340 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



tended organization and passed from achievement to 

 achievement. Forest conservation has spread from 

 nation to state and produced legislation in the last 

 session of Congress which may mark the turning of 

 the tide at last toward the rehabilitation of our for- 

 ests. Wild flower preservation, the garden club 

 movement, bird conservation and nature study or- 

 ganization all have made long forward strides. 

 The United States Biological Survey, the United 

 States Forest Service and the Conservation Depart- 

 ments of state governments have entered into peri- 

 ods of unprecedented activity and achievement. 

 Game refuges have increased. The State Parks 

 Movement became formally organized and has de- 

 veloped a co-operative spirit. 



Not that National Park events, creative and de- 

 fensive, were in any sense a cause of these increased 

 conservational activities of other kinds. They con- 

 stituted merely another manifestation of the same 

 general current, a swift new confluent which helped 

 swell and speed the whole. 



Looking back over the steps immediately lead- 

 ing to the recreation conference of 1924, and in de- 

 tail at the workings of young Mr. Roosevelt's execu- 

 tive committee, of which I was a member, which 

 planned and effectuated it, I perceive that even the 

 farthest-seeing and most expectant of us did not, at 

 the moment, realize the fulness of our opportunity. 

 The Conference had been proposed by Charles 

 Sheldon ;whose immediate object was game conser- 



