Franklin D. Roosevelt

Address at the Mountain States Forest Festival, Elkins, W. Va.

October 01, 1936

The setting in which we are gathered today for this Forest Festival turns our thoughts toward conservation.

This wonderland of natural beauty is at one and the same time a challenge and a justification. It demonstrates what can be done in the way of conservation of our resources. It shows us how prodigal Nature is in her gifts, while at the same time it emphasizes the necessity for men to supplement Nature's work in order that the rich gifts which are ours may be brought to their fullest usefulness in the service of all mankind.

The State of West Virginia is rightly proud of its glorious natural scenery, but the State also shows to us what happens when man flies in the face of Nature. Today I have seen many square miles of splendid mountains which have been denuded of timber. I have seen yellow streams carrying eroded silt and soil from the steep slopes.

In this State, as in many others, we are proud of the growing consciousness of the people themselves that man's errors in the past must be corrected by man in the future. In this worth-while effort the State and the Federal Government are working hand in hand.

Here and hereabouts you see what can be done through the National Forest Service in cooperation with the work of the State Conservation Preserves; you have an opportunity to see at first hand the practical contribution to enlightened conservation that is being made by our C.C.C. camps and all of the other agencies whose activities are directed to the preservation of our matchless resources here at the gateway to the Monongahela National Forest.

No part of our conservation work is more important than the protection of our wild life. It is a work into which we can all enter, heart and soul, because there is no political partisanship in an activity whose object is to preserve and restore the life of our great out-of-doors.

I am sure that those in this audience who are devotees of outdoor life, whether fishermen, hunters, naturalists, campers or hikers, will rejoice to know what has been done during the last three and one-half years to protect and perpetuate our wild life. In the past it had been shamefully neglected and exploited. One of the earliest concerns of my Administration on assuming office was to provide a national wild-life restoration program and a policy that would make certain that the conservation of our wild animals, birds and fishes would thereafter take rank with the conservation of the other great renewable resources of the Nation. Plans to accomplish this had been available for years but, I am sorry to say, they had been in great part ignored.

We have evolved a national wild-life conservation program which proposed, largely in conjunction with giving work to the unemployed, to provide abundantly for the needs of wild life by purchase and retirement of agricultural lands that were submarginal in character, by the purchase of other suitable lands, and by making generous allocations of public lands, all to be set aside as sanctuaries.

Allotments totaling nearly $15,000,000 have been made from current emergency funds to support this great wild-life program —an amount greater than the total of all funds previously appropriated for that specific purpose in all our American history. In addition, I approved an Act of Congress continuing an appropriation of $6,000,000 of emergency funds for the same kind of purposes, making altogether nearly $21,000,000 for the conservation of water fowl, birds and other valuable forms of American wild life.

We have outlined and enacted a legislative program to give effect to our policy:

(1) The Duck Stamp Bill, which has raised about $700,000 a year for the protection of migratory birds.

(2) The Coordination Bill, requiring active cooperation of each department of the Administration and Cabinet officers in the enforcement of game laws.

(3) The Robinson Bill, creating game sanctuaries on all public properties- a big step forward.

Besides that, we went further. We completed the Migratory Bird Treaty with Mexico, a treaty which had hung fire for nearly twenty years. That treaty supplements a similar treaty with our neighbor, Canada, which gives protection to birds on their Southern flight. By the terms of the treaty with Mexico, protection is given migratory birds on their Northern flight.

I cite these facts because critics of this Administration have lately been engaged in expressing dissatisfaction with the progress of wild-life restoration by the Federal Government during the past three years. Apparently, while some people want us to save money, these critics do not think we spent enough money. Yet, in pursuance of this program, the Nation has acquired and set aside in these past three years some 4,800,000 acres of land and dedicated them to the restoration and perpetuation of valuable wild life. Many of the refuges have been located on the principal resting and breeding grounds of wild fowl of all kinds; others are placed along the main migratory flight lanes, while still others afford rest and food and safety to the birds in their winter quarters.

Out in the Western country great ranges have been established to perpetuate the big-game species—the elk, antelope, mountain sheep and the deer. All these sanctuaries afford shelter and security to hosts of song and insectivorous birds and to a great variety of other wild creatures.

The total area of Federal wild-life sanctuaries that had been acquired in the United States in all previous years before 1933 amounted to only 1,800,000 acres. And so since June 30, 1934, more than two and one-half times as much wild-life sanctuary area has been acquired or is now being acquired than in all the preceding years in the history of our Government. This work is now going on; and I believe that for the next four years it will be continued with the same vigor and singleness of purpose.

It is pertinent to remind you here that this touches the lives and the homes of an enormous number of Americans. Seven million of our citizens take out fishing licenses each year, and six million more take out annual hunting licenses, a veritable army of thirteen million citizens to uphold the banner of conservation.

Drainage and drought and over-shooting have greatly decreased the numbers of our waterfowl and other types of our wild life. For three consecutive years, at the cost of much bitter criticism, I have approved regulations drastically reducing the open shooting seasons and bag limits and prohibiting the use of certain devices known to be unduly destructive. As a consequence we are informed that there is evidence that these species have shown some increase in numbers, and it is believed that through our action they may now survive the disasters and the killings of former years.

Such, my friends, is a brief and very incomplete statement of the ways and means by which this Administration has made effective its recognition of the fact .that the wild life in our fields and woods and waters constitutes a resource of vital importance to all Americans, and that it is the responsibility of the Federal Government in cooperation with the States to safeguard it for future generations. At last we are making definite progress.

The State of West Virginia understands this program. You have not only vast natural resources but you have vast human resources. And I am thinking not only of the birds and the beasts and the fishes; I am thinking also of the necessity of keeping them from becoming extinct in order that the human resources, our children and our grandchildren, may have them here in their generation.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address at the Mountain States Forest Festival, Elkins, W. Va. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/209168

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