“When it is realized that all this timber belongs to the wards of the United States, the Indians, or to the Government itself, it is hard to see on what principle the states can so neglect this great timber belt. Not a foot of this timber can be sold or in any way disposed of until it has been appraised and surveyed. And it was asked that the Minnesota delegation in Congress take steps at once to have Congress pass a measure authorizing the placing of a revenue cutter on the Lake of the Woods, and equipping two posts, one near Rainy Lake, and the other directly across from Hungry Hall, where one lone timber inspector is supposed to be. But has any thing been done? The State Senatorial Committee of Minnesota, in an investigation of frauds against the state, found the timber pirates responsible for most all the calamities from fire which have befallen the timber lands of the state. After stealing millions of dollars worth of timber belonging to the state, in order to cover the theft, have started fires which have resulted in those terrible losses of life and property. Firing the lands they had fraudulently cleared in order to render the measurement of stumpage impossible, and thereby shut off any suits a commission might attempt to bring against them. In putting the torch to the ‘toppings,’ every thing is destroyed—stumps, young trees and frequently valuable timber, to the amount of many million dollars.”
In all the pine belts in the western country there is a loud demand by honest citizens, that the manner of cutting timber be severely regulated. It has been clearly shown from time to time that this forest destruction in the United States without restitution, is still going on at the enormous rate of over ten million acres annually, and must soon land the country in all the ills due to forest famine.
Senator Paddock, of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, reports that the United States Government retains somewhat less than seventy million acres of public domain, which is designated as timber or woodland, mostly situated on the slopes and crests of the western mountain ranges. The above estimate may be too low, but if not, the entire forests of the Government are scarcely sufficient of themselves to supply the vast demands of the country another decade.
In 1889, it was estimated that Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming contained fifty-three thousand square miles of forest—Colorado and New Mexico, thirty thousand; and that other portions of the public domain were covered with large and valuable belts, and of which the Hon. Secretary of Agriculture says in his reports: “We are wasting our forests, by axe, by fire, by pasturage, by neglect. They are rapidly falling below the amount required by industrial needs, by our water supply, by our rivers, by our climate, by our navigation and agriculture. It is high time to call a halt. The devastation of the axe will probably go on in the forests owned by private parties. Other forms of devastation can and should be stopped by vigorous measures on the part of the Government.”
“Our only hope,” says Secretary Rusk, “is to save what forests we have still in public possession, ... not allowing them to be cut except under such conditions as will insure ample reproduction.”
Six years have passed since the above important declarations were made, still nothing has been done to deter the thieves or ward off a pending calamity.
For future forest supplies the people of the United States must look to the general government which controls the national domain, holds the keys of the public treasury, and is responsible for this source of national wealth.
From various authentic sources, it is stated of the once-timbered countries in Southern Europe, Northern Africa and from the Russian Empire to South India, which are now uninhabited barren wastes, has been due to changes of climate, soil and water-fall, from the loss of forests. The once fertile valleys of Syria, with springs and brooks, and fields of grain and grass, are as parched and dry, and water as scarce as it is on the desert or staked plains—summer suns have scorched the unprotected soil—hot winds absorbed the last vestige of moisture—the air is filled with clouds of loose dust, and the naked mountains stand as monuments of departed glory, of the Roman provinces from the Caucasus to the archipelago.
Look at the wasted peninsulas of Southern Europe. What has reduced to skeletons the inhabitants of the garden lands of the nations of classic antiquity? Greece has become a barren rock, and Sicily, “the pearl of the Mediterranean,” a hospital of famine, typhus and purulent ophthalmia!
Has not the desolation in each been due to one and the same cause?—the destruction of forests.