Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/39

 the exporting to foreign countries of timber unlawfully taken from the government lands to the detriment of the public interest, should be effectually arrested. Whatever our success in this respect may have been so far, it is certain that the evil will spring up again if the efforts of the government to arrest it should be in the least relaxed in the future, or if Congress should fail, by leaving the laws of the country in their present condition, to show an active sympathy with this policy. To that want of proper legislation I have each successive year called attention in my reports to you, as well as by direct appeals to Congress. The main features of the legislation urged by this department are very simple. They consist in two propositions: First, that the government should be authorized to sell timber from lands principally valuable for the timber growing upon them—that is to say, not agricultural nor mineral—at reasonable, perhaps even at merely nominal, rates to supply all domestic needs and all the wants of local business enterprise, as well as of commerce, the latter so far as compatible with the public interest; and, secondly, that these sales of timber be so regulated as to preserve the necessary proportion of the forests on the public lands from waste and indiscriminate destruction. Such a policy can, in my opinion, be carried out without great cost, with a simple machinery, and in perfect justice to the wants of settlers and the business enterprises of the country. It is virtually the policy proposed to Congress by the Public Lands Commiss i on in the report and the bill submitted to Congress at its last session.

I would also urge once more upon Congress the importance of the passage of a law, repeatedly recommended in my reports, prescribing a severe penalty for the willful, negligent, or careless setting of fires upon public timber-lands of the United States, and also providing for the recovery of damages thereby sustained. The extensive as well as wanton destruction of the timber upon public lands, by the willful or negligent and careless setting of fires by hunters or prospectors or tourists, is a matter of general notoriety. The destruction caused in this way from year to year is almost beyond calculation. While in several, if not in all of the States, such acts are made penal offenses by statute, no law of the United States provides specifically for their punishment when committed upon the public lands. If forest-fires in the Western States and Territories cannot be wholly prevented by such a law, the punishment of some offenders here and there will certainly make the class of persons most liable to commit such offenses more careful, and thereby at least limit the extent of the immense damage now caused by negligence or recklessness.

The question of the preservation of forests in just proportion to the area of the country is engaging the attention of prudent men in every civilized nation. By competent authorities it is estimated that this proportion should be about one-fourth of the whole. In some foreign countries the injury caused by the barbarous ignorance and improvidence of