OCR Text |
Show EARLY EFFORTS TO PROTECT PUBLIC TIMBERLANDS 533 agation, maintenance, and protection of live oak plantations. Two islands off the Georgia coast whose 1,950 acres were covered with live oaks were acquired from private interests. Twenty-eight years later the islands were still reported to be in the possession of the government, having been "generally under the care of an Agent, but the most valuable part of the timber has been removed. ..." A spokesman for the Navy Department made no accounting for the timber once on the island nor did he explain why his Department had not set out young trees as the English had long since learned to do to maintain a supply for their Navy.4 In 1817 the United States began to safeguard and control some part of the live oak trees which had come into its possession as a result of the purchase of Louisiana. The Secretary of the Navy was instructed to explore and select such live oak and red cedar land as might satisfy the requirements of the Navy. Agents were appointed to select the desired tracts and to protect them from trespass on several islands in the new territory. A reservation of 19,000 acres was made; this land was said to contain 37,000 live oak trees fit for naval purposes. Cedar lands in Alabama were also recommended to be set aside but before action could be taken they had been sold. With the acquisition of Florida there came into American possession additional large tracts of valuable timber. Delay in adjudicating land claims, and the existence of numerous inlets and bays where cutting could be accomplished almost with impunity, despite the orders to naval ships to be on the watch for illegal cutting, led to "many depredations" and the loss of immense quantities of the most desirable timber. By 1827 the Atlantic Coast having been nearly depleted of live oaks, the Navy Department was recommending that the government should 4 House Reports, 19th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 5 (Serial No. 152), No. 114, p. 3. raise its own supply by planting seedlings on the islands it had purchased for reserves.5 This recommendation was promptly acted upon. Congress appropriated $10,000 in 1828 for the purchase of land in Florida suitable for the propagation of live oak trees and agents were appointed to get the plantation under way. Three years later Congress adopted a broad gauge law to provide for the punishment of those who destroyed or removed live oak and other timber or trees reserved for naval purposes. Fines up to the triple value of the trees cut and prison terms of one year were authorized. Informers were to have one half the fines.6 Conservation of valuable stands of timber and the development of a plantation of live oak to assure supplies of construction lumber for the future won support in Congress for a time. But the architecture of naval ships was changing, timber supplies of the country, other than live oak, were found to be extensive, and efforts to prevent depredations upon the reservations proved largely futile. Consequently, in 1843 the reservations in Louisiana were set aside or annulled and settlers on the land were permitted to gain ownership by preemption-an indication that they had been clearing and improving it.7 Jenks Cameron has traced the drab story of the government agents appointed to prevent trespass on the live oak and other valuable timber lands of the southern states in the later years. He found evidence that there were four or five such agents serving 5 Ibid., pp. 4-8. 8 Acts of March 19, 1828, March 2, 1831, 4 Stat. 256, 472. 7 There is much information on the live oak experiment in conservation in American State Papers, Naval Affairs, III. 47-50 and 917-58 and IV, 32-33, 81, 98-124 and 191-223. Jenks Cameron, in his Development of Governmental Forest Control in the United States (Baltimore, 1928) , devotes an entire chapter to the live oak matter, with his usual sardonic humor. |