3 02 



THE FORESTER. 



December, 



The present diffusion of responsibility is 

 bad from every standpoint. Its prevents 

 that effective cooperation between the 

 Government and the men who utilize the 

 resources of the reserves, without which 

 the interests of both must suffer. The sci- 

 entific bureaus generally should be put 

 under the Department of Agriculture. 

 The President should have by law the 

 power of transferring lands for use as for- 

 est reserves to the Department of Agricul- 

 ture. He already has such power in the 

 case of lands needed by the Departments 

 of War and the Navy. 



The wise administration of the forest 

 reserves will be not less helpful to the in- 

 terests which depend on water than to 

 those which depend on wood and grass. 

 The water supply itself depends upon the 

 forest. In the arid region it is water, not 

 land, which measures production. The 

 western half of the United States would 

 sustain a population greater than that of 

 our whole country to-day if the waters 

 that now run to waste were saved and 

 used for irrigation. The forest and 

 water problems are perhaps the most 

 vital internal questions of the United 

 States. 



Game Preservation. 



Certain of the forest reserves should also 

 be made preserves for the wild forest crea- 

 tures. All of the reserves should be bet- 

 ter protected from fires. Many of them 

 need special protection because of the 

 great injury done by live stock, above all 

 by sheep. The increase in deer, elk. and 

 other animals in the Yellowstone Park 

 shows what may be expected when other 

 mountain forests are properly protected 

 by law and properly guarded. Some of 

 these areas have been so denuded of sur- 

 face vegetation by overgrazing that the 

 ground-breeding birds, including grouse 

 and quail and many mammals including 

 deer, have been exterminated or driven 

 away. At the same time the water-stor- 

 ing capacity of the surface has been 

 decreased or destroyed, thus promoting 

 floods in times of rain and diminishing the 

 flow of streams between rains. 



In cases where natural conditions have 

 been restored for a few years, vegetation 

 has again carpeted the ground, birds and 

 deer are coming back, and hundreds of 

 persons, especially from the immediate 



neighborhood, come each summer to en- 

 joy the privilege of camping. Some at 

 least of the forest reserves should afford 

 perpetual protection to the native fauna 

 and flora, safe havens of refuge to our rap- 

 idly diminishing wild animals of the larger 

 kinds, and free camping grounds for the 

 ever-increasing numbers of men and wo- 

 men who have learned to find rest, health, 

 and recreation in the splendid forests and 

 flower-clad meadows of our mountains. 

 The forest reserves should be set apart 

 forever for the use and benefit of our 

 people as a whole and not sacrificed to the 

 short-sighted greed of a few. 



The forests are natural reservoirs. By 

 restraining the streams in flood and re- 

 plenishing them in drought they make pos- 

 sible the use of waters otherwise wasted. 

 They prevent the soil from washing, and 

 so protect the storage reservoirs from fill- 

 ing up with silt. Forest conservation is 

 therefore an essential condition of water 

 conservation. 



Reclamation of Arid Lands. 



The forests alone cannot, however, fully 

 regulate and conserve the waters of the 

 arid region. Great storage works are 

 necessary to equalize the flow of streams 

 and to save the flood waters. Their con- 

 struction has been conclusively shown to 

 be an undertaking too vast for private ef- 

 fort. Nor can it be best accomplished by 

 the individual states acting alone. Fair 

 reaching interstate problems are involved; 

 and the resources of single states would 

 often be inadequate. It is properly a na- 

 tional function, at least in some of its fea- 

 tures. It is as right for the National Gov- 

 ernment to make the streams and rivers 

 of the arid region useful, by engineering 

 works for water storage, as to make useful 

 the rivers and harbors of the humid region 

 by engineering works of another kind. 

 The storing of the floods in reservoirs at 

 the headwaters of our rivers is but an en- 

 largement of our present policy of river 

 control, under which levees are built on 

 the lower reaches of the same streams. 



The government should construct and 

 maintain these reservoirs as it does other 

 public works. Where their purpose is to 

 regulate the flow of streams, the water 

 should be turned freely into the channels 

 in the dry season to take the same course 

 under the same laws as the natural flow. 





