The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1929-01-02
Sell Promising Protection,
Gathered Ouer 500
DELAY IN FOREST RECLAMA-
TION A CRIME AGAINST POS
TERTTY SAYS CHIEF FORESTER

TION A CRIME AGAINST POS-
TERITY SAYS CHIEF FORESTER
The United States can not afford tx
let things drift in working out the
most economical and advantageous
use of it's forest areas, Chief Forester
R. Y. Stuart of the United States De
partment Of Agriculture declared to-
day.
ALREADY conditions have been ere
ated in parts of the country which
leave it doubtful whether some Of thu
land has not passed over from the
class of potentially useful into thu
class of permanent though artificial
DESERT" Major Stuart said. 'It may
be past the point at which it will ever
repay public reclamation. To let this
conversion go on is a crime agains'
posterity. 1t is also an impairment Of
present values such as, we can not
ourselves afford"
With three-fourths Of the forest
land, and six-sevenths of the popula-
ton, the eastern half of the United
State contains less than two-fifths OF
the country's standing saw timber
the Chief Forester pointed out. The
problem of putting the land to produc-
tive and beneficial use is particularly
acute in this section. Less than one
sixth of it's forests are virgin, and it
is now drawing upon the virgin stands
of the West for more than 20 percent
of it's annual consumption of lumber.
It's cut-over forests vary in present
condition from second-growth ripe for
the saw to land wholly denuded of
valuable timber. Of the total east
ern forest area more than 95 percent
is privately owned.
The United States can not afford to
wait passively for economic forces to
work out the problem in their slow
way, says Major Stuart.
SIN time," he continued, "those
forces alone would largely accomplish
what needs to be done. Gradually
private landowners will come to grow
timber crops on larger and larger
part of the 336,000,000 acres of east
ern forest land which they now own.
Gradually they will abandon larger
and larger part of the land which they
can not make pay enough to meet it's
tax bills.
Gradually forced public ownership
of these abandoned and wrecked
lands, brought about through pro-
cess of automatic land classification,
will lead to policies of public admin
istration and reclamatory expendi
lures. The public and private bur-
dens imposed by shortages of neces-
sary forest products and in the form
of impoverished localities, stripped
mountains, man-made deserts, and vi
client changes in the character of
stream flow, will sternly bring home
the necessity for finding remedies.
But the cost of waiting for all this
and the easily preventable deteriora-
ton in the ability of the forest to re-
spond to right practices make the sug-
gestion of such a course monstrous."
"Two major purposes need to be
pursued" Major Stuart said, in point
ing out a desirable remedial program.
"One of them is to hasten the econ
omic process by which, in time, pro-
badly the major fraction of the pre-
sent private forest land in the east
ern half of the county-and for that
matter in the West, too-will come to
be used for timber growing by it's
owners as paying private enter
prise. The other is to adopt public
policies of forest-land acquisition and
administration on a scale that will
bring the East, without too long de-
lay, into a situation more nearly COM
parable with that of the West and of
every great nation of the civilized
world having extensive forest re-
sources"
In every part of the country, ac-
cording to Major Stuart, it is impor-
tant to check the forest deterioration
caused by fire. Both the Federal
Government and in most regions the
private owners must more fully meet
their responsibility in this regard. In
addition, large part of the public
effort in connection with forestry
must be directed toward finding out
the how and where of private fores-
try and getting the results into prac-
tical use-toward research and indus
trial education. However, private
forestry at best will never accomplish
more than partial solution of the
forestry problem. Public forestry
must attack the core from the other
side through State, Federal, and mu-
nicipal forest acquisition, aimed pri-
marily at obtaining the land most
necessary from the standpoint of
watershed protection, recreation, and
like public needs, land which, under
management, will tend most effec-
lively to stimulate private interest in
timber growing, and land necessitat-
ing such OUTLAWS for its reclamation
to good timber-growing conditions
that not for long time, if ever, will
private capital make use of it.