Watershed management is fast becoming a popular catch-phrase as water shortages develop, though few people realize it is still more a concept or aim than a course of action. The idea of watershed management goes back to antiquity. But what we have done or know about it is mostly a development of the last 25 years, starting with the big conservation programs of the “thirties.'' To a public then desperately concerned with pulling itself out of a great economic depression, talk about controlling little waters meant little and might well have been interpreted by some as ushering in a government-sponsored program for child care and guidance.