COMMUNITY FORESTS

GEORGE A. DUTHIE.

Community forests are the woodlands that are owned by the cities and townships, school districts, counties, or another public body in a State.

They are of many types, but they are all alike in that they are maintained for the public benefit and use.

They have many purposes, but they are all an expression of the Americans' innate love for trees and belief that there is a close relationship between forests and good living.

Many kinds of communities have public forests, but they have in common a progressive citizenship that is alert and resourceful in making it a good place to live in.

The character of community forests differs according to ownership and purpose. County and township forests have about the same pattern. City and town forests, distinctive from county forests, have the greatest variations in size and type; sometimes they are large tracts that protect municipal water sources; sometimes they are only small areas, in or near a town, and were planted so as to beautify the environs. School forests are mostly used for educational purposes. Among organization forests are those maintained for the public use by churches, service clubs, the Boy Scouts, 4-H Clubs, and similar groups. In brief, community forests are public forests that are not Federal forests or State forests.

The 3,113 community forests in the United States cover 4,413,950 acres. Of the 1,121 municipal forests, about one-fourth are for watershed protection. There are 1,279 school forests. County and township forests together number 617, organization forests 96.

THE COUNTY AND TOWNSHIP FORESTS are the most extensive. They account for half of the area of all community forests. They vary in patterns and purposes; some of them are mostly for recreation; others emphasize the growing of timber.

Eleven miles south of Champaign-Urbana in Illinois is the Lake of the Woods, a 260-acre tract of woodland, open fields, and water bordering the historic Sangamon River. Here one will find a spring-fed 18-acre lake for swimming, boating, fishing, and skating; a playing field for all types of out- door sports; picnic grounds on the lake shore; camping spots on the river; and equestrian and nature trails through the upland woods. It is Champaign County's newly organized forest preserve district. Although small in area, it has fine possibilities for expansion as more woodland areas are added along the river. The public schools are enlisted in a long-range conservation program for the forest, and the school children of the county use it in firsthand studies of the natural sciences.

The method of financing the forest is both simple and direct. Twenty-year bonds were issued to buy the land and improvements, at a cost of about $80,000. A special tax levy yields an annual fund of about $30,000, for use (during the first 5 years) to extend and develop the forest and, later, to retire the bonds. A commission of five men, who serve without compensation, manages the forest. It is under the direct supervision of a resident forester-caretaker.

There are ten such forests in densely Populated Illinois. The most extensive is the Cook County Forest Preserve, Which lies within the metropolitan area of Chicago.

In Wisconsin another pattern is followed. Great areas of cut-over pine-lands had been abandoned after being stripped of timber; the waste land returned no taxes or revenue. In many northern counties, the productive taxable property could not support the local governments. To meet this situation, many counties availed themselves Of the relief offered by the Wisconsin Forest Crop Law. Under a cooperative arrangement with the State, 10 cents is paid yearly from the general fund for each acre in the county forest to help support the local government. Another 10 cents an acre is paid annually to the county from the State forestry funds for improving and developing the forest. The State also furnishes technical supervision of the cutting of timber to insure a consistent forest policy and a uniform standard of management. In return, the State is reimbursed by a 50-percent severance tax when forest products are harvested. It is in the nature of a share-crop relationship between the county owner and the State.

Twenty-eight counties have set up crop-law forests, which have a combined area of more than 2 million acres. Some of the counties 20 years ago faced bankruptcy; under management, the forest lands now yield revenues that in time may absorb a major part of the tax burden. The annual return now is more than $150,000. The forests also furnish opportunities for public recreation.

This income is from forests that but a few years ago were waste land; a large part of the new forest cover has come from hand-planted seedlings. The future prosperity of the crop-law communities, then, seems extremely promising. The pulpwood markets are clamoring for the wood that is growing in those young trees and that will soon be ready to market.

The philosophy of government that supports a county forest program was well stated in a resolution adopted in Allegany County, N. Y., that provided for establishment of a county forest system of 2,500 acres on the following premises : Large amounts of idle land not paying taxes are not contributing to the welfare of the county; these lands are contributing to an erosion problem and costing the county large sums annually in clogged stream channels, highway maintenance, and loss of revenue; the areas are too small to be managed under the State forest program; a large industrial user of forest products will eventually be lost unless a precedent is established for the management of all forest lands in the county according to good forestry principles; the county itself is a large user of wood products for which a dependable future source must be planned; the county can supply its own needs and at the same time stabilize local employment through its forest plan; the recreational value of the Allegany County hills has been neglected; and finally, forestry is a paying proposition, and we owe it to ourselves and to our heirs to leave the county in a better and more stable position, as regards its natural resources, than we found it.

The county forests of New York constitute a State-wide system that combines a high degree of recreational development with timber production. Fifty-two of the counties have forests. From 2 million to 5 million trees have been planted by each of these counties. Some of the stands are now being thinned by the first cutting of pulpwood, fuel wood, poles, and Christmas trees. From now on they will yield a steady revenue to the counties.

There are very few counties in the United States that do not have some land that presents an administrative problem. Cut-over land, submarginal farms, spoil banks remaining from mining operations, swamps, eroding mountain slopes, deep gorges and gullies, and sand dunes are the lands that private owners cannot afford to hold, problem land that nobody wants. Such lands often become tax delinquent and a burden to the tax-paying public. In public ownership under the proper forestry management, they become an asset instead of a liability. Where they occur in very large areas, they may be incorporated into national or State forests, but small and scattered tracts are best developed into county or township forests under the administration of the local government.

Dispersal of the forest units throughout the county does not present a serious problem in county administration;from the standpoint of making recreation areas accessible to everyone, the dispersal is an advantage.