Forestry is a vast subject. It has to do with farm and forest, soil and climate, man and beast. It affects hill and valley, mountain and plain. It influences the life of cities, states, and nations. It deals not only with the manifold problems of growing timber and forest by-products, such as forage, naval stores, tanbark, and maple sugar, but it is intimately related to the navigability of rivers and harbors, the flow of streams, the erosion of hillsides, the destruction of fertile farm lands, the devastation wrought by floods, the game and birds of the forest, the public health, and national prosperity. The practice of forestry has, therefore, become an important part in the household economy of civilized nations. Every nation has learned, through the misuse of its forest resources, that forest destruction is followed by timber famines, floods, and erosion. Mills and factories depending upon a regular stream flow must close down, or use These are the lessons that some of the world's greatest nations have learned, in some cases through sad experience. The French people, after neglecting their forests, following the French Revolution, paid the penalty. France, through her reckless cutting in the mountain forests, has suffered and is still suffering from devastating floods on the Seine and other streams. Over one million acres were cut over in the mountains, and the slash and young growth that was left was destroyed by fire. As a result of this forest destruction the fertility of over 8,000,000 acres of tillable land was destroyed and the population of eighteen departments was impoverished or driven out. Now, although over Our own country has learned from its own experiences and from the experiences of nations like France. On a small scale we have endured the same devastating floods. Forest fires in the United States have caused an average annual loss of seventy human lives and from $25,000,000 to $50,000,000 worth of timber. The indirect losses run close to a half a billion a year. Like other nations, we have come to the conclusion that forest conservation can be assured only through the public ownership of forest resources. Other nations have bought or otherwise acquired national, state, and municipal forests, to assure the people a never-failing supply of timber. For this reason, mainly, our own National Forests have been created and maintained. The ever-increasing importance of the forestry movement in this country, which brings with it an ever-increasing desire for information along forestry lines, has led me to prepare this volume dealing with our National Forests. To a large extent I write from my own experience, having come in contact with the federal forestry movement for Few people realize that the bringing under administration and protection of these vast forests is one of the greatest achievements in the history of forest conservation. To place 155,000,000 acres of inaccessible, mountainous, forest land, scattered through our great western mountain ranges and in eighteen Western States, under administration, to manage these forests according to scientific forestry principles, to make them yield a revenue of almost $3,500,000 annually, and to protect them from the ravages of forest fires and reducing the huge annual loss to but a small fraction of what it was before—these are some of the things that have been accomplished by the United States Forest Service within the last twenty years. Not only is this a great achievement in itself, but few people realize what the solution of the National The people of the West are convinced that a If I succeed only in a small degree to make my reader appreciate the great significance of the National Forest movement to our national economy, I will feel amply repaid for the time spent in preparing this brief statement. I am indebted to the Forest Service for many valuable illustrations used with the text, and for data and other valuable assistance. To all those who have aided in the preparation of this volume, by reading the manuscript or otherwise, I extend my sincere thanks. I am especially grateful to Mr. Herbert A. Smith and others of the Washington office of the Forest Service for having critically read the manuscript and for having offered valuable suggestions. Richard H. Douai Boerker. New York, N. Y., |