THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE RESERVES UNDER THE GENERAL LAND OFFICE
The Act of June 4, 1897. The Secretary of the Interior in 1896 requested the National Academy of Sciences, the legally constituted advisor of the Government in scientific matters, to investigate, report upon, and recommend a National Forest policy. This resulted in the Act of June 4, 1897, under which, with subsequent amendments, the National Forests are now being administered. Under this act the Reserves remained in the hands of the General Land Office, Department of the Interior. It charged this office with the administration and protection of the Forest Reservations. Later the Geological Survey was charged with surveying and mapping them, and the Division of Forestry was asked to give technical advice. It is very evident that the Division of Forestry containing all the trained scientific staff had no relation to the government forestry work except as the offices of the Department of the Interior might apply for assistance or advice. It is true that an important step had been taken, but the complete separation of the administration by the General Land Office and the force of trained men in the Division of Forestry was a serious defect.
The Act of June 4 might be called the Magna Charta of national forestry. The U. S. Geological Survey undertook the task of surveying, classifying, and describing the Forest Reservations. At a cost of about one and one-half million dollars over 70,000,000 acres of Forest Reserves were mapped and described. The General Land Office undertook the administration and Forest Superintendents and Rangers were appointed to take charge of the Reservations. The rules and regulations for administering the Reserves were formulated by the Commissioner of the General Land Office.
The Division of Forestry in 1898. On July 1, 1898, the Division of Forestry employed 11 persons, 6 clerical and 5 scientific. There were also some collaborators and student assistants. There was no field equipment and no field work. But in the fall of 1898 an important step was taken. From that time on the Division of Forestry offered practical assistance to forest owners and thus it shifted its field of activity from the desk to the woods. The lumbermen were met on their own grounds and actual forest management for purely commercial ends was undertaken by well known lumbermen. From that time dates the solution of specific problems of forest management and the development of efficient methods of attacking them. The work of the Division at this time, therefore, consisted of activities along 4 distinct lines: (1) that of working plans, (2) that of economic tree planting, (3) that of special investigations, and (4) that of office work. Thus it will be seen, even at this late date the Division had practically nothing to say about the scientific forestry methods which should be used on the Reservations.
The Bureau of Forestry. In 1901 the Division of Forestry was raised to the rank of a Bureau, but this was a change in name only and carried with it no change in the handling of the Government's vast forest resources.