6 FORESTRY IN COLORADO 



In JQ03 an act was passed making the sheriff and his deputies in 

 each county forest fire wardens, in addition to their other duties. 

 During the early period of Mr. Ensign's incumbency to the office 

 of State Forest Commissioner it is interesting to learn that recom- 

 mendations from the Commissioners of the General Land Office, 

 supplemented by those from California, Colorado, and several other 

 states, were made toward the segregation of all exclusively timber 

 lands belonging to the general government and the formation of 

 permanent forest reservations. A bill was introduced into the 

 United States Congress which provided for the withdrawal from 

 sale or entry of the public forest lands and their classification. It 

 instituted in the Department of the Interior the offices of Commis- 

 sioner of Forests and four assistant commissioners, authorized the 

 appointment of necessary forest inspectors and rangers, and sought 

 to establish an effective and reasonably complete forest administra- 

 tion. By a system of licenses for the cutting of public timber it 

 provided for the needs of settlers and others. Five hundred thou- 

 sand dollars was named as the amount necessary to carry out the 

 provisions of the act. This bill, which was introduced in both 

 branches of the 1887-8 Congress, seems to have made but little, if 

 any, progress, beyond the committees to which it was referred. 



In commenting on this bill, Mr. Ensign further states that a 

 new bill "differing in some important particulars from the old one 

 will be prepared and introduced at the next session of Congress." 

 Just what was the fate of this second bill, however, has not been 

 learned. In this bill is foreshadowed the later enactments by the 

 general government creating our present forest reserves and the Or- 

 ganization of the National Forest Service to care for and manage 

 them. In 1891 the timber culture act was repealed and in the same 

 enactment a clause was inserted giving authority to the President 

 of the United States to set aside forest areas from the public do- 

 main to serve as forest reservations. Acting under this authority, 

 Presidents Cleveland and Harrison had, previous to 1894, pro- 

 claimed seventeen forest reservations with a total estimated area of 

 17,500,000 acres in the whole United States. 



Since that year, additional forest areas have been reserved 

 until at the present time Colorado stands fifth in the area of its 

 forest reserves, with a total area of 14,761,900 acres. 



Each forest is under the supervision of a forest supervisor 

 who has under him a force of forest rangers who police the timber 

 lands for the purpose of fire protection, prevention of timber thiev- 

 ing, and who also look after the issuing of grazing and timber 

 cutting permits. The rules and regulations governing the conduct 

 of all forest officers are fully outlined in the Use Book, published 

 by the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. 



