12 MISC. PUBLICATION 247, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 



of land for national-forest purposes was first financed by regular 

 appropriations, but since 1933 emergency funds have been available 

 for this purpose, and purchases have been greatly speeded up. In 

 the period since the Weeks law was passed the Forest Service, acting 

 as the executive agency, has recommended, and the National Forest 

 Reservation Commission has approved, proposals to purchase over 

 15,500,000 acres (pi. 3). Prior to 1933 Federal acquisition of forest 

 lands had totaled less than 550,000 acres in any one year. Within a 

 12 month period in 1933-34, more than 4,000,000 acres were acquired 

 or placed under contract of sale to the Federal Government, and the 

 accelerated program continued through 1935. 



As optioned, these lands have been added to the national-forest 

 system, then put under protection and administration. Through 

 fire control, improvement work, and planting, made possible by 

 regular and emergency appropriations, areas once largely denuded 

 are being brought back to productivity. Full- or part-time jobs are 

 thus available to local people who might otherwise be on relief rolls. 

 On areas thus purchased, 1 the yearly capacity of Forest Service 

 nurseries, where trees for field planting are raised, was increased from 

 23,000,000 trees in 1932, to 166,000,000 in 1935. 



To date, almost all forest-land acquisition by purchase has been 

 confined to the territory east of the Rocky Mountains, where the 

 proportion of privately owned forest land is high, and that of national- 

 forest land low, as compared to Western States. It largely has 

 been confined, too, to lands which did not bear merchantable timber 

 at the time of purchase. Recent conditions have indicated the 

 wisdom of applying a portion of such funds as may be available to the 

 purchase of forest lands — in the West as well as the East — on which 

 there is now merchantable timber. Such a course will make it pos- 

 sible to practice immediate sustained yield on demonstration areas. 

 And acquisition of key tracts will in some cases help stabilize forest 

 industries and communities by early application of sustained-yield 

 management to economic units which might otherwise be privately 

 operated on a cut-out-and-get-out basis. It will probably still be 

 desirable, however, to concentrate the bulk of forest-land purchases 

 in the eastern part of the country. 



The program of forest-land purchases under the Weeks law was 

 the first project of such a character handled by the Department of 

 Agriculture. Recently other land-purchase programs for purposes 

 such as wildlife refuges, control of soil erosion, and curtailment of 

 submarginal farming have become necessary] and advisable in the 

 public interest. To meet the need for coordination and correlation 

 and to provide for unity of action, there has been set up in the Depart- 

 ment a land policy committee. 



This committee acts as a clearing house for land purchases of 

 all departmental Bureaus. It receives and records all detailed project 

 reports, determines relationships of separate land-purchase and 

 management projects to each other and to the whole, provides for 

 adjustment of geographical conflicts and interbureau cooperation. 

 Through it, all land-purchase work of the Department is now unified, 

 correlated, and coordinated. 



1 In the eastern, southern, and north central regions of the Forest Service. 



