and concerted action going far beyond anything 
accomplished in the past. 
Action Needed 
A reappraisal of this kind logically includes con- 
sideration of what action is needed. As the pre- 
ceding pages have made apparent, the forest 
situation is extremely complex. It involves a 
great variety of physical and economic considera- 
tions. There is no panacea by which satisfactory 
forest conservation can be attained in this country. 
For considering what is needed, a point of de- 
parture is afforded by the comprehensive program 
recommended by the Department of Agriculture 
in 1940 to the Joint Congressional Committee on 
Forestry, which had been commissioned by the 
President to investigate and report on the Na- 
tion’s forest situation. “Those recommendations 
and other proposals have been carefully reexamined 
in the light of the reappraisal findings, progress 
in the intervening years, and the current economic 
outlook. For example, after careful study it was 
concluded that incentive payments for good forestry 
practices do not form a sound major approach to 
forest conservation. As another example, the 
status of State forest-regulatory measures and 
other relevant circumstances were carefully recon- 
sidered, and as a result the Forest Service continues 
its recommendation of a Federal-State plan of 
regulating cutting and other forest practices on 
forest land. 
In presenting its program of action now, the 
Forest Service reaffirms the philosophy that forest 
conservation requires Federal, State, and local gov- 
ernmentsy and private owners and agencies to act 
in effective cooperation. It takes into account the 
need for Federal leadership in many segments of 
the work. It further recognizes that although 
there is need for considerably more public owner- 
ship—Federal, State, and local—much the larger 
part of the forest land, and particularly of the pro- 
ductive capacity, will remain in private ownership. 
' The recommendations that follow refer especi- 
ally to the Federal aspects of a long-range program, 
though cooperative action is often involved. Ad- 
mittedly, they do not fully compass all unsatisfac- 
tory features of the present situation; for example, 
the 75 million acres of forest land which is wholly 
deforested or has so little restocking as to justify 
the description “idle.’” Nor do they adequately 
reach the additional millions of acres of run-down 
forests in small properties that need considerable 
capital expenditure with long deferment of income. 
To spell out the Federal phases of a long-range 
program does not minimize the opportunity and 
need for private or State action. In fact, strength- 
ening of State forestry agencies is an important 
corollary of the Federal program. Much of this 
program aims to help private owners take care of 
their own lands; but private owners cannot reason- 
ably be expected to do alone a job for which they 
are as yet unprepared and unequipped. 
This program is aimed primarily at meeting 
American requirements for timber supply; but it 
should go far toward preventing soil erosion and 
safeguarding range forage, watershed, recreational, 
and other values which in some regions surpass 
that of the timber. If fully effective, it would 
provide a framework within which the short-range 
and many necessary detailed and supplemental 
measures could be worked out. It may be divided 
into three broad categories: 
First, a series of public aids to private forest 
landowners, especially the small owners. Some 
of these require new legislation. Others are already 
in effect but need strengthening. 
SECOND, public control of cutting and other forest 
practices on private land sufficient to stop forest de- 
struction and keep the land reasonably productive. 
THIRD, expansion and intensified management of 
national, State, and community forests. 
The principal measures embraced by the fore- 
going three categories follow. 
I. Public Aids and Services to Private Owners 
1. Technical assistance to private owners in es- 
tablishing and tending forests, and in harvesting 
and marketing forest products, should be made 
available on a broader and much larger scale than 
at present. Corresponding assistance should also 
be made available to operators of processing plants. 
The emphasis here is on owners of small properties. 
and plants. 
The value of on-the-ground technical assistance 
and guidance to individual private owners of small 
properties has been impressively demonstrated by 
the present small program of the Forest Service in 
cooperation with State forestry agencies under the 
Norris-Doxey Act. Embracing some 650 counties 
in 40 States in the fiscal year 1948, 173 farm wood- 
land management projects, each with a resident 
forester, were reaching only a small part of the 
farm-forest owners who desire such aid, even within 
the counties served. The Federal contribution to 
6 Miscellaneous Publication 668, U. S. Department of Agriculture 
