i6 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION. 



January, 



VIEW IN SOUTH PI^ATTE RESERVE, COLORADO. TIMBER ON HII.ES BADI.V BURNT. 



government must step in and, for the 

 preservation of our national territory-, 

 save from destruction and waste the 

 water suppHes of the arid region. ITn- 

 less it does this, it is inevitable that an 

 immense area in the West will, in a com- 

 paratively brief period, as time goes, re- 

 vert back to a hopeless and irreclaim- 

 able desert. 



The people of the whole country are 

 being gradually awakened to this neces- 

 sity, and there is good ground for hop- 

 ing that a broad national policy of water 

 conservation, through forest conserva- 

 tion and flood-water storage, will be 

 inaugurated in this session of Congress; 

 but it is certain beyond the shadow of a 

 doubt that if the national government 

 does this it will give neither the arid 

 lands nor the control of their reclama- 

 tion to the states. It will never sur- 

 render or delegate its obligations to re- 

 claim these lands for the benefit of other 

 than bona fide settlers, who will build 

 whole communities to disseminate their 

 newly created wealth among the people 

 of the entire countrj^ through the en- 

 largement of every channel of our in- 

 ternal trade and commerce. 



The close connection between forest 

 preser\^ation and water conservation is 

 clearly shown b}' Captain Chittenden in 

 his report above referred to where he 

 says : ' ' There seems to be a well-nigh 

 universal consensus of opinion that the 

 preservation of the forests of the arid 

 regions is distinctly a government duty. 

 Considerable appropriations have been 

 made for the survej' of the proposed 

 reservations, and ways and means for 

 their preservation are being considered 

 now. One of the great arguments al- 

 ways advanced in favor of forest preser- 

 vation is the influence wdiich forests are 

 supposed to have in consenang the flow 

 of streams. Inasnuich as the commer- 

 cial value of these forests is practically 

 insignificant, except for furnishing fuel 

 and rough timber, the water question is 

 really the more important one. If it is 

 properly a government function to pre- 

 serve the forests in order to conserve the 

 flow of the streams, surely it cannot be 

 less a government function to execute 

 works which will conserve that flow even 

 more positively and directly. Granting 

 all that can be said of forests in this con- 

 nection, they certainly can never pre- 



