20 FOREST PRESERVATION AXD NATIONAL PROSPERITY. 



tion depends upon water supplies, and the water supply is furnished 

 from the melting snows caught and held by the forest clothing the 

 great mountain chains of the Sierras and the Rockies. 



What is needed to-day is vastly more strength to the arm of Ameri- 

 can forestry for the vigorous prosecution of its carefully outlined 

 plan to save what we now possess. The two greatest problems be- 

 fore this country to-day are forestry and irrigation. For can any- 

 thing be of greater import than the creation of an empire within our 

 midst which will support a population as great as that of the entire 

 country to-day \ 



F. E. NEWELL. 

 Chief Engineer, TJ. S. Reclamation Service. 



The Government, through the operation of the reclamation act of 

 June 17. 1902, is building large irrigation works throughout the West. 

 The fund for that purpose now amounts to about 25 million dollars. 

 These works, national in character, are being built as rapidly as pos- 

 sible. The protection of these works, their future use, their stability 

 through all time, are very largely dependent upon the proper treat- 

 ment of the forests which lie upon the mountains above the reservoirs. 

 In fact there is hardly a project now under consideration whose 

 future success is not closely joined with the questions of the best use 

 and preservation of the forests, and, to a less degree, of the grazing 

 land immediately adjacent. These works are being built to last for 

 all time, and if they are to be preserved in their best condition it can 

 only be after we have solved this question of the protection and best 

 use of the forests. 



* * * Take Arizona, for instance. Here the Reclamation Serv- 

 ice is building a storage dam at Roosevelt costing probably 3 million 

 dollars. When built it will enable the creation of homes for many 

 thousands of people and render productive a large area now desert. 

 For the protection of the Arizona reservoir a forest reserve must be 

 had above the reservoir, in order to prevent, as far as possible, the 

 washing of soil, which follows ujDon the destruction of tree growth. 

 In Colorado is the Gunnison tunnel 30,000 feet in length, to take 

 water from the Gunnison River into the Uncompahgre Valley — a 

 broad, fertile, but arid plain. The headwaters of that river must be 

 protected in part by the forests as well as by reservoirs. In Idaho 

 the same is true. 



This matter of the development of the West is not a State question, 

 but is interstate. We must build reservoirs in Wyoming: we must 

 conserve forests in Wyoming to benefit the arid plains of Idaho. In 

 western Kansas there is the greatest interest in irrigation, and 

 although there are no forests the rivers that come into Kansas, as 

 the Arkansas, depend partly for the continuity of their flow on the 



