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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



The President is Thornton A. Green; Vice-President, C. V. R. Townsend; 

 Treasurer, James E. Sherman; Secretary-Forester, Thomas B. Wyman. 



Heic Hampshire Timberland Owners' Association. 



The only association of the kind in the East. It has about thirty mem- 

 bers, representing about 1,500,000 acres. 



The association maintains looljout stations, patrols, etc., and co-operates 

 with the federal government and the state under the provisions of the Weeks 

 law, whereby funds are appropriated for fire protection in certain states. It 

 has six permanent patrolmen and puts on additional men during seasons of 

 fire danger. The total number of patrolmen in the fall will be about fifty. 



The cost of protection to the association is about five-eighths cent per 

 acre. 



W. P. Brown is President; W. H. Bundy, Vice-President; and F. H. Bil- 

 lard, Secretary-Treasurer-Forester. 



The total area actually represented by the voluntary timberland protective 

 associations, after three years growth, is about 15,000,000 acres; but not less 

 than 30,000,000 additional acres benefit by the patrol. The efficiency of the 

 protection on this area is not exceeded anywhere outside of the National For- 

 ests. If ever there was a trial by fire it was last year, and the associations 

 came out of it with remarkably small loss. 



The measures they are applying are mainly common sense methods which 

 only needed systematizing to become effective. Patrol, telephone lines, trails, 

 tool caches, and education have been recognized for years as essentials of for- 

 est fire protection. The new features developed are largely administrative. 

 The ability to get together and work together in applying a definite system is 

 what has accomplished results. That it will pay cannot be doubted; while 

 the fact that the lumbermen are willing to contribute liberally for fire protec- 

 tion that protects shows that their business judgment is sound. They will 

 accept forestry just as willingly if it can he made to pay. 



What is needed now is an extension of the fire association idea to the 

 forests of the East and to the pine lands of the South. Nor is it a far cry to 

 almost universal co-operation between timberland owners which will reduce 

 their fire losses to a nominal figtire. IMuch depends on the protective asso- 

 ciations now in existence ; if they fail, few would have the heart to try again ; 

 if they continue to be effective, the way is open for similar protective meas- 

 ures in all of our private forests. The states and the federal government can 

 greatly assist the organized private timber owners by protecting their own 

 lands and by co-operation and sane legislation. 



