organizations, about 414 million is managed as 
community forests. These are in more than 3,000 
units in 43 States. A few date back a great many 
years, although most are of recent establishment. 
These forests help meet community needs for 
watershed protection, readily accessible recreational 
facilities, and other public services—not to men- 
tion timber and the revenue to be derived from 
it. Some, especially the municipal forests managed 
primarily for water supply, receive excellent man- 
agement. It remains to be seen how well local 
governments can build up and maintain forests, 
how well they can resist pressure to exploit them 
for immediate income. Some sales of these lands 
already made may prove to have been unwise. 
However, community forests are a promising de- 
velopment and can do much to stimulate local 
interest and understanding of opportunities and 
needs in forestry. 
Extension of Public Ownership 
Early land-disposal policies shifted to private 
ownership much forest land that should have re- 
mained in public hands. True, this made for a 
speedy opening up and use of forest resources, but 
to accomplish the sterner tasks of rehabilitation and 
permanent management enlarged public ownership 
is needed. 
Just how much additional forest land should go 
back into public ownership depends on many fac- 
tors including the extent of effective private man- 
agement. But there are substantial acreages whose 
values and location unmistakably best suit them to 
public ownership—Federal, State, or local.4°  Prin- 
cipally these are in six categories: 
1. Lands where soil, climate, or species make for 
such slow growth or poor quality that there is little 
incentive for good private forestry. 
2. Lands so depleted of timber growing stock 
that the needed heavy outlays for rehabilitation 
and the long waiting make net returns too small 
and uncertain to attract private capital. 
3. Lands where private ownership results in such 
inadequate management as seriously to threaten 
stable supplies of forest products, and the dependent 
communities and industries. 
40 A Forest Service study in 1937 suggested as a flexible 
future goal that an additional 140 to 150 million acres of 
forest land should be publicly owned—about two-thirds Fed- 
eral. A more up-to-date review doubtless would modify 
this estimate, but there jis evident need for extensive ac- 
quisition. 
Forests and National Prosperity 
- 4, Forest lands vital to control and use of water, 
where private ownership cannot assure good water- 
shed management. 
5. Forests of high value for recreation, wildlife 
propagation, and other public services, where priv- 
ate ownership will not afford adequate develop- 
ment or access. 
6. Lands so intermingled with or integrally re- 
lated to public forests that their separate owner- 
ship seriously hampers administration and manage- 
ment of the public lands. 
Of high priority is the acquisition of a large 
acreage in the last category—the intermingled lands. 
In the West, much national-forest and other Federal 
land forms a checkered pattern of alternate mile- 
square sections, interspersed with private and other 
holdings that were alienated in this fashion from 
the public domain. Within the exterior boundar- 
ies of other national forests, the pattern of owner- 
ship is somewhat similarly patchy, though not in 
a regular checkerboard (fig. 29). In some units of 
the eastern national forests, Federal ownership 
constitutes less than half of the total. Within the 
boundaries of all national forests, there are nearly 
50 million acres of alienated land of which, it is 
estimated, some 35 million should be acquired. 
Some State forests are similarly broken up, and 
many are in small, widely scattered units. 
Patchwork ownership adds to the difficulties in 
protecting forests, in laying out satisfactory road 
systems, in managing timber and other resources, 
and, indeed, in exercising most management func- 
tions. Although cooperative management of pub- 
lic and private lands under sustained-yield agree- 
ments #4 will meet the needs in some localities, 
consolidation through purchase or exchange is the 
chief means of unscrambling the jigsaw pattern 
which so often impedes effective administration of 
public forests. 
Progress in acquisition has been much too slow. 
This reflects public apathy—mostly lack of under- 
standing of forestry needs and of what public 
forests can contribute to local economic and in- 
dustrial welfare. Then, too, there is opposition 
in some localities motivated by fear of government 
encroachment into private affairs. On the other 
hand, local interest and initiative are responsible 
for much public acquisition. As yet, the general 
public is not well informed of its large stake in 
stable, effective management of forest land on 
“See p. 94. 
91 
