Originally the regular circuit or district governments had charge not only of the management of State forests but also of the forest police and the regulation of the management of communal forests. This supervision was exercised by the political administration, often without technical advisers, and the different provinces had developed this service very variably. While in some provinces no special effort was made to look after these interests, the laws remaining mainly dead letters, in others a better system prevailed. In Styria, for instance, in 1807, five forest commissioners and 20 district foresters were employed; but this organization was of short duration. A loose administration of the forest laws was most general. The movement for reform and to secure a general law for the empire controlling forest use dates from the year 1814; but, only after the political reaction of 1848, and when the severe floods of 1851 had forcibly called attention to the unsatisfactory state of things was the necessity of change recognized. In 1852, such a general law was enacted, supplanting all the forest ordinances (with minor exceptions). This law, which in the main is still in force, distinguishes between ban forests and protective forests. The former are such as require in their management consideration of their protective value to adjoining private or State property and personal safety, e.g., to prevent landslides, snowslides, avalanches, etc. Protection forests are specially located forests which for their own continuance as well as for that of neighboring ones must be managed under special restrictions, e.g., on sand dunes, shores of waters, steep slopes. The dangers which they are to prevent being more of an indirect or hidden nature, and only produced by their mismanagement, the control also is of a more general nature, the owner being allowed to manage his property within general prescriptions, while the ban forests are protective forests of a higher order and are more strictly and more directly controlled by the authorities. The declaration of a ban forest and the prescription for the conservative management depend on the findings of a commission assisted by experts (since 1873). The execution of the law however, being left to the political administration of the provinces, jealousies between imperial and provincial governments, and fear of resistance and ill will of forest owners prevented a strict and uniform application of the law. Hence, from time to time, we find ministerial rescripts, and special provincial legislation to secure a more energetic enforcement of the law.