Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1912 [PAGE 113]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1911]

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES.

69

a little south of Belleville and a little north of Mt. Garmel, with a northward extension along the Wabash to the northern boundary of Lawrence county. The counties of Calhoun, Pike and Jo Daviess were also surveyed, and the bluff and bottom-land timber of the Mississippi was examined from the mouth of the Illinois to the Wisconsin line, and that of the Illinois from the mouth of the. river to LaSalle. These are the only areas of the State now containing sufficient forest land to make a detailed survey worth while. A full report has been prepared, with numerous photographic illustrations and a large map, and is now in my hands for publication as a State Laboratory bulletin. The balance of the publication fund on bulletin account will be sufficient to issue this report in an edition of fifteen hundred copies, but for a greater number additional funds will be necessary. Appended to this report is a draft of a model forestry law prepared by the. legal department of the United States Forest Service with reference to Illinois conditions. The substance of this report has been transmitted to the Governor for his use in the preparation of his annual message. I am hopeful that suitable appropriations for the advancement of forestry interests of the State may be had at the coming legislative session, and shall be pleased to know that the University will take part in such a movement. Our river work is a much larger, more complicated, and more expensive undertaking, and one equally pressing for completion. The Illinois is one of the most important fishing waters in the country, surpassed in productiveness by few if any streams in the world. Its present yield, in fisheries products alone, amounts to about a million dollars per annum. A thoroughgoing, practical investigation of this stream is now especially needed because of the great changes in progress at the present time in its environment and the still greater changes contemplated or impending, which have affected, or must certainly affect, greatly and permanently, its productive value. Reclamation projects, for the protection, drainage, and cultivation of its bottom-lands; manufacturing projects, threatening a various contamination of its waters; canalization projects, and projects for the control and equalization of its flow, in the interests of transportation—are all being earnestly agitated, and several of them are in process of active execution. To forestall or correct the evil effects of these inevitable operations we need the fullest knowledge of the stream from every practical point of view, and this I have undertaken to acquire; but with my present funds the work will go much too slowly to accomplish its immediate purpose, as I shall not ordinarily have available more than about $4,000.00 per annum for this purpose. During the year ending Sept. 30, 1910, I spent $5,000.00 on this work, with the effect so to cripple our funds that I have been obliged to close the biological station for the year, and shall also be compelled to economize by closing our library January 1. Even this expenditure has only enabled me to put the essential part of the equipment into working order, to provide a new gasoline launch in place of the steam launch sold in 1904, and to keep two men at work, One a naturalist and the other a fisherman. I have made a careful estimate of the appropriations necessary to equip and man this work adequately, and find that it will cost approximately $14,000.00 a year for the next two years. I am proposing, consequently, to ask this sum of the Legislature for this purpose, and shall be pleased to have the approval of the trustees in so doing and the assistance of the University generally in developing and carrying forward this work. No other agency in the State, is either doing anything or planning anything in this direction, so far as I am aware, and we have, therefore, as it seems to me, an unusual opportunity to do a notable and much needed public service at a comparatively small expense. The Governor has expressed his interest in these plans and has asked me to send data upon the subject for use in the preparation of his annual message. In lieu of a formal description of our operations during the past two years, I beg to be allowed to substitute a pamphlet lately printed by the