Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/324

324 timber lands as national forests. Speaking generally, there has been reserved of the existing forests about 70 per cent, of all the timber lands of the government. Within these forests (including 26,000,000 acres in two forests in Alaska) are 192,000,000 of acres, of which 166,000,000 of acres are in the United States proper, and include within their boundaries something like 22,000,000 of acres that belong to the state or to private individuals. We have, then, excluding Alaska forests, a total of about 144,000,000 acres of forests belonging to the government which is being treated in accord with the principles of scientific forestry.

The law now prohibits the reservation of any more forest lands in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado and Wyoming, except by act of congress. I am informed by the department of agriculture that the government owns other tracts of timber land in these states which should be included in the forest reserves. I expect to recommend to congress that the limitation herein imposed shall be repealed.

In the present forest reserves there are lands which are not properly forest land, and which ought to be subject to homestead entry. This has caused some local irritation. We are carefully eliminating such lands from forest reserves, or where their elimination is not practicable, listing them for entry under the forest homestead act. Congress ought to trust the executive to use the power of reservation only with respect to land covered by timber or which will be useful in the plan of reforestation. During the present administration 6,250,000 acres of land, largely non-timbered, have been excluded from forest reserves, and 3,500,000 acres of land principally valuable for forest purposes have been included in forest reserves, making a reduction in forest reserves of non-timbered land amounting to 2,750,000 acres. The Bureau of Forestry since its creation has initiated reforestation on 5,600 acres.

A great deal of the forest land is available for grazing. During the past year the grazing lessees numbered 25,400, and they pastured upon the forest reserves 1,400,000 cattle, 84,540 horses and 7,580,400 sheep, for which the government received $986,715—a decrease from the preceding year of $45,470, due to the fact that no money was collected or received for grazing on the non-timbered lands eliminated from the forest reserve. Another source of profit in the forestry is the receipts for timber sold. This year they amounted to $1,043,000, an increase of $307,000 over the receipts of last year. This increase is due to the improvement in transportation to market and to the greater facility with which the timber can be reached.

The government timber in this country amounts to only one fourth of all the timber, the rest being in private ownership. Only 3 per cent. of that which is in private ownership is looked after properly and treated according to modern rules of forestry. The usual destructive waste and neglect continues in the remainder of the forests owned by