226 



THE FORESTER. 



October, 



been coming the old streams of logs. 

 Minnesota is by no means a new region 

 for the lumberman, but a part of the 

 State, more especially that covered by 

 certain Indian reservations, is still un- 

 cut, and is looked on eagerly by the eyes 

 of those men whose capital is invested 

 in the lumber trade. The eastern and 

 northwestern portions of Minnesota have 

 been well logged off. The forest fires at 

 Hinckley and elsewhere, which wiped 

 out whole villages and destroyed scores 

 of lives, show what possibilities of ruin 

 there are latent in a slashed-off, aban- 

 doned lumber country. Little by little 

 the axe and the saw have been working 

 toward the last of the great North- 

 western Pine forests. 



It is not the purpose of this forestry 

 organization to injure any existing prop- 

 erty rights. It is the intention to be not 

 unjust, but just, to the Indians who live 

 in that country. It is not the intention 

 to rob the State of Minnesota, or any 

 citizen of that State in any particular, 

 but to benefit that State and its citizens. 

 The organization is not presumptuous 

 enough to ask for any given limits for 

 this national playground. The gentle- 

 men of the organization have merely 

 asked the members of Congress to come 

 out and see that country, and then to 

 decide the question whether it should 

 belong to the people of America or be 

 given over to the axe and saw of a few 

 lumbermen, who must soon ruin it, as 

 they have ruined the Pine tracts farther 

 to the east. 



The State of Minnesota, under its own 

 forest laws, is taking some care of its 

 forest lands, and each year a report of 

 the wardens is submitted as to ravages 

 of fire and destruction from other causes. 

 Of the 11,890,000 acres of natural forest 

 in the State 10,889,000 acres are in twen- 

 ty-three counties. Seven million acres 

 lie to the west of Duluth, and here the 

 members of the new park association 

 propose to establish a national park that 

 shall preserve the natural forest, its 

 plants and animals. The only opposi- 

 tion to this will come from those who 

 believe that it would be against the in- 

 terests of the State to reserve any great 

 extent of wild land from settlement. 

 This opposition may be overcome by the 

 plan pursued in other States where parks 

 have been located in a way not to inter- 

 fere with the development of remote 

 sections of the State. 



The organization of the National Park 

 and Forestry Association will give im- 

 petus to the general movement to save 

 the forests in the States and Territories. 

 There is now very little opposition to 

 the plans inaugurated by the Govern- 

 ment for the preservation of forests, and 

 in most of the older States there is a 

 strong sentiment in favor of a system 

 under which the trees so ruthlessly de- 

 stroyed in the timber States of the East 

 may be replaced. In the prairie States 

 much progress has been made. 



The necessity for prompt action, in 

 view of the rapidity with which large 

 areas of forest are denuded of timber, is 

 shown in the following press dispatches 

 from that section of country: 



"Two hundred men are now gather- 

 ing in camps on Turtle River, north of 

 Cass Lake, to cut 300,000,000 feet of 

 Pine. The camps on the upper branches 

 of the Mississippi, where 300,000,000 

 additional feet of Pine is to be cut, were 

 established last year, and 35,000,000 

 feet has been driven down the Missis- 

 sippi to Bemidji, and is now being 

 loaded on cars 800,000 feet each day 

 and railroaded out of that region on the 

 Brainerd & Northern. 



" If the Ojibway Pine is sold to these 

 lumbermen under the Nelson law, every 

 Pine tree in the whole region, except at 

 Itasca Lake, in the State Park, will be 

 cut and turned into lumber before the 

 expiration of the ensuing fifteen years at 

 the present rate of destruction. It will 

 then be absolutely impossible to prevent 

 devastating and enormous forest fires 

 similar to those which have heretofore 

 occurred in the cut-off Pine regions of 

 Minnesota." 



