Conservation of Our Forests 



Extracts from an address to the Vermont Forestry Association 



By Theodore N. Vail 



President, American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and Vice-President of the American Forestry Association 



CONSERVATION has been much used and much 

 abused in connection with our national resources. 

 It is a big, open question how best to serve the 

 present necessities of man and yet have proper considera- 

 tion for future necessities. If you are thrifty, you con- 

 serve fruits and vegetables and other products for your 

 future use, but you only conserve articles particularly 

 intended for that 

 purpose, or the sur- 

 plus above your 

 present needs. 

 That is what 

 should be the teach- 

 ing of conservation 

 how to use with- 

 out waste our natu- 

 ral resources for 

 our present needs, 

 and protect and 

 conserve the rest 

 for future use. 

 When the present 

 needs are in con- 

 flict with our real 

 or conjectural fu- 

 ture needs, we 

 must decide in 

 favor of the pres- 

 ent demands, or 

 those of the near 

 future. 



Conservation, as 

 applied to forestry, 

 is a question of 

 location or environ- 

 ment and local con- 

 ditions. In Ver- 

 mont it is not waste 

 to burn up the 

 small branches of 

 the fallen trees ; 

 fuel is too plentiful 

 and too cheap and 

 labor too expensive 

 to prepare them for 



use; yet, in some parts of the world it would be wanton 

 waste not to save for use for domestic purposes every 

 last stick and twig. It was not waste for our pioneer 

 fathers to make a slash of the timbered sides of these 

 Vermont hills and burn it to clear the land for agri- 

 cultural purposes, because the wood encumbered the 

 ground and was an obstruction to settlement ; but now 



THEODORE N. VAIL 



President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and Vice-President of the American 



Forestry Association. 



if you wanted to clear a piece of timber for cultivation 

 or pasture, you would not do it that way. It is not 

 waste or wanton destruction to clear woodland to the 

 last stick, if you protect the new growth for future use. 

 Our timberland must now be treated the same as any 

 growing crop planted or be allowed to plant itself, pro- 

 tected and harvested at maturity, and our shade trees 



must not be held 

 too sacred to re- 

 move when they 

 become a nuisance 

 instead of a pleas- 

 ure or a benefit. 



Much is talked 

 about conservation 

 in connection with 

 the freshets of 

 spring and dwin- 

 dling of our streams 

 in summer. Many 

 of the things which 

 some think due to 

 lack of conserva- 

 tion are the inevi- 

 table sequence of 

 cultivation and set- 

 tlement. Timber- 

 land cut over but 

 not burned over, if 

 the new growth is 

 protected, or tim- 

 berland of growing 

 trees, will practi- 

 cally protect the 

 streams as well as 

 if the old timber 

 was left standing. 

 Uniform streams 

 throughout the 

 year never have ex- 

 isted, and to make 

 them would require 

 reservoirs to catch 

 all above the aver- 

 age flow and to 

 hold it to use as needed. The tangled, mossy, fibrous 

 ground of the primeval wilderness and the valley swamps 

 caused by fallen timber and luxuriant weed growth acted 

 as reservoirs and did maintain a more uniform flow than 

 we now have, but they did not prevent freshets when 

 the warm spring rains came on a great depth of snow 

 laying on frozen ground, or when a big downpour fell 



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