with whom Mr. Justice Brennan, Mr. Justice White, and Mr. Justice Marshall join, dissenting in part.
I agree with the Court that the implied-reservation doctrine should be applied with sensitivity to its impact upon those who have obtained water rights under state law and to Congress’ general policy of deference to state water law. See ante, at 699, 701-702, 705. I also agree that the Organic Administration Act of 1897, 30 Stat. 11, cannot fairly be read as evidencing an intent to reserve water for recreational or stock-watering purposes in the national forests.1
*719I do not agree, however, that the forests which Congress intended to “improve and protect” are the still, silent, lifeless places envisioned by the Court. In my view, the forests consist of the birds, animals, and fish — the wildlife — that inhabit them, as well as the trees, flowers, shrubs, and grasses. I therefore would hold that the United States is entitled to so much water as is necessary to sustain the wildlife of the forests, as well as the plants. I also add a word concerning the impact of the Court’s holding today on future claims by the United States that the reservation of particular national forests impliedly reserved instream flows.
*720I
My analysis begins with the language of the statute. The Organic Administration Act of 1897, as amended, 16 U. S. C. § 475 (1976 ed.), provides in pertinent part:
“No national forest shall be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the boundaries, 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 . . .
Although the language of the statute is not artful, a natural reading would attribute to Congress an intent to authorize the establishment of national forests for three purposes, not the two discerned by the Court. The New Mexico Supreme Court gave the statute its natural reading in this case when it wrote:
“The Act limits the purposes for which national forests are authorized to: 1) improving and protecting the forest, 2) securing favorable conditions of water flows, and 3) furnishing a continuous supply of timber.” Mimbres Valley Irrigation Co. v. Salopek, 90 N. M. 410, 412, 564 P. 2d 615, 617 (1977).
Congress has given the statute the same reading, stating that under the Organic Administration Act of 1897 national forests may be established for “the purposes of improving and protecting the forest or for securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber . . . .” H. R. Rep. No. 1551, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., 4 (1960), quoted ante, at 714-715; accord, S. Rep. No. 1407, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., 4 (1960). See also Note, New Mexico’s National Forests and the Implied Reservation Doctrine, 16 Natural Resources J. 975, 991-992 (1976).
“[T]he Court not surprisingly attempts to keep this provision in the background, addressing it only ... in a footnote,” United States v. Sotelo, 436 U. S. 268, 283 (1978) (Rehn*721quist, J., dissenting), where it decides that the Act should be read as if it said national forests may “be created only ‘to improve and protect the forest within the boundaries/ or, in other words, ‘for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber.’ ” Ante, at 707 n. 14 (emphasis in original).2 The Court then concludes that Congress did not mean to “improve and protect” any part of the forest except the usable timber and whatever other flora is necessary to maintain the watershed. This, however, is not what Congress said.
The Court believes that its “reading of the Act is confirmed by its legislative history.” Ibid. The matter is not so clear to me. From early times in English law, the forest has included the creatures that live there. J. Manwood, A Treatise and Discourse of the Laws of the Forrest 1-7 (1598); 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *289. Although the English forest laws themselves were not transplanted to the shores of the new continent, see generally Lund, Early American Wildlife Law, 51 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 703 (1976), the understanding that the forest includes its wildlife has remained in the American mind. In establishing the first forest reservations, the year before passage of the Organic Act of 1891, Congress exhibited this understanding by directing the Secretary of the Interior to “provide against the wanton destruction of the fish . . . and game found within said reservation, and against their capture or destruction, for the purposes of merchandise or profit.” Act of Oct. 1,1890, § 2, 26 Stat. 651.3
*722Similarly, the bill introduced by Representative McRae in the 54th Congress, upon which the Court relies in construing the statute, ante, at 707-708, n. 14, directed the Secretary, “to preserve the timber and other natural resources, and such natural wonders and curiosities and game as may be therein, from injury, waste, fire, spoliation, or other destruction . . . .” H. R. 119, 54th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 Cong. Rec. 6410 (1896). The bill that became law in the 55th Congress substituted for this provision the independent “improve and protect the forest” clause together with a general direction that the Secretary “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 . . . .” Organic Administration Act of 1897, 30 Stat. 35, 16 U. S. C. § 551 (1976 ed.). Despite this rephrasing, Congress remained of the view that wildlife is part of the forest that it intended to “improve and protect” by passage of the 1897 Act, for in its first appropriation to implement the Act it directed that
“forest agents, superintendents, supervisors, and all other persons employed in connection with the administration and protection of forest reservations shall in all ways that are practicable, aid in the enforcement of the laws of the State or Territory in which said forest reservation is situated, in relation to the protection of fish and game . . . .” Act of Mar. 3, 1899, 30 Stat. 1095.
