LAWS, DECISIONS, AND OPINIONS APPLICABLE TO THE NATIONAL FORESTS. ESTABLISHMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF NATIONAL FORESTS. Creation of National Forests. Act of March 3, 1891 (26 Stat., 1095). SEC. 24. That the President of the United States may, from time to time, set apart and reserve, in any State or Territory having public land bearing forests, in any part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial value or not, as public reservations, and the President shall, by public proclamation, declare the establishment of such reservations and the limits thereof. Designation. * Act of March 4, 1907 (34 Stat., 1256). * Forest reserves * * * shall be known hereafter as National Forests * * * Authority to revoke, modify, or suspend proclamations. Act of June 4, 1897 (30 Stat., 11). * To remove any doubt which may exist pertaining to the authority of the President thereunto [in regard to the National Forests], the President of the United States is hereby authorized and empowered to revoke, modify, or suspend any and all such Executive orders and proclamations, or any part thereof, from time to time as he shall decm best for the public interests: * * * The President is hereby authorized at any time to modify any Executive order that has been or may hereafter be made establishing any forest reserve, and by any such modification may reduce the area or change the boundary lines of such reserve, or may vacate altogether any order creating such reserve. Creation of additional forests restricted. Act of March 4, 1907 (34 Stat., 1256). Hereafter no forest reserve shall be created, nor shall any additions be made to one heretofore created within the limits of the States of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, or Wyoming, except by act of Congress. (California added by act of Aug. 24, 1912.) Transfer act. Act of February 1, 1905 (33 Stat., 628). The Secretary of the Department of Agriculture shall, from and after the passage of this act, execute or cause to be executed all laws affecting public lands heretofore or hereafter reserved under the pro 9 visions of section twenty-four of the act entitled "An act to repeal the timber-culture laws, and for other purposes," approved March third, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, and acts supplemental to and amendatory thereof, after such lands have been so reserved, excepting such laws as affect the surveying, prospecting, locating, appropriating, entering, relinquishing, reconveying, certifying, or patenting of any of such lands. Administration of National Forests. Act of June 4, 1897 (30 Stat., 11). All public lands heretofore designated and reserved by the President of the United States under the provisions of the act approved March third, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, the orders for which shall be and remain in full force and effect, unsuspended and unrevoked, and all public lands that may hereafter be set aside and reserved as public forest reserves under said act, shall be as far as practicable controlled and administered in accordance with the following provisions: Purposes of establishment. No public forest reservation shall be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the reservation, or for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States; but it is not the purpose or intent of these provisions, or of the act providing for such reservations, to authorize the inclusion therein of lands more valuable for the mineral therein, or for agricultural purposes, than for forest purposes. Regulation of occupancy and use. The Secretary of the Interior shall make provisions for the protection against destruction by fire and depredations upon the public forests and forest reservations which may have been set aside or which may be hereafter set aside under the said act of March third, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, and which may be continued; and he may make such rules and regulations and establish such service as will insure the objects of such reservations, namely, to regulate their occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction; and any violation of the provisions of this act or such rules and regulations shall be punished as is provided for in the act of June fourth, eighteen hundred and eighty-eight, amending section fifty-three hundred and eighty-eight of the Revised Statutes of the United States. Sale of timber. For the purpose of preserving the living and growing timber and promoting the younger growth on forest reservations, the Secretary of the Interior, under such rules and regulations as he shall prescribe, may cause to be designated and appraised so much of the dead, matured, or large growth of trees found upon such forest reservations as may be compatible with the utilization of the forests thereon, and may sell the same for not less than the appraised value in such quantities to each purchaser as he shall prescribe, to be used in the Ŝtate or Territory in which such timber reservation may be situated, |