HANDLING THE FIRE PERIL 



By E. T. ALLEN 



FoBESTEB, Western Conseevation and Fobestby Association 



XN 1910, probably the worst fire year in American history— a year when no 

 rain fell for months, when the winds were veritable hurricanes, when fires 

 sprang up everywhere and were numbered not by hundreds but by thou- 

 sands — the Western Forestry and Conservation Association and its constituent 

 membership carried safely through the season fully 16,000,000 acres of forest, 

 containing at least the stupendous amount of 300,000,000,000 feet of timber. They 

 spent $700,000 for patrol and fire fighting and extinguished over 5,580 fires. 

 Of the vast area protected, barely half a million acres were burned over, includ- 

 ing timber, second-growth and cut-over land. Not more than half of one per 

 cent of all the private timber in Idaho, Washington and Oregon, the states 

 which suffered heaviest from the 1910 fires, was damaged, and the actual loss 

 will not exceed a quarter of one per cent. 



True, this loss was serious, and there was destruction of villages and 

 human lives, but this was only the greater evidence of the test to which the 

 associations were subjected. It proves only too well the hazard which applied 

 equally to the immense area saved and compared to which the loss was 

 insignificant. Had it not been for the associations, the West would have 

 suffered one of the greatest calamities the world has seen. 



During the legislative season following, the Association made an active 

 campaign for more adequate state protective work, especially in Oregon 

 and Washington, and due chiefly to its efforts these states passed completely 

 new forest codes and increased their annual appropriation from $23,000 

 to $68,000. 



The Association receives continual requests for information about 

 organization and methods of cooperative work from all parts of the United 

 States and Canada, and many new associations have resulted. It is mentioned 

 more frequently in press and periodicals than any forest protective agency in 

 the United States except the federal forest service. 



All this means a record of achievement. It means that the timber owners 

 of the Pacific Northwest are held up as protectors of the nation's resources 

 instead of destroyers, as worthy of public commendation rather than suspicion. 

 It means conceding an honestly earned right to a voice in laws and policy of 

 conservation. It means that the stability of investments in western timber is 

 being impressed on capital. Consequently it must mean sound principles, 

 effective methods, and expenditures both liberal and well directed. What are, 

 then, the objects and methods of the cooperative work which has given the 

 Pacific Northwest this distinction? 



The first principle of the movement is to preserve the forests. Not to tell 

 some one else how, but to do it. There is a difference. Propaganda associa- 

 tions, like newspaper articles and speeches, are good in their way, but it takes 

 real money and work to put out fires. The Pacific coast associations get the 

 money and spend it. If two cents an acre suffices, well and good; if it takes 



329 