See also Act of May 23, 1908, 35 Stat. 259, 16 U. S. C. § 553 (1976 ed..). This understanding has continued down to the present day. See, e. g., Act of May 22, 1928, § 5, 45 Stat. 701, 16 U. S. C. § 581d (1976 ed.) (authorizing annual appropriations “[f]or such experiments and investigations as may be necessary in determining the life histories and habits of forest *723animals, birds, and wildlife”); Act of Mar. 29, 1944, § 1, 58 Stat. 132, 16 U. S. C. § 583 (1976 ed.) (authorizing the Secretary to establish sustained-yield units “in order to provide for a continuous and ample supply of forest products; and in order to secure the benefits of forests in maintenance of water supply, regulation of stream flow, prevention of soil erosion, amelioration of climate, and preservation of wildlife . . . .”) (Emphasis supplied.) 4
One may agree with the Court that Congress did not, by enactment of the Organic Administration Act of 1897, intend to authorize the creation of national forests simply to serve as wildlife preserves. But it does not follow from this that Congress did not consider wildlife to be part of the forest that it wished to “improve and protect” for future generations. It is inconceivable that Congress envisioned the forests it sought to preserve as including only inanimate components such as *724the timber and flora. Insofar as the Court holds otherwise, the 55th Congress is maligned and the Nation is the poorer, and I dissent.5
II
Contrary to the Court’s intimations, cf. ante, at 711-713, I see no inconsistency between holding that the United States impliedly reserved the right to instream flows, and what the Court views as the underlying purposes of the 1897 Act. The national forests can regulate the flow of water — which the Court views as “the very purpose for which Congress did create the national forest system,” ante, at 711-712 — only for the benefit of appropriators who are downstream from the reservation. The reservation of an instream flow is not a consumptive use; it does not subtract from the amount of water that is available to downstream appropriators. Reservation of an instream flow therefore would be perfectly consistent with the purposes of the 1897 Act as construed by the Court.6
I do not dwell on this point, however, for the Court’s opinion cannot be read as holding that the United States never reserved mstream flows when it set aside national forests under the 1897 Act. The State concedes, quite correctly on the Court’s own theory, that even in this case “the United States *725is not barred from asserting that rights to minimum instream flows might be necessary for erosion control or fire protection on the basis of the recognized purposes of watershed management and the maintenance of timber.” Brief for Respondent 44 n. 11. Thus, if the United States proves, in this case or others, that the reservation of instream flows is necessary to fulfill the purposes discerned by the Court, I find nothing in the Court’s opinion that bars it from asserting this right.
I express no view as to the effect of the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960, 74 Stat. 215, 16 U. S. C. §528 et seq. (1976 ed.), on the *719United States’ reserved water rights in national forests that were established either before or after that Act’s passage. Although the Court purports to hold that passage of the 1960 Act did not have the effect of reserving any additional water in then-existing forests, see ante, at 713-715, this portion of its opinion appears to be dicta. As the Court concedes, “[t]he United States does not argue that the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960 reserved additional water for use on the national forests.” Ante, at 713 n. 21. Likewise, the State argues only that “[n]o reserved rights for fish or wildlife can be implied in the Gila National Forest 'prior to the enactment of the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of June 12, 1960 ...” Brief for Respondent 44 (emphasis supplied); see also id., at 1 (“questions presented”). Indeed, the State has gone so far as to suggest that passage of the 1960 Act may well have expanded the United States’ reserved water rights in the national forests, presumably with a priority date for the additional reserved rights of 1960. See Brief in Opposition 16-17. Read in context, the New Mexico Supreme Court’s statement that the 1960 Act “does not have a retroactive effect nor can it broaden the purposes for which the Gila National Forest was established under the Organic Act of 1897,” Mimbres Valley Irrigation Co. v. Salopek, 90 N. M. 410, 413, 564 P. 2d 615, 618 (1977), quoted ante, at 713, appears to mean nothing more than that the 1960 Act did not give the United States additional reserved water rights with a priority date of before 1960 — a proposition with which I think we all would agree. Cf. ante, at 713-714, n. 21. But there never has been a question in this case as to whether the 1960 Act gave rise to additional reserved water rights with a priority date of 1960 or later in the Gila National Forest.
In fact, the Court appears to show some ambivalence as to whether, in its view of the 1897 Act, national forests are to be reserved for two purposes, or only one. See ante, at 711-713.
The Act cited is entitled “An act to set apart certain tracts of land in the State of California as forest reservations." 26 Stat. 650 (emphasis supplied). Yosemite National Park was not carved out of the forest reserved by the 1890 Act until 1905. See Act of Feb. 7, 1905, 33 Stat. 702-703, 16 U. S. C. §46 (1976 ed.). A portion of the land reserved by *722the 1890 Act remained a forest reserve and was designated the Sierra National Forest.
The understanding that' the forest includes the creatures that live there is confirmed by the modern view of the forest as an interdependent, dynamic community of plants and animals:
“The forest community, then, consists of an assemblage of plants and animals living in an environment of air, soil, and water. Each of these organisms is interrelated either directly or indirectly with virtually every other organism in the community. The health and welfare of the organisms are dependent upon the factors of the environment surrounding them; and the environment surrounding them itself is conditioned to a considerable degree by the biotic community itself. In other words, the plants, the animals, and the environment — including the air, the soil, and the water— constitute a complex ecological system in which each factor and each individual is conditioned by, and in itself conditions, the other factors comprising the complex.” S. Spurr, Forest Ecology 155 (1964).
See also Gosz, Holmes, Likens, & Bormann, The Flow of Energy in a Forest Ecosystem, 238 Scientific American No. 3, pp. 92-102 (1978). Thus, it is doubtful whether the timber and watershed that the Court prizes so highly could flourish without a complement of wildlife. The recognition by modern science of this vital interdependence is by no means a new discovery. See J. Manwood, A Treatise and Discourse of the Laws of the Forrest 6 (1598).
No doubt it will be said that the waterflow necessary to maintain the watershed including the forest will be sufficient for the wildlife. This well may be true in most national forests and most situations. But the Court’s opinion, as I read it, recognizes no reserved authority in the Federal Government to protect wildlife itself as a part of the forest, and therefore if and when the need for increased waterflow for this purpose arises the Federal Government would be powerless to act. Indeed, upstream appropriators could b,e allowed to divert so much water that survival of forest wildlife — including even the fish and other life in the streams— would be endangered.
It is true that reservation of an instream flow might in some circumstances adversely affect appropriators upstream from the forest. There would be no inconsistency with the 1897 Act, however, for that Act manifestly was not intended to benefit upstream appropriators.