The practical usefulness of the national forest reserves to the mining,
grazing, irrigation, and other interests of the regions in which the
reserves lie has led to a widespread demand by the people of the West
for their protection and extension. The forest reserves will inevitably
be of still greater use in the future than in the past. Additions should
be made to them whenever practicable, and their usefulness should be
increased by a thoroughly business-like management.

At present the protection of the forest reserves rests with the General
Land Office, the mapping and description of their timber with the
United States Geological Survey, and the preparation of plans for their
conservative use with the Bureau of Forestry, which is also charged with
the general advancement of practical forestry in the United States.
These various functions should be united in the Bureau of Forestry,
to which they properly belong. The present diffusion of responsibility
is bad from every standpoint. It prevents that effective co-operation
between the Government and the men who utilize the resources of the
reserves, without which the interests of both must suffer. The
scientific bureaus generally should be put under the Department of
Agriculture. The President should have by law the power of transferring
lands for use as forest reserves to the Department of Agriculture. He
already has such power in the case of lands needed by the Departments
of War and the Navy.

The wise administration of the forest reserves will be not less helpful
to the interests which depend on water than to those which depend on
wood and grass. The water supply itself depends upon the forest. In
the arid region it is water, not land, which measures production. The
western half of the United States would sustain a population greater