American Big Game in Its Haunts: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club

by Unknown

Forest Reserves of North America

In the United States something over 100,000 square miles of the public domain has been set aside and reserved from settlement for economic purposes. This vast area includes reservations of four different kinds: First, National Forest Reserves, aggregating some 63,000,000 acres, for the conservation of the water supply of the arid and semi-arid West; second, National Parks, of which there are seventeen, for the purpose of preserving untouched places of natural grandeur and interest; third, State Parks, for places of recreation and for conserving the water supply; and fourth, military wood and timber reservations, to provide Government fuel or other timber. Most military wood reserves were originally established in connection with old forts.

The forest reservations, as they are by far the largest, are also much the most important of these reserved areas.

Perhaps three-quarters of the population of the United States do not know that over nearly one-half of the national territory within the United States the rainfall is so slight or so unevenly distributed that agriculture cannot be carried on except by means of irrigation. This irrigation consists of taking water out of the streams and conducting it by means of ditches which have a very gentle slope over the land which it is proposed to irrigate. From the original ditch, smaller ditches are taken out, running nearly parallel with each other, and from these laterals other ditches, still smaller, and the seepage from all these moistens a considerable area on which crops may be grown. This, very roughly, is irrigation, a subject of incalculable interest to the dwellers in the dry West.

It is obvious that irrigation cannot be practiced without water, and that every ditch which takes water from a stream lessens the volume of that stream below where the ditch is taken out. It is conceivable that so many ditches might be taken out of the stream, and so much of the water lost by evaporation and seepage into the soil irrigated, that a stream which, uninterfered with, was bank full and even flowing throughout the summer, might, under such changed condition, become absolutely dry on the lower reaches of its course. And this, in fact, is what has happened with some streams in the West. Where this is the case, the farmers who live on the lower stretches of the stream, being without water to put on their land, can raise no crops. Nothing, therefore, is more important to the agriculturists of the West than to preserve full and as nearly equal as possible at all seasons the water supply in their streams.

This water is supplied by the annual rain or snow fall; but in the West chiefly by snow. It falls deep on the high mountains, and, protected there by the pine forests, accumulates all through the winter, and in spring slowly melts. The deep layer of half-rotted pine needles, branches, decayed wood and other vegetable matter which forms the forest floor, receives this melting snow and holds much of it for a time, while the surplus runs off over the surface of the ground, and by a thousand tiny rivulets at last reaches some main stream which carries it toward the sea. In the deep forest, however, the melting of this snow is very gradual, and the water is given forth slowly and gradually to the stream, and does not cause great floods. Moreover, the large portion of it which is held by the humus, or forest floor, drains off still more gradually and keeps the springs and sources of the brook full all through the summer.

Without protection from the warm spring sun, the snows of the winter might melt in a week and cause tremendous torrents, the whole of the melted snowfall rushing down the stream in a very short time. Without the humus, or forest floor, to act as a soaked sponge which gradually drains itself, the springs and sources of the brooks would go dry in early summer, and the streams further down toward the cultivated plains would be low and without sufficient water to irrigate all the farms along its course.

It was for the purpose of protecting the farmers of the West by insuring the careful protection of the water supply of all streams that Congress wisely passed the law providing for the establishing of the forest reserves. It is for the benefit of these farmers and of those others who shall establish themselves along these streams that the Presidents of the United States for the last twelve or fourteen years have been establishing forest reserves and have had expert foresters studying different sections of the western country to learn where the water was most needed and where it could best be had.

It is gratifying to think that, while at first the establishment of these forest reserves was very unpopular in certain sections of the West, where their object was not in the least understood, they have—now that the people have come to see what they mean—received universal approval. It sometimes takes the public a long time to understand a matter, but their common sense is sure at last to bring them to the right side of any question.

The list of reservations here given is brought down to December, 1903, and is furnished by the U.S. Forester—a member of the Club.