Coos Bay grant lands are located. Utah typifies much of the range country of the Rocky Mountain region in which the national forests and grazing districts are located. The Fishlake, Manti, and Unita National Forests are among the forests most intensively used for grazing under regulated practices developed by the Forest Service. The principal difference between the range lands within the forests and those within the grazing districts lying outside the forest is that the latter, as a rule, are at a lower elevation and provide usable range at different seasons than do those within the national forests. Ranchers and stockmen within a given region generally depend upon spring, fall and sometimes winter range on grazing districts and private lands and summer range on national forest lands. Such a user must therefore obtain a permit from the local office of the Bureau of Land Management and another permit from the local office of the Forest Service.

This divided administration of the public range between two agencies of the Federal Government has resulted not only in duplicate administration and technical staffs but in different permit fees, different regulations of use and different payments to counties in lieu of taxes. Users are put to additional costs and inconveniences by the divided jurisdictions and duplicating red tape. This inconvenience may sometimes be extremely serious as when the grazing season prescribed by the Bureau of Land Management does not mesh with that prescribed by the Forest Service or vice versa. If, for instance, there is a gap between the time when the rancher must remove his stock from the grazing district and the beginning of the grazing season on the national forests, confusion and adjustment of the dates of admitting and removing stock as between the two agencies

occur.

In the case of the O. & C. lands where forest management instead of range management is the primary purpose the situation is analogous and even more complex. The Secretary has classified the lands as chiefly valuable for the growing of timber and has prescribed the same objective of management as has long prevailed with respect to similar lands within the national forests. O. & C. lands are a checkered part of a continuous forest belt in western Oregon made up of private, national forest and O. and C. lands as chart II, page 200, shows. The result is that a buyer of timber from a unit containing both national forest and O. & C. timber must deal with two departments of the Government, each of which may impose different conditions of forest removal. A striking example of this has been found in the exercise by the two secretaries of the authority granted them by Congress to enter into long-term agreements with owners of private timber in order to make sustained yield undertakings feasible. The conditions first laid down by the two secretaries have been quite different although the projects involve land and forest of similar character in the Douglas fir region of Oregon and Washington. Greater uniformity has recently been effected. Good management of O. & C. lands in a number of cases calls for the inclusion of parts of bordering national forests in O. & C. working circles for sustained yield units.

D. From what has already been said it seems clear that both bureaus charged with common objectives of forest and range management are necessarily forced to maintain duplicate organizations qualified to deal with the same variety of problems. Because of its recent acquisition of the functions under discussion, the Bureau of Land Management is still in the proces of building up, as appropriations can be obtained, an organization adequate to its needs. Duplication of field offices is likewise in process. During the past year, for example, the Bureau has established six regional offices, each in sections of the country in which the Forest Service already has regional offices.

817143°-49- -14

CHART II-Continued

THIS MAP shows in black the lands formerly granted to the Oregon and California Railroad and the Coos Bay Wagon Road grant and revested in the United States by Acts of Congress in 1916 and 1919 because of breach of contract by the grantees. These lands are administered by the Bureau of Land Management, Department of Interior. Of the total acreage of 2,130,000, approximately 450,000 acres are within national forest boundaries. The remainder is adjacent to or within close proximity to the national forests. These revested lands are practically all timbered and are administered for timber production.

The area of the national forests in western Oregon (shown on map) 18 6,258,000 acres.

The lands shown in are within the indemnity limits of the grant to the railroad but were not selected by the railroad and forma part of the national forests in which they lie. The national forests, including these lands, are administered by the Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, and total about 462,000 acres. It is obvious from the checkerboard pattern of these O & C lands that where they lie within the boundaries of the national forests, one agency of government is handling all the even-numbered sections in each township and another agency of government all the odd-numbered sections.

This situation is only a few degrees less complicated outside the forest boundaries because it still means two different government agencies operating in the same field of activity and the same territory.

E. Even before the Forest Service was established, forest research was begun in the Department of Agriculture under the old Bureau of Forestry. Following 1905 when the Forest Service was placed in charge of the national forests, research was vigorously expanded to provide basic information upon which policies and practices of multiple use of resources could be based. This included range no less than forest management. In 1928 Congress passed the McSweeneyMcNary Act which authorized and directed

"the Secretary of Agriculture to conduct such investigations, experiments and tests as he may deem necessary under sections 2 to 10, inclusive, in order to determine, demonstrate and promulgate the best methods of reforestation, of growing, managing, and utilizing timber, forage, and other forest products, of maintaining favorable conditions of water flow and the prevention of erosion, of protecting timber and other forest growth from fire, insects, disease, or other harmful agencies, of obtaining the fullest and most effective use of forest lands, and to determine and promulgate the economic considerations which should underlie the establishment of sound policies for the management of forest land and the utilization of forest products."

This broad charter has been the foundation on which the Forest Service has extended research into virtually every phase of forest and range management, including utilization of forest products. It maintains 13 forest experiment stations located in every important forest region of the country. The work of three of these stations located in the West is devoted primarily to problems of range management and watershed protection. Thus the Service is the source of the bulk of the forest and related research information now available.

Confronted with the same problems, the Bureau of Land Management has need for similar research information. It has not as yet engaged extensively in research but has depended upon information flowing from the experiment stations of the Forest Service. This is as it should be but the rivalry for advancement and showing, characteristic of Government agencies, is an invitation that may well prove exceedingly and unnecessarily costly.

F. It is a well-known fact that there has been long standing jurisdictional rivalry between the two departments. This rivalry naturally extends to the acquirement of appropriations for specific lines of work. It is natural that each department should stress aggressively the importance of its own activities without always weighing the over-all needs of the public land resources as a whole. This is confusing to Congress in putting first needs first and in providing adequate supporting appropriations. Thus an unbalanced state of operating funds as between the two agencies may result.

G. Groups seeking special privileges in the use of public lands and their resources are historically quick to seize opportunities to accomplish their ends. A striking example of how the present two-agency administration of public forest and range lands provides such opportunities is the recent and still current effort of western stockmen to obtain a reduction of grazing fees on the national forests. When upon passage of the Taylor Grazing Act the grazing districts of the unreserved public range were established, the Secretary of the Interior formulated and put into effect more liberal grazing regulations and much lower grazing fees than those prevailing on the national forests. Ever since, the stockmen have used these more liberal grazing fees and requirements in an effort to bring about a liberalization of grazing regulations and a reduction of grazing fees on the national forests.