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PRESERVATION OF FORESTS
AS A
MEASURE OF PUBLIC SAFETY

Address Delivered Before the
Seventeenth
National Irrigation Congress

HELD AT
SPOKANE, WASHINGTON, U. S. A.
AUGUST, 1909.

BY THE BRAZILIAN DELEGATE
Li BAETA- NEVES, Mining and Civil Engineer.

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THE PRESERVATION OF FORESTS AS A MEASURE OF
PUBLIC SAFETY.

Address before the 17th National Irrigation Congress, Spokane, Wash.,
August, 1909.
by
L. BAETA-NEVES
Mining and Civil Engineer; Graduate of the Ouro Prete Mining School, Brazil; Chief of
the Technical Department of the Directory of Railway and Public Works in Minas

Geraes, Brazil; Member of the Historic and Geographic Institute of the same state;

Member of the National Geographic Society of Washington; Knight of Columbus;

Honorary Member of the Rotary Club of Los Angeles, Cal.; Representative of the

Brazilian Government before the Scientific Congresses 16th Irrigation and 3rd

Dry Farming in America, and Vice-President and Corresponding Secretary of this

Congress; Special Delegate of Brazil before the 17th National Irrigation Congress

at Spokane, Wash., where, by selection, he addressed the meeting on behalf of

the Foreign Represensatives.

I really feel glad and exceedingly honored in coming again
before this Congress and my pleasure is great in telling you
once more how much [ appreciate the warm welcome of the
North American people, and how much I have enjoyed the
pleasant stay in this most hospitable city.

I come now with the same feelings and sentiment that I
tried to translate to you. on the opening session of this most
important meeting full of very valuable lessons from any view
point; on that day IT had the great henor of speaking to you
on behalf of the foreign delegates of this convention bringing
greetings from the Brazilian Government and from the dif-
ferent nations here represented. But now, allow me to say,
Americans, and distinguished representatives of foreign conti-
nents and islands, that translating the good feelings and altru-
istic sentiment of the people of the countries of Columbus, I
am going to speak with my whole soul, my whole heart. on
behalf of the sacred rights of humanity, addressing you on a
subjeet very dear to me in which I have been deeply interested
since my childhood; a subject on which I have learned a great
deal from two men of universal reputation, who, for the glory

of the western hemisphere, were born under the purest sky
of America—I mean Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. I stand
for the forest, for the preservation of forests. as a measure of
publie safety. My paper is in part an extract of a report that
I sent to Brazil to be read this week at the request of the
4th International American Medical Coneress, held now at Rio
De Janeiro ‘‘on the most efficacious means of preventing and
lessening the effects of periodical droughts.’’? In that paper I
wrote. about the lessons of the Irrigation Congress, which
lessons we are already profiting by, having improved the Irri-
vation projects of which I wrote the address printed in the pro-
ceedings of the 16th National Irrigation Congress, last year.
[ am pleased to say that in this report I emphasized also the
ereat work which has been done by the dry farming Congress,
whose lessons are the best. to teach the people. of the arid
district of the world, how to use profitable by the water, almost
always so expensive and diffieuit to be obtained in such dis-
tricts. You will find on the last proceedings of the dry farm-
ine Congress at Cheyenne, a paper of mine on the combination
of irrigation and dry farming processes, which combination I
think will give the best results in rendering more fit to sustain
life a region subject to drought. To the medical Congress, I
suggested that a branch of the dry farming of Ameriea should
be established in Brazil according to the wishes of its indefat-
igable secretary my good friend Mr. John T. Burns.. Being
requested by his execelleney Governor Norris, of Montana to
work in Brazil, as a vice-president and corresponding secretary
of the Congress I feel exceedingly honored in giving my very
hest service to my brothers of North America, assuring them
-hat they can count upon my great admiration for your coun-
try, where [I am living for one year with my family always in
elose touch with the American family and people. Allow me to
say, ladies and gentlemen, that keeping the same love for my
native land, in my heart, will have for ever a warm room for
the American people. But let me stop, ladies and gentlemen, of
speakine of my feeling that, in spite of my sincerity. I cannot
express by words as they come frem the bottom of my heart:

