30 FOBEST PEESEBVATION AND NATIONAL PEOSPEEITY, 



ing plans wliich the Bureau has prepared for lands in 52 States and 

 Territories. 



The area in woodlots and timber tracts in this country is approx- 

 imately 500 million acres. It is from them that our future timber 

 supply must chiefly come. And the inauguration of better methods 

 in their management is thus a national duty until the private forester 

 is present in sufficient numbers to carry on the work. When that time 

 comes the Bureau will step aside. 



GIFFOBB PINCHOT, 



Forester, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



* * * We recognize that the bulk of our forests are now and must 

 always remain in the hands of private owners ; that it is only as the 

 private owner, large or small, becomes interested in forestry and 

 carries out its practical principles, that we shall succeed in introduc- 

 ing forestry into the United States. It should be, remembered by 

 every forester, and every man interested in forestry, that the wood- 

 lands in farms are about three times as great in extent as all the 

 national forest reserves, and that the reserves are almost insignificant 

 when compared with the vast area of timber land, the millions upon 

 millions of acres, which are owned by lumbermen in larger or smaller 

 holdings, by railroads, or by men of various occupations who control 

 the timber lands upon which the prosperity of this whole country 

 depends. This is to be remembered, that the forests of the private 

 owners will have to be set in order if the overwhelming calamity of a 

 timber famine is to be kept from this nation. The extension of the 

 present forest area, by restocking cut-over lands and by making 

 plantations where there are no forests, is one of the chief duties of 

 the present moment. This will be accomplished by helping the States 

 to formulate their own policies, by active cooperation in studying the 

 local situation in each, and by recommending the best procedure 

 under the conditions that are found to exist. In particular, the 

 farmers in every section of the country must be aided, either to 

 develop their woodlots or to plant trees upon the prairies. The 

 forests now under Government control should remain under Govern- 

 ment control so far as they are needed for public uses. We must 

 have forest reserves, and we shall have to extend their area later on, 

 not merely by Presidential proclamation, but by purchase, both East 

 and West. Forest lands are passing out of the Government's owner- 

 ship every day — lands whose preservation is absolutely essential to 

 the well-being of the country where they lie. It will eventually cost 

 the Government of the United States hundreds of millions of dol- 

 lars to become possessed again of the areas which it once held, which 

 are now in private ownership, and which are absolutely essential to 



