134 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



March 



izing settlers to cut under careful super- 

 vision of forest officers at a nominal 

 charge, or by a sale of superfluous 

 wood supplies by the forest officers, 

 must depend largely on local conditions. 

 Many of these suggestions are now con- 

 templated by the regulations of the 

 General Land Office in its administra- 

 tion of forest reservations. 



In one respect I feel that the existing 

 laws and regulations concerning the 

 forest reservations should be modified. 

 I refer to the so-called lieu selections. 

 The law provides that persons having 

 entries within forest reservations at the 

 date of the proclamation may exchange 

 their lands within such reservation for 

 a like amount of land outside the reser- 

 vation anywhere upon the public do- 

 main. The purpose of this provision 

 was to induce all persons having a right 

 to reside within the reservation bound- 

 aries to remove therefrom. It is my 

 belief that a certain number of bona fide 

 residents within the reservation is a 

 good thing, for in cases of emergency 

 such persons can be called upon to assist 

 in the extinguishing of fires or the driv- 

 ing out of herders illegally grazing their 

 stock within the reservation. These 

 residents would naturally be most alert 

 to prevent the extension of any fires 

 liable to injure their own holdings, and 

 would be likely to know of any timber 

 cutting or herding that was going on in 

 their vicinity. By making them forest 

 guards they could be of great assistance 

 in protecting the reservation and useful 

 in other forest operations. 



In another most important respect 

 our laws must be changed before we 

 can get the best results from the forest 

 reservations. At present the forest work 

 of the federal government is divided 

 among three different bureaus the 

 General Land Office, the Geological Sur- 

 vey (both in the Interior Department) , 

 and the Bureau of Forestry in the Agri- 

 cultural Department. This division can 

 not be defended, but is natural enough 

 when historically considered . The Gen- 

 eral Land Office was organized to dispose 

 of the public domain, at first as an asset 

 of the government, and later as a means 

 of strengthening that government by 

 building up new commonwealths to join 

 the sisterhood of states. 



When the idea of permanently reserv- 

 ing portions of the public domain for 

 forest and water uses became a reality, 

 a new duty was imposed upon the Land 

 Office that is, to administer perpetually 

 a portion of the public domain, not to 

 dispose of it. Thus we see it is foreign 

 to the previous functions of the General 

 Land Office to perform such administra- 

 tive work. 



While the Land Office has its own 

 surveying system, it provides only for 

 sectionizing the country that is, divid- 

 ing it into squares. This is not the 

 kind of survey needed for forest reserva- 

 tions, as previously pointed out, and so 

 the Geological Survey is called upon to 

 make the boundary surveys of the reser- 

 vations, and incidentally furnish as much 

 topographic information concerning the 

 reserves as is possible. Hence the second 

 division of forest work. 



The real scientific forest work of the 

 federal government is done by the 

 Bureau of Forestry, organized primarily 

 to investigate forest conditions, conduct 

 experiments as to tree growth, furnish 

 information, and make working plans. 

 It has no general powers of administra- 

 tion over forest lands from the Congress 

 of the United States, only such as are 

 given it voluntarily by states, corpora- 

 tions, and individuals. In other words, 

 the subject-matter with which it has to 

 deal is withheld from it under existing 

 laws. This association has repeatedly 

 advocated uniting all this forest work 

 into one bureau, confidently believing 

 that it would result in a saving of money 

 and in far better forest management 

 of this great national resource, which 

 should in time become a source of annual 

 income instead of expense. For this 

 we are now working, and must continue 

 to work until it is done, and then we 

 shall see our forest reservations properly 

 managed. 



With the growing interest in national 

 management of forest resources the de- 

 mand for trained men to handle private 

 forest properties will steadily increase, 

 and naturally those who have had prac- 

 tical training on the government re- 

 serves will have the preference over 

 others, as these reserves come to be 

 managed more and more in accordance 

 with sound forestry. The reserves will 



