- 

 tice in most other States, where fire protection for all 

 classes of forest land, both public and private, is ordi- 

 narily centered in the State Forester. There are, how- 

 ever, certain advantages in relieving the State Forester 

 of this burden, and the practical working out of the 

 Indiana plan will doubtless be watched with much in- 

 terest by other States should it be adopted. 



Several sections of the bill are designed to put suf- 

 ficient "teeth" in it to make it really effective. Thus, 

 all wardens are given authority to summon all male 

 residents of the State between 18 and 50 years of age 

 to assist in extinguishing fires, and to arrest without 

 warrant violators of the law. Heavy penalties are pro- 

 vided for maliciously setting fires on either public or 

 private land, and for letting fire escape from one's own 

 land with consequent damage to another's property. 

 Penalties are also provided for kindling fires on public 

 land or along State highways without permission of the 

 appropriate authority. This provision might well be 

 applied to kindling fires on any lands within the danger- 

 ous season without a permit. Other slight modifications 

 might also be suggested, but these do not affect the main 

 features of the law, which is decidedly worthy of en- 

 actment. 



The other measure proposes to encourage timber pro- 

 duction by granting a virtual subsidy through the reduc- 



tion of taxes. Owners of "forest plantations" and "native 

 forest lands," which are defined in great detail, are per- 

 mitted to have them classified and assessed at the uni- 

 form rate of $1.00 per acre. This assessment can appar- 

 ently be continued indefinitely, provided the management 

 of the lands is satisfactory to the State Forester, and no 

 provision is made for the collection of any products 

 tax at time of cutting. An interesting and commendable 

 feature of the bill is the proposal, when any land is 

 withdrawn from classification, for the State to appropri- 

 ate in the form of an unearned increment tax any appre- 

 ciation that may have taken place in the value of the 

 bare land during the period while it was under classi- 

 fication. 



The present measure covers much the same ground as 

 a somewhat similar law permitting the assessment of 

 forest land at $1.00 per acre which was passed in 1889, 

 but was repealed after four years because it was so loosely 

 drawn. There is perhaps some question as to whether the 

 provisions of the new bill, in attempting to remedy these 

 defects do not go to the other extreme and may not prove 

 so cumbersome as to be unworkable. It would, for example, 

 seem to be much easier and fully as effective to leave it to 

 the State Forester to decide whether a given tract is suf- 

 ficiently well stocked as to come within the terms of the 

 law, rather than to prescribe a fixed minimum number of 

 trees at each age, to credit trees of a given diameter as 

 occupying so many square feet of ground, and to provide 

 that "if a tree dies or is removed the vacancy shall be 

 filled by planting seed or seedlings therein." It is also 

 questionable whether it is either necessary or justifiable 

 to grant timber growers so large a subsidy as is repre- 

 sented by a tax on a purely nominal land valuation and 

 by complete exemption from any cutting tax. In most 

 other States the tendency in forest taxation reform ap- 

 pears to be toward assessing the bare land at its fair 

 market value, and collecting a products tax from the 

 mature timber at time of cutting. 



Fire protection and forest taxation constitute two of 

 the important problems which must be solved in the 

 development of any adequate State forest policy. It is 

 to be hoped that the General Assembly of Indiana will 

 not adjourn without taking advantage of the opportunity 

 presented by these bills to take constructive action in 

 this direction. 



