Ward Shepard

A contributing author of books and articles concerning forestry and conservation.

The CCC did a surprising amount of valuable work, yet its primary emphasis was the rehabilitation of young men deprived by the depression of normal opportunities for work and education, a fact that served to under emphasize the inherent importance of the conservation job itself. Food or Famine: The Challenge of Erosion, 1945.

Nature holds the whip-hand. Ibid.

The contour furrow . . . is one of the most important inventions of the human race. It is as simple, as elemental, and as overwhelmingly important as fire or the wheel. Ibid.

Strips of dense, water-holding crops like grass alternate with strips of row crops like corn, which are poor water holders, in order to act as buffers against down-hill movement of water and soil. Ibid.

. . . the dust bowl not only woke up America, but woke up the world. Ibid.

The motto of flood control should be: Keep the silt on the land and the water in the ground. Ibid.

Many of the "surplus" crops like wheat and cotton are the fruit of an exploitive one-crop agriculture that is wrecking the world's soil; and in the face of widespread malnutrition, these surplus crops are of little significance in their bearing on the world food potential. Ibid.

The faster water runs, the more soil it can carry; in fact, the amount of soil it carries increases at a geometric ratio with its speed. Ibid.

There are over 200 million . . . gullies in the United States. None of them were here at the advent of the white man. Ibid.

The great rivers, by siltation, are steadily losing their water-carrying capacity while being called on to carry an ever-increasing load of surface water and silt. Ibid.

Wind erosion is merely a variant of water erosion. Unless soil particles are bound down and held together by vegetation, even a moderate wind picks up the lighter particles, especially the rich organic material, and leaves behind the heavier particles of sand and gravel.Ibid.

The power of vegetation to control runoff and erosion is no mere abstract theory. It is supported by overwhelming experimental proof, based on precise measurement of erosion and runoff from small areas of land. Ibid.

A philosophical cynic, viewing modern man as the end-product of a million years of evolution and ten thousand years of civilization, might point out that he has signally failed to master either of his two main jobs: making peace with his fellows or making peace with nature. Ibid.