Per hreaeer eu DO Ne bi UL GE LN 7 
Under both the Illinois and Iowa laws, the state conservation authori- 
ties — in Iowa the Conservation Commission, and in Illinois the Depart- 
ment of Conservation — have been given supervisory controls over con- 
servation district programs. The state agencies’ approval is required for 
any major land acquisition or development project. This is intended to 
assure that the district programs will harmonize with the state’s over-all 
parks and recreational facilities program. 
It is anticipated, according to William T. Lodge, director of the Illinois 
Department of Conservation, that some small parks and historic site areas 
now owned and operated by the state will be turned over to the conser- 
vation districts. The state is trying to hold to a policy of not accepting 
any site for a state park that is less than 1,000 acres in size. Some of those 
it now administers are much smaller than this. 
There are two big reasons why development — as the conservation 
district law makes possible — is urgent. One, which Conservation Director 
Lodge points out at every public opportunity, is that Illinois has the lowest 
acreage of public recreation lands of any state. Its total is 565,178 acres for 
more than 10 million residents, and nearly half of this is in federal forest 
preserves in the southern part of the state. 
The second reason is that with the population explosion, animal and 
plant life are rapidly being pushed aside and crowded out. That is par- 
ticularly true in Macon and other grain-belt counties, where wooded tracis 
and green open spaces are fast being encroached on by the subdivider in 
urban areas and the grain-farm plow in rural regions. 
Although Iowa is far ahead of Illinois in the new movement to conserve 
its scenic and historic areas for public use in perpetuity, its recreation and 
conservation leaders recognize their state got a slow start on the program. 
Asked if with nearly all of their counties in the act, Iowa is not in 
position to acquire and preserve for public use ‘almost every desirable 
historic and scenic area in the state,” H.W. Freed, Iowa Conservation Com- 
mission staff member who has been close to the whole Iowa development, 
sald: 
“Yes, our program will preserve most of the wooded areas that now 
exist in Iowa. We are getting into this just in time, for those areas are 
being encroached on fast. It would have been better if we had started 40 
years ago, for much that we should have had is gone — gone forever.” 
Freed, as director of County Conservation District activities for the 
Iowa Conservation Commission, has been in general charge of aiding the 
counties in promoting formation of the districts. He spends most of his 
time in the field helping the district boards plan and execute development 
of parks, wildlife areas and other facilities. 
Izaak Walton League leaders in many of the counties are credited by 
Freed with Iowa’s impressive progress in organizing the conservation 
districts. 
“Any interested group — Sportsmen’s Club, Audubon Society, or the 
Jaycees — could serve as sponsoring agency for the formation of a district.” 
Freed pointed out. “When the advantages are shown, and the modest cost 
In comparison to the advantages, it isn’t difficult to win a favorable vote 
in a referendum.” 
“Some of the counties,” he said, “have shown great imagination, and 
have developed projects that are novel as well as educational and recrea- 
