FORESTRY COMMISSION. 17 



and corporations in the treatment of timber production as a co-ordinate 

 occupation with agriculture of untold importance in the maintenance of 

 an independent commonwealth. 



We have endeavored, and with a considerable measure of success, to 

 interest our leading educators and scientists in the Michigan forestry 

 problem. We have striven in this campaign of education to enlist the aid 

 especially of the university and the Agricultural College and the organi- 

 zation known as the Farmers' Institutes of our State. In all this work 

 we have used the small appropriation provided for in the act of our in- 

 corporation. A detailed statement of these expenditures will accompany 

 this report as an exhibit. 



Under an act of the Legislature of 1903 the Forestry Commission was 

 given additional powers and duties in the establishment and management 

 of the State Forest Reserve in Crawford and Eoscommon counties. Un- 

 der this act the commission appointed a Forest Warden, whose report will 

 accompany this as a document to be presented to the Legislature and 

 disseminated in our printed volume. We have taken hold of the forest 

 reserve designated under the act, and have been acquiring as large an 

 amount of information as possible concerning the conditions and require- 

 ments, in order to make it an object lesson in reforestation of value to 

 the State. 



We have established nurseries and done considerable planting in the 

 open areas, an account of which will be given in the official report of the 

 Warden. Through a misunderstanding of the purposes of the Forestry 

 Commission, there was considerable opposition, in the vicinity of the estab- 

 lished reserve to the work of the Forestry Commission. We are happy to 

 see, however, that as a result of our activities, there has been awakened 

 in this community a great interest in our work and sympathy with our 

 purposes, which is somewhat remarkable. Instead of open opposition, we 

 have active co-operation in our efforts, and the contiguous land owners 

 now understand that in the establishment of a forest reserve under our 

 plan, the lands in the neighborhood will appreciate in value, and that 

 every effort for reforestation in the reserve acts directly in the interest of 

 land values in the vicinity. Men who were quite strong in the feeling 

 that Ave were going to convert large areas of land into a wilderness un- 

 derstand now that a crop of forest products is as important tg grow as 

 anything we can develop from the soil in Michigan; that in the interest 

 of the future of our State, and of every part of it, the growing of timber 

 in order that we may furnish raw material for manufacturers and cor- 

 portions which utilize timber products, we are carrying on a business that 

 is co-ordinate with agriculture, and, in truth, a part of it. 



In the public discussion of questions connected with reforestation in 

 Michigan, we have found great interest in our purposes on the part of 

 men interested in the utilization of the vast power which is hidden in our 

 running streams. In transforming this power so that it shall be of prac- 

 tical use, men have learned that regularity and certainty of the flow is a 

 factor of great importance, and that the forest cover which borders on 

 streams, and particularly that which protects the sources of these streams, 

 becomes a matter of great importance to those engaged in transforming 

 the energy of the moving water into a power that runs machinery and 

 performs other offices. In the business world it becomes apparent to these 

 men that the maintenance of a reasonable amount of forest cover in the 

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