This article is an attempt to elucidate the state of forests in Bessarabia in the first interwar decade, given that until the First World War, forests were part of the private agricultural fund, while, according to the provisions of the Law on Agrarian Reform, in the new conditions, the forests had to serve the cause of public and national utility. Based on archival documents, including unpublished ones, it describes the situation in which, on the one hand, according to the provisions of the agrarian reform law, the forests were to be transferred urgently to the State, in order to be protected from illegal and abusive cutting, while, on the other hand, the critics of the agrarian reform accused the legislators that the law of agrarian expropriation was applied to the forests.