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Report of the Secretary of Agriculture in relation to the forests, rivers, and mountains of the southern Appalachian region

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  • SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. 25 ward slopes the damages have exceeded those on slopes toward the north or west. Trees have been burned near the roots, making their bases defective (see PI. XLVII); the young growth has been burned down (see PI. XLVI); the grasses and other wild forage plants have been temporarily exterminated, so that instead of pasturage being improved, as some have believed it would be, in the end it has been seriously damaged. This destruction of the injuries resuit- humus has always resulted seriously both to the forests burning™! thl and to the soils. In some cases, where the forests covering the steep, rocky slopes were thin, the loss of the humus has resulted in the washing and leaching away of the soils to such an extent as to destroy the forests entirely; and in all cases where the humus is thus removed the work of land erosion among the trees goes on as surely as though the forest itself were gone, though of course the process is far less rapid. Furthermore, the storage of water (in soils from which this humus has been removed) is far less perfect than in the original perfect forest. The rapid rate at which these lumbering operations have extended during the past few years and the still more rapid rate at which they are being extended at the present time, considered in connection with the destructive work of the fires and the clearing for agriculture, indicates that within less than a decade every mountain cove will have been invaded and robbed of its finest timber, and the last of the remnants of these grand primeval Appalachian forests will have been destroyed. Hence the very possibility of securing a forest reserve such as now contemplated is a possibility of the present, not of the future. This great activity indicates, furthermore, in the most striking way possible, the growing anxiety as to the future supply of hard-wood timber. And indeed the time is now J^p"^1,™ at hand when the great interests involved make it impera- est policy. tive that the Government take hold of this problem and inaugurate here in these great broad-leaved forests of the East a new conservative forest policy, as it is already doing for the pine forests of the West. FOREST CLEARING AND AGRICULTURE IN THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS. Ordinary fanning on these mountain slopes can not exist permanently and should never exist at all As stated above, not more than 10 per cent of the land of this region has a surface slope of less than 10 degrees (approxi-
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).