Introduction

Report of the Secretary FORESTRY AND ARIO LAND INTERESTS RiiPKiN'iKi) HV I'liE Author From a publication of tlu' State (jf Oreiioii in 1S08 Qf^ -^fr'dCLe-.Jdfco^j^ A PAPER FoRBSTKY Interests OF OREGON JOHN XIINTO A REHRINT HY XHE AUTHOR SAI.EM, OREGON': KOSS K MOORKS & CO., PRI.NTKRS 9 1 i) I) r>\ O'l'''" D. OF 0. PPB 14 -910 -- FORESTRY INTERESTS. ?Ir. President and ?Ieinhers of the Board: Since responding to j'our request in April last to write out my views on the subject of Forestry, I have, as you authorized, become a member of the American Forestry Associa- tion, and from its publications and others from the division of forestry of the United States department of agriculture, and from Hon. Binger Hermann, Commissioner of the General Land Office, I have secured valuable information on the present status of the national forest policy, in which the American Forestr5' Association seems to be an impelling and guiding influence. The American Forestrj' Association is a voluntary body. Its membership roll contains six hundred and ninety names, sixty-eight being females; and three hundred and seventj'- -- -- one a clean majority are residents of New York, Massa- chusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia, fifty claiming residence in Washington Citj'. It is, I believe, reasonable to suppose that the large majority -- of the members of this body are educated people idealists on the subject of forestry. It is not deemed iinreasonable to assume that the fifty members located in Washington are (in addition to being well informed) either in the employ of the National Government, or wishing to be so. The organization is so constituted that a few active members can shape the course of the association and become a powerful influence in framing the policy of the g-overnment relative to the disposal of forest lands. Take B. K. Fernow's position as illustration; He is chairman of its executive committee three being a quorum; a member of its directors, four being a quorum. [And fifteen is a quorum of the association.] He is also chief of the division of forestry, which gives him a great personal influence. By the report of its executive cominittee, read by Mr. Fernow, February .5, 1897, we are informed that it secured the appointment of a committee of the National Academy of Sciences "by inducitig the then Secretary of the Interior (Hon. Hoke Smith) to ask the advice of that learned body" as to the proper steps to be taken with reference to the public timber lands; that an appropriation of $2o,000 was readily secured to pay its expenses; that "it was not expected its recommendations would be esseutiullj- or atrikitiirlj- (lifferent I'ruiti those niarlo unci advocated bj- the ussociation;" that it was hoped ''the weight of the opinion of the eminent men of the committee, so secured, and the body from which the committee was -- selected being- tlie legally constituted advisor of the govern-- ment in matters scientific would do much to arouse more general public interest and to secure the passage of desired legislation." In the same report the committee mentions that "it passed and directed to congress and the executive, resolutions protesting against the modification of the Cascade range forest reserve, which modification the people of Oregon had petitioned for." The report of the executive committee of the American Forestry .Association was read at its meeting on February ."ith. That ot the committee whose appointment it secured from tile .Vcatlemy of Sciences, by tfie help of one or more competent clerks of the general land ofiBce detailed by Secretary Francis to assist in its preparation, had been "completed and submitted about February lat." It recommended tliirleen additional forest reserves, of an aggregate area of '.il,:{7'.�,8-H) acres. The recommendation was adopted and proclaimed on Fetiruary 22, 1897, Hithuut reference to the rejjresentutiren of the states njost directly interested or tfie conditions of their udniission as political communities, in plain contravention oi some important provisions. The report is introduced by alluding to experiments now under process by Gustave Wex, an eminent engineer having charge of improvements on the river Danube, giving gauges recorded as to tlie high and low water marks of ten rivers having their sources in central Europe. As the examinations are incomplete, they are inconclusive as to central Europe, and constitute simply an introduction to the report, which seems to avoid scientific demonstration, to deal in assumption of facts and aspersions of industries in Oregon which cannot be truthfully applied to tfie natural conditions existing in this state, nor to the actions of its citizens. Happilj-, the report shows such a lack of statesmanship that it caused a halt in the movement of the policy which thus seems to have been initiated by the Forestry Association, the general objects of which are certainly worthy and very important where timber is needed. The wording of the report of the committee to the Academy of Sciences is such, as to assertions made and language used, as to create the suspicion that the committee trusted too much to the clerk or clerks the secretary of tlie interior phicetl to their assist- -- ance. Assertions of fact are iiiatle and expressions used relative to sheep and sheep husbandry that may be passed over as emanating from an appointee of President Cleveland. It is not possible to believe such assertions and expressions to be the composition of any member of a bodj' selected from the American Academy of Sciences, and the letter of Professor Sargent, in appendix it of the report, is so superior as to make it almost certain the members "signed a report none of them would have written." The tenure of the report is so abusive of sheep and sheep owners as to create the conviction that it is the product of personal animosity, as it is but a refined echo of the western cowboy's abuse of sheep -- and sheep owners his successful contestants for grass in the range country. The effect of this part of the report will be to increase and encourage animosities which have caused the outrages against law and justice tliat have been committed against flock owners and their tlocks in every range state. It is not intended to claim that sheep men are not sometimes aggressors in these troubles: they are not angels. The use of the word "nomadic," as defining this mode of sheep-keeping, is calculated to give a false conception of the pursuit. The owners