zSz THE FORESTER. December, 



Changing Mt. Rainier's Boundaries. 



Official Approval of the Suggestions made by An Authority through 



The Forester. 



An excerpt from the annual report of glaziers covered the Cascade Range, 



the Commissioner of the General Land Arctic animals and arctic plants then lived 



Office, recommending to the Secretary of throughout the region. As the climate 



the Interior the extension of the Mount became milder and glaciers melted, the 



Rainier National Park, will be of especial creatures of the cold climate were limited 



interest to readers of The Forester, in in their geographic range to the districts 



that the recommendations made by Mr. of the shrinking glaciers. On the great 



Bailey Willis, in the leading article of the peak the glaciers linger still. They give 



May issue of The Forester are officially to it its greatest beauty. They are them- 



approved by the head of the Government selves magnificent, and with them survives 



Forest Reserve service. a colony of arctic animals and plants 



In the section of the report devoted to which cannot exist in the temperate climate 

 the care of the National Forest Reserves of the less lofty mountains. These arctic 

 under his supervision, the Commissioner forms are as effectually isolated as ship- 

 speaks as follows: wrecked sailors on an island in midocean. 



" One of the most important measures There is no refuge for them beyond their 



taken during the past year in connection haunts on ice-bound cliffs. But even 



with forest reservations was the action of there the birds and animals are no longer 



Congress in withdrawing from the Mount safe from the keen sportsman, and the few 



Rainier Forest Reserve a portion of the survivors must soon be exterminated un- 



region immediately surrounding Mount less protected by the Government in a 



Rainier and setting it apart as a national national park.'" 

 park. " The necessity of having this unique 



" The peculiar features of this region peak and its environs preserved in a state 

 demand protection of a widely different of nature has for years attracted much at- 

 and much more stringent nature than that tention, not only in this country but abroad, 

 afforded a forest reservation. The forests and the matter of setting it apart as a 

 that clothe the slope and foothills of national park has long been one of inter- 

 Mount Rainier require, as great regulators national interest, eminent scientists of 

 of floods, to be preserved absolutely un- England and Germany being among the 

 touched, while the fact of the presence of promoters of the move, 

 arctic animals in that region calls for ex- "In view of the great importance thus 

 traordinary measures to insure to them attaching to the subject, I regret to report 

 proper protection. that the area set apart fails to embrace all 



"The importance attaching to effective of the features of that region which it is 



measures to preserve these arctic forms of desirable to have included. Certain dis- 



life was strikingly set forth in the memo- tricts have been omitted which belong 



rial presented to the United States Senate more rightly within a national park than 



from committees appointed by several of to a forest reserve, and as such should not 



the scientific societies of the United States, be left without the protection of the park, 

 which reads on this point as follows: "Upon this point the views of Mr. Bailey 



" 'But Mount Tacoma (Mount Rainier) Willis, of the Geological Survey, are of 



is single not merely because it is superbly especial value. In an article in the May, 



majestic; it is an arctic island in a tern- 1899, issue of The Forester, compiled 



perate zone. In a bygone age an arctic partly from official data, Mr. Willis states 



climate prevailed over the Northwest and as follows : 



