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Show ing the yield from his land. There are many sections of highly prosperous farms in the country where conservation is practiced by the farmers as a normal part of farm operations, and the only investment of the Federal Government is in making engineering and technical assistance available. Forest conservation is practiced much less widely as a private responsibility. An article published in Fortune in August 1950 indicated that rapid strides are being made by the industry, but it added that conservation was not feasible on holdings of less than 200,000 acres. De- creases in waste would increase the value of tim- ber stands, and owners and operators would have a greater incentive to conserve their assets, resort- ing less to the denudation of forest slopes, which makes natural reforestation difficult. The management of private forest lands, like the conservation of farm land, is to a large extent an unsolved problem in the conservation of land and water. The physical techniques of conser- vation management are reasonably well under- stood, though much remains to be learned. The methods by which these techniques can be insti- tuted, particularly on private land, are not nearly so clear. An aspect of the Department of Agriculture's work, which has been hampered mainly by lack of funds and legal obstacles imposed in some States, is the public acquisition of land which cannot be properly managed under private own- ership. For example, land deterioration had progressed so far in the Yazoo Valley, in Mis- sissippi, that a program of land purchase was instituted as a part of the Department's flood control program for that area. The Mississippi Legislature forbade Federal purchase of such lands, but has since relaxed the ban. The pro- gram should be prosecuted more rapidly in order to avoid damage both on the deteriorated lands and downstream from them. The staif available for technical and engineer- ing assistance also needs to be expanded. Exist- ing staffs are unable to keep up with the work load, and the load would increase if there were any possibility that additional commitments for advisory services could be met. The Commission believes that some means must be found to improve the control of fire, insects, and disease in private forests. Also the problem of balancing growth and drain grows more serious with every passing year, and the Forest Service has neither the authority nor the funds to deal with it. The States have proved, except in a few in- stances, to be unable to deal with the problem on the scale necessary. Where private forests con- stitute a major portion of the tax-paying lands in the States, the power of the State to enforce conservation methods will be limited. It seems likely that as basin development pro- grams are instituted, some financial device, either in the form of incentive payments or credit sys- tems, or some other mechanism, will be devised to obtain the cooperation of operators in a con- servation problem. Every effort should be made, by every responsible agency of Govern- ment, to devise such mechanisms. Only through such means will it be possible to get the full benefit of forest cover as an aid in the management of water resources. The Bureau of Land Management Protection of much of the public lands in the West, described on pages 132-133, is the responsi- bility of the Department of the Interior. Because the land is largely arid or semiarid, and supports only limited vegetation, erosion is widespread. The Department estimates that nearly half of the acreage is critically or severely eroded. The erosion damage which originates on the public lands is communicated to private lands downstream; silt, originating on the in- fertile, readily erodible land washes downstream in large quantities, polluting the water, and is often deposited on top of more productive soil in the flat agricultural areas below. More important, these lands contribute by far the largest proportion of the sediment which shortens the useful life of water resources proj- 136 |