Adirondack Forestry Problem^. 



By B. E. FERNOW, Director New York State College of Forestry. 



HE State of New York is the first 

 and only State in the Union to 

 have entered upon a definite 

 policy of forest conservation, acknowl- 

 edging the necessity and duty of the 

 State to assume the protection of its 

 most important watershed and of the 

 forest cover thereon, and recognizing 

 that in State ownership alone lies the 

 assurance of its continued conservation. 



Such a policy, now firmly established, 

 presents a number of problems which 

 are partly of an administrative, partly of 

 a technical nature. Some of these are 

 still partly unsolved, and the solution of 

 others has not even been begun. 



Ownership. 



The main and fundamental one, the 

 problem of ownership, has been practi- 

 cally settled by various acts of the 

 Legislature, namely: in 1883, when the 

 State determined to retain the forest 

 lands which it then owned; in 1885, 

 when it placed them in the care and 

 custodv of a Forest Commission; in 

 1890, when the first act authorizing the purchase of additional lands was signed by a 

 democratic governor, with the memorandum affixed that the act was good but inade- 

 quate; and finally in 1897, when the Legislature and a republican governor created 

 The Forest Preserve Board, giving it authority to acquire for the State, by purchase 

 or otherwise, control of the entire region within an outline comprising three million 



acres more or less, or as much thereof as might appear desirable. 



354 



AN IDEAL BATTLE GROUND, 



