FOREST DESTRUCTION PREVENTED BY CONTROL 



OF SURFACE FIRES 



BY JOSEPH A. KITTS 



F()RI'".Sr fires in the United States destroy, year by 

 year, more than the forest yield. It requires at 

 least 250 years for a forest to reproduce itself, 1. c, 

 the yield is not greater than two-fifths of one per cent 

 per annum. The stand of timber is being cut at the rate 

 of 3^ per cent per annum. It is evident that we must 

 save the yield and augment natural reproduction by ];)lant- 

 ing, in order to insure a future supply. The situation is 

 now so critical that the fire problem is one to which 

 earnest thought and attention should be given until a 

 solution has been proven, accepted and put into practice 

 throughout the United States. 



Forest fires are of three types in effect — surface fires 

 which spread over the surface of the forest floor, fed by 

 the litter; ground fires which smolder in the ground, con- 

 suming the humus and sometimes the roots of trees ; and 

 crown fires which destroy the entire forest cover. Crown 

 fires start from the ground and the litter must be very 

 heavy and very dry and inflammable to cause and 

 sustain them. The humus must be very dry to sustain 

 a ground fire. 



I have practiced for the past twenty-eight years, on 

 my home lands in California, a method of prevention of 

 crown fires learned from the Sierra Nevada Indians. I 

 have found this method successful in my second growth 

 timber and also in prime forest where the accinnulation 

 of litter (the cause of destructive fires) was in consider- 

 able projrartion. This method has been highly satisfac- 

 tory from every point of view and is here offered as a 

 solution of the fire problem in the coniferous forests. 



The method consists in the burning of the forest 

 litter, by surface fire control as described herein, during 

 and at the end of the wet season, burning over by rota- 

 tion from one-fiftieth to one-fifth of the forest area each 

 year, the periodical rotation depending upon the local 

 rate of litter accumulation. The litter is then burned 

 without danger from crown or groimd fires and, if 

 handled scientifically, aids natural reproduction, removes 

 the excess underbrush, increases the forage, maintains the 

 forest in a thrifty and healthy condition and renders the 

 forest immune to destruction by fire at all seasons of 

 the year. 



It is well known that the Indians practiced a periodic 

 burning over of the forests. Literature on the subject 

 has explained this in many ways excepting the one here 

 given. When the California pioneer asked the Indian 

 why he set so many fires, he replied, "Letum go too 

 long — get too hot — killum all." He used the surface 

 fire to burn the litter in order to prevent the crown fire 

 which destroyed everything. He may not have been 

 very scientific but it must be admitted that his methods 

 of preservation of the forests were highly successful 

 when compared with present day destruction. The first 



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growth trees are fire-marked throughout the northern 

 Sierra Nevada forests ; the indications of destruction by 

 crown fires prior to the coming of the "Americans" arc 

 in small proportion and so indistinct as to point to fires 

 very remotely in the past, if at all; and, the ages of the 

 ])rime trees precludes the occurrence of crown fires for 

 hundreds and thousands of years of aboriginal treat- 

 ment. The pioneers found these forests open and 

 clean ; today they are so encumbered with fallen trees, 

 underbrush and other litter that complete destruction 

 is the usual result of a summer fire. 



Consider the fires in the Crater Lake National Forest 

 in 1910. (Forest Service — Bulletin 100). This forest 

 has an area of 1,166,600 acres, an estimated total stand 

 of 10,197,000,000 feet B. M. and a rated annual yield of 

 90,000,000 feet B. M. 60,891 acres, or 1-19 of the total 

 area, was burned over, destroying 250,000,000 feet B. M., 

 or 1-40 of the stand of timber. One thousand men, em- 

 ployed in fighting the fires, were found inadequate and 

 five companies of United States troops were added. The 

 cost of fire fighting to the Forest Service was $40,000, 

 or 70 cents per acre for the area destroyed. One thou- 

 sand acres of the burned-over area was reseeded at a 

 cost of $3.00 per acre. The loss, then, cannot be esti- 

 mated at less than $3.70 per acre. The timber destroyed 

 was three times the annual growth, and, although the year 

 1910 was an unusually dry one, it must be remembered 

 that the average annual destruction, throughout the 

 United States, is greater than the rate of growth. 



I recently had an opportunity to study the densely 

 ])lanted forests of France. It should be observed here 

 that without these planted forests France could not have 

 waged war for four years. Crown fires are unknown 

 in these dense forests because the people gather the 

 litter for fuel. It is not possible, of course, for us to 

 go fagoting through