THE DOMINION FOREST RESERVES. 

 By a. Knechtel. 



Introductory. 



It would almost seem as if the white race had ^begun 

 wrong on this continent. Needing cleared land for agriculture 

 we started in the woods, and now when we need woods we start 

 on the cleared land. The arrangement was not an economic 

 one. The prairie should have been located near the Atlantic 

 and the woodland in the Northwest. Arranged as it was, with 

 the forest on the land that was close to the market for it's pro- 

 ducts, forest destruction was at first a necessity, and later became 

 a habit. Fire, the good servant in clearing the land, ran ram- 

 pant carrA'ing forest devastation far beyond the necessities of 

 the people. 



The earliest settlers, coming from Europe were used to forest 

 conservation. They had practised it in the coimtries from 

 which they came. Forest destruction was to them a new 

 thing; but the forests were so vast that they thought there 

 could never be a scarcity of wood, and they reasoned that the 

 more the forest was destroyed, the more the agricultural interests 

 of the country would be advanced. But the modern settler 

 sees the forest in a different light, especially so in the great North- 

 west where on the wide prairie wood is a luxury. To him forest 

 conservation is the necessity, not forest destruction. He has 

 no delight in the devastation of the woods by fire, and he hails 

 with hope legislation and management tending to improve the 

 condition of the forest. He sees clearly that his comfort and 

 his agricultural interests are closely dependent upon a plentiful 

 supply of wood. 



The country is so vast and the demand for wood so great, 

 it is a tremendous problem to so manage the forests that this 

 demand may be met continuously. Hope seems to lie in the 

 creation of forest reserves, and the policy of setting aside land 

 to be used as forest reserves is now pretty well established by the 

 Dominion Government. 



The Dominion Forest Reserves are intended to preserve 

 and produce a perpetual supply of timber for the people of the 

 prairie, the homesteaders' needs being considered of first impor- 

 tance. They are not intended to furnish wood for the lumber trade. 

 Hence the policy of the Department is favorable to small mills 

 rather than to large ones which need large tracts of forest and 



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