are not "nomads," nor are their tlocks, indeed. The former have their settled homes in the -- dry pastoral regions of the range states are themselves the equals of other men engaged in developing their localities, both in public spirit and private enterprise. This fact can be proved by looking at the devlopment of a country much more closely resembling that claimed to have been examined by the committee than does that of central Europe Australasia. But Australia, and the lessons to be derived from Australia's enterprise, in the conservation of scant water suppU', its records of rainfall, its experiences of the encroachment of "pine scrub" upon sheep and cattle ranges, the greater success of the former on driest ranges as compared with the latter, has received no notice from this intelligent committee. Whj'? It would seem as though the work -- was already cut out for this respectable committee as a stalking horse to the forestry association; and it came very near telling by whom, when it follows John Muirand B. K. Fernow in holding up to the secretary of the interior, and through him to the president of the United States, the examples of the imperial governments of Germany, Russia and British rule in India in regard to forestry; as though the citizenship of the United States were on the same level as the laboring populations of those countries, and there 6 were no ay:r�'ment between the states and the nation in the way of its recommendations. The committee commends tlie use of tlie army to guard these reserves, now aggregatinji^ nearly fort}- inillion acres, needed, as it claims, for the preservatii)n of the water supply in the dry interior; and as a means of making- money where the best timber is and water is not needed, as in the Olympic rangein Washing-ton. It recommends the exclusion of sheep from pasturage within these reservations, as destroyers of the forest and desolators of the plains. The herders are singled out as incendiaries of forests. The major reasons for its recommendations are that forests protect the sources of streams in mountain and highland districts, by preserving- the snow from melting and impeding the percolation of melted snow or rain from reaching the valleys below. My observation teaches me that mountains and highlands are the attracting- causes of precipitation, and trees and brushwood are effecta of this precipitation; that all other things being equal, snow melts first in belts of timber or brush, partly because the frees and brush break :p the snow wlien falling- and partly because of the influence of color on solar rays, dark objects absorbing, white, reflecting heat. The bulletin (No. ;iS) of the experiment station of the Universit}of Missouri is now sending out the result of color on peach trees, showing that the simple act of wliitewashing this sensitive tree delaj'ed the swelling of the buds twenty-two days later than the unwhitened. This accords with my observations on the Cascade rang�, where it is rare to find a patch of snow within the timber after the middle of July, and not then near the trees or brush. Later than that snow is on'open ground; generally where it has tjeen laid by drifting. These snow banks on open land, and water from springs in valleys below, are the sources of rivers after the middle of July. Congress, in passing tVie sundry civil expense bill, June i, 1897, provided for the survey of the forest reserves, and empowered the president to revoke, modify or suspend all such executive orders or proclamations, or any part thereof, from time to time, as he shall deem Ijest for the public interests; and suspended the proclamation of Februarj- 22, 1897, as to reserves in Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Washington, Idaho and South Dakota, till March 1, 1898. This action has had the result of causing the departments of the interior and of agriciiltiire to sent out special agents to collect information on the interests involved. Mr. F. V. Coville, botanist of the department of agriculture, visited this olTice / with a letter of iutroducliori from Hon. Hinger Hermann, asking such aid as I could give him as a special agent of the department of agriculture, sent to Oregon with a view of studying and reporting upon the subject of sheep grazing within the forest reserves. I gave him all the aid 1 could .and a general letter of introduction to such stockmen as he should meet on his proposed route northward from Klamath Kails on the summit and eastern slope of the Cascade range. In a letter from Washington, acknowledging my letter was a service to him, he expresses the belief that he had gathered facts which would solve the grazing question. A letter from Kdwin F. Smith, statistical agent of the department of agriculture, asking the number of sheep and value of grazing on the Cascade range and foot-hills, was received by Hon. H. E. Dosch, of the first district, who turned it over to me for answer. Based on the nnmtjer of sheep assessed in Wasco, Sherman, Crook, Lake and Klamath counties in 18!Xi, and estimating the number of lambs not assessed, I count the total 707,(567 liead, the wool yield of which I estimate at l.&i^.liliO pounds, worth in the home market $19.^.366.90, all of which I credit to summer grazing, leaving the mutton and lambs to the credit of winter care; but I think the benefit of the sheep being taking off the plains in summer is worth fully as much to other stock in- -- -- terests horses and cattle and to the wintering of sheep, so that the total value would be in round number $1.(X)0,000 anuallj'. Only one-third of these sheep as yet go within the l)ounds of the reserves as laid, but the number is increasing as the flock-owners increase and improve their provisions for the winter keep. There is little or no lumber taken from the reservations. The provision for winter feed is the engrossing summer work of the east Oregon flock-owner, and his success in that is the measure of his success in his pursuit. In this he has the advantage of the range cattle owner, as he has his flocks always under control, which is well nigh impossiljle with catlle or horses. Cattle, horses and fat sheep are generally shipped to markets east of the Rockies by rail, but sheep designed for sale as breeders for the ranges of Wyoming or the Dakotas, or feeders for the corn lands of Xebraska, Kansas, or adjoining states, are driven on foot, -- perferably on the highest lands on the route taken both food and water and avoidance of local interests being considered. The