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the whole session would be too’shért for translating them and

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1 must go back to the subject of my paper. In my report to
the International Medical Congress I wrote also about the
Cactus of Luther Burbank, of California, and incidentally I
called the attention of the Brazilian Engineers to the recent
process in which the English government is now interested,
facilitating ‘the atmospheric precipitations for small water
supply near the coast, causing the deposit of dew as has been
practiced in Gibraltar. I have read something about this pro-
cess on an interesting paper of Mr. George Hurbard read this
year on Mareh 3rd, before the Royal Society of Arts, London: I
wrote too about the forests considering them lke I am about to
do.

The importance of forests as protectors of mankind is an
incontroversible fact, and there is no spirit, less observing as it
may be, that has not noticed, even slightly, some influence of
the trees in benefitting life.

At different times I have treated this wmportant subject
that impressed me so much, in the national and foreign press
and in public addresses here in America, several times dis-
cussing the influence of the trees upon our life. Once speaking
about the combined work of medicine and engineering in the
noble and humanitarian campaign to improve the means of
life on the surface of this planet, especially to preserve and
increase the vigor of the people, I said in part:

‘Life progressively is becoming very difficult to be pre-
served in good conditions because of the incessant exhaustion
of elements that are favorable to it on the surface of the earth,
where a continuous transformation is observed all over.

‘The forests, the best protectors of our life, are gging fast,
and from the modification that their disappearance is bringing
to the climate and to the natural conditions all over the earth,
will come serious troubles to the solution of the sanitary prob-
lems in the future.

‘Tt is necessary to use intelligently so important elements
of life, without so barbarous destructions, because so far as
the present scientific knowledge is concerned, there is no doubt,
at all, that from the lack of the forest will come the greatest
modifications in the meteorological conditions of the earth,
and you know, the meteorological conditions—the weather—

3

has the most positive influence on our life. This influence does
not appear only on the health conditions, but, too, in the most
complicate social phenomena.

“The old proverb— Man is the son of his environments’
—is a translation of a truth scientifically demonstrated, prov-
ing the weather’s influence. It is true that it means the law
of adaptation, but the environments of man depend entirely
upon the meteorological conditions. According to this law we
could, perhaps, live even under bad conditions of weather, but
such condition would bring an unhealthy condition of life, too.

“Professor Dexter, of the University of Illinois, studying
the mental and physiological influence of the meteorological
conditions, in one of his books, gives a comprehensive study of
the question, proving the weather’s influence on the organie
and intellectual life, the emotions, the literary sentiments, the
individual conduct. He proves principally that the change of
meteorological conditions affects the health more than any-
thing else.

““Under bad meteorological conditions we never would have
the necessary reserve of energy for the complete activity of life.

“And good meteorological conditions can be guaranteed
only by the preservation of forests, that, unhappily for our
future,does not receive from the people the deserved attention. ”’

Since the colonial time many Brazilians have been econ-
sidering the forests from a sanitary viewpoint. The patriarch
of our independence José Bonifacio in 1815 wrote these phrases :

“What other productions of Mother Nature ought to de-
serve greater attention from the philosophers and statemen
than the forests and trees? Trees, wood and timber: Only
these words, well meditated upon and understood, are enough
to awaken our whole sensibility.’’

Besides other reasons there is a powerful one that makes
necessary the protection of forest—its great influence upon
health. Health is all, and upon it reposes the happiness of
people and the greatness and prosperity of the countries.

On account of a rapid progress we must not sacrifice the
forests as it has been done in many new countries.

Any progress detrimental to the vital forces of nature, is

4

negative, ephemeral; if one generation profits by it, the follow-
ing one fatally will suffer its consequences.

This axiom, in my humble opinion, translates better the
decline and disappearance of some nations that figured in
antiquity than any explanation given by the modern philos-
ophy for the fact; and forethought advises to profit by the
practical lesson contained within it, preserving our natural
resources in order not to saerifice to a temporary greatness
the best means of preserving life, which means are represented
by the forest.

The trees are great regulators of many conditions of life.
principally facilitating the atmospheric precipitation and
their profit. The aqueous vapors penetrating the cool atmos-
phere of the forest at the contact of the foliage of the trees.
condense resolving into rain or dew; and the water that falls
on the soil, protected against evaporation by the shade, having
its surface-flow impeded and its absorption facilitated by the
roots, penetrates in greatest quantity into the land, guarantee-
ing the permaneney and abundance of the source that it forms.

The rainfall without the protecting vegetation rapidly
flows on the surface soil forming the run-off, which takes from
the earth the fertilizing humus, excavating the mountain and
producing the destructive overflow in the valley.

In the countries where ice and snow do not appear the
regimen of the water courses in a great measure depends upon
the vegetation that covers the head of the streams; and such
an influence is as great as the porosity of the soil is small in
the generative basin of ‘the sources. If there is yet controy-
ersy which is progressively disappearing with more serious
study about some forests’ influences, there is not, all over the
earth, any one who ean scientifically contest this truth that his-
tory and geography, the facts of the past and the observation
of the present so clearly confirm. The Nile, which comes from
the heart of Africa, born among the virgin forests where fire
and men never have penetrated, keeps today, in an average,
the same flow that it had when it fertilized Egypt at the time
of the Pharaohs.

The effects of forests do not appear in confined zones.

5

Their influence is not bounded by a certain region, and the
calamity coming from their devastation passes over the indi-
vidual property affecting the public welfare. This is an incon-
testible truth that science demonstrates and facts corroborate.
Therefore there is no reason why protection of forest must
be concerned to a certain extension, not affecting the private
lands.

The individual right ought not to affect the high interests
of the Union which ought to save its own future, guaranteeing
by the preservation of the natural resources of the country, the
general well-being of the present and future generations.

This rational theory, applied to the case of forests, each
day gains assent in this country being already accepted in the
higher tribunals in favor of the legislation protecting such
resources, which legislation is earnestly advocated by President
Roosevelt, accordingly it was-adopted on March 10, 1903 by the
supreme court of Maine, and on April 6th of the same year, the
supreme court of the United States sustained it, confirming
the opinion of the court of errors and appeals of New Jersey.

To the glory of us Brazilians this principle is the confirma-
tion of a doctrine of which I spoke last here at Albuquerque,
promulgated in 1892 by the eminent Brazilian, Dr. Francisco
Saturnino Rodrigues de Brito, who wrote:

“The argument against such laws has no reason for being,
because the owner of the land is only a steward of the soil
that was entrusted to him by the past generations; he is the
depository of lands as he is a depository of capital, and thus,
as it has a social origin, territorial property must have a social
application, in attending to collective interest; and these re-
quire the individual effort of each man to preserve and improve
on the planet the necessary means of living, among which are
the preservation and replantation of forests, that may keep
the necessary moisture for regular rainfall and the normal dis-
tribution of water, detainmg it among their roots and not
permitting the destructive overflows that take from the soil the
fertilizing humus. The argument has no reason for being, also,
because the interest of the family itself requires providence
against the prodigal member who steals from his own children

6

the inheritance from the past, giving to this improvident an
egotistical father only the income of it; and as it happens with
the inheritance, legislative enactment must regulate the ques-
tion of lands for the interest of the social community that has
a great attainment from the Past, and comprehending the Pres-
ent and the Future.’’

The arguments of President Roosevelt are very similar
to those of the illustrious Brazilian engineer and the same
thing can be said in regard to the reasons presented by the
Supreme Court of the United States as quoted by the American
President :

“The State, as quasi-sovereign and representative of the
interest of the public, has a standing in court to protect the
atmosphere, the water and forests either in its territory, irre-
spective of the ascent or descent of the private owner of the
land most immediately concerned.’’

IT am deeply convinced that the conscientious scruples of
a great many of our eminent legislators and loyal men in ae-
cepting this doctrine he only in the fact that they are always
busy with something else, never dedicating themselves to any
serious study of the forests in their relations to life and the
progress of countries; they have never considered that, on
weeount of such relation, the sacred rights of humanity, the hfe
of our children and future generations require a direet ana im-
mediate protection for the trees, which protection is undoubt-
edly a measure of public safety. And really such a protection
iS aS Important as any other measure that may prevent the
invasion and spread of some epidemic disease.

To the 4th Latin-American Congress I moved that all
possible effort should be made to have Brazil and all nations
represented at the congress accepted the proposition that is
found in my address of forests last year, which proposition
I write now as follows:

‘Preservation of forests in many ways necessary, must be
considered as a measure of public safety and tt is of urgent

necessity to maintain the permanency and abundance not only
of the stream flow, but, of the underground waters.” (1)

7

This proposition, ladies and gentlemen, will do some good
for our forests when thoroughly aecepted in the countries
where the question of right of property has been an obstacle
to the protection laws for saving the trees on the private lands.

I make an appeal to you, gentlemen, of all different nations
here represented to bring with you the ideas contained in this
paper whose value les only on the strong conviction with

‘

which I wrote it.

Let us be united all over the world in this great and noblest
eampaign for the life of mankind, for the life of our own
children, the water, the pure air, the shade of relief of fatigue,
the timber, in resume, the life itself. Let us profit by the
creat lessons of Gifford Pinchot, accepting the wise advise of
greatest men of the past and present generations. And may
this alarm-cry arouse the energies of the present for the solu-
tion of the great problem of the future.

MEANS ADVISED TO PREVENT THE CUTTING OF FOR-,
ESTS IN BRAZIL.

After the approbation of the proposition contained in the
first part of my address considering the protection of the for-
ests as a measure of public safety, we must have some restriction
from the states in regard to the use of the generative land of
courses, establishing the protective areas, even approximately,
according to the good sense, putting them under a provisory
police of the tax collectors and the patriotism of the people,
until we can get the resources for a most effective police.

We must get annually from the Federal Congress some
appropriation, however small, to start the National Forestry
Reservation at the head of the great and navigable rivers,
progressively enlarging such reservation until it has a suffiei-
ent extension.

I think that in general the forests would be preserved if
the people knew how to use them systematically if efficient
means of preservation of timber could be obtaimed, in order
to use the softer and light wood as good material, avoiding, as
said by the illustrious engineer, Joaquim Julio Proenca, the

8

devastation of the virgin forests for hardwoods to be employed
in construction of certain importance, principally railroads;
if we could plant good species, growing fast to be used as fuel
and good timber, for instance, the eucalyptus as is being done
in California, and was advised in Minas Geraes by the dis-
tinguished botanist engineer, Alvaro da Silveira, and if we
eould stop or diminish the clearing of forests or old process
of burning the forests for fuel and agricultural purposes by
divulging the scientific processes of cultivation, and profit by
using green wood as a fuel in great factories, using dry stoves
heated by the furnace gases, as established by the deceased
President Joao Pinheiro in his factory at Caeté, Minas
Geraes, Brazil.

From these considerations we have many suggestions how
to protect the trees, but, certainly, the suggested measures
and those profitable ones found in many forestry codes in our
states, must not be taken only by the Union, whose service,
as I said before, must be as simple and economie as possible
in order to be stable.

The Federal Government in accordance with the states
must help the development of the instruction on forestry, estab-
hshing special forestry gardens, however small, connected with
botanical branch iw the engineering courses, for better knowl-
edge and trial of species of rapid growth, suitable for con-
struction and railroad ties; must promote replantion of resist-
ant trees such as eucalyptus in the arid region, principally
where the sources permanently or temporarily appear; must
promote the employing of hight and white soft timber by giving
premiums to the inventor of the best and most economic pro-
cess for its preservation, and finally, must make every possible
propaganda by publication of short and practical papers and
so on among farmers on the influence and value of the forests

(1) In my book on the water supply and sewers of Caxambu, Minas
Geraes, Brazil, I explained the influence of the forests upon the un-
derground water in a chapter under the title “Preservation of the
sources.’