Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/485

Rh regulations for the administration of each can be determined upon.

—The proposition to dispose of the public lands of the Government by giving them to the States in which they are situated has often been under discussion, and in this connection it has been suggested that if the Government will give the forested lands to the States they will be better taken care of than by the General Government. This may be true, but as long as the forestry question is an interstate problem there will be great difficulty in adjusting conditions within a State so as to do full justice to the interests of the adjoining States. This applies more largely to fire protection and the water for irrigation than to timber supplies. If the General Government, however, should not establish a permanent and successful forest policy, I believe that it would be much better to give the forested lands to the States than to continue the system of waste and destruction that has existed in the past. There is no doubt that under State adminstrationadministration [sic] something would be done, but the chances are that it would come too late to be of avail in the permanent protection of the forests.

Private ownership of forest lands within or adjoining the forest reserves can not but be detrimental to the interests of the forests and to the people to whom they are tributary. Both individuals and corporations purchase the forested lands for the purpose of profit, and when this is secured, either by the cutting of the timber or by sale to other parties, their interest ceases. It is very rarely, except in the case of very large holdings, that any attempt at protection against destruction by fire is made, but any one who has traversed the forests of the West in the vicinity of settlements has seen the results of the cutting of the timber. If it happens that firewood is marketable, the land is swept clean of every tree upon it, and great piles of brush are left scattered over the ground, ready to carry the first fire that may reach them to the adjoining forest, and destroy every vestige of vegetation that may have escaped the axe in the area cut over.

—The question of the forest reserves has both a practical and a sentimental interest. Its practical bearings are felt by the people of the States in which the reserves are situated, and by those interests in adjoining States which are dependent upon the reserves for their timber supply and, in the arid and semiarid States, for water for irrigation, without which it would be impossible for the population of large areas to exist. The sentimental interest is largely among the people who, without any direct values at stake, feel that the element of the population that would waste the forest