Pollard: Conservation, the National Issue 137 



The largest acreage is in California, with Alaska as a close 

 second. It is a matter for regret that with the exception of 

 Florida, there is no state land east of Michigan containing a na- 

 tional reserve, although there is imperative need of protection for 

 the still extensive forests of the southern Alleghenies. The lack 

 of an Appalachian reserve is deplorable, but there is hope that 

 Congress may yet intervene to save this noble mountain area 

 from devastation. 



Since the national forest reserves are located chiefly in the far 

 western states, it is natural that the question of their further ex- 

 tension and the problem of administration should become a polit- 

 ical issue in that section. The West has been more or less 

 unjustly accused of being unfriendly to the conservation move- 

 ment. But we must bear in mind that the thickly settled East 

 has passed through a historical experience upon which the West, 

 in spite of its phenomenal development, is but just entering. As 

 I have already indicated, the early American colonists settled in 

 the midst of a virgin forest of wonderful variety and luxuriance. 

 In the period of interior colonization followingupon the Louisiana 

 purchase, the forests were rapidly cleared to make way for farms 

 and villages. Timber was so abundant, and the area of the coun- 

 try so vast, that none could foresee a possible exhaustion or even 

 scarcity of the supply. Hence it often happened that homestead 

 sites were selected in regions unsuitable for agriculture, only to 

 be abandoned after the woodlands had been destroyed. In such 

 cases the land usually reverted to scrub, or inferior forest, and 

 all possibility of further commercial development was lost. If 

 the early settlers could have been endowed originally with that 

 foresight and judgment which is unfortunately gained only by 

 sad experience, they would have selected for cultivation those 

 lands in which the tree growth indicated a soil of great richness 

 and productivity, leaving the forest elsewhere untouched as long 

 as possible; and the history of New England and the Middle 

 States would not then have told a tale of neglected homesteads 

 and abandoned farms. As Pinchot has pointed out, a mistake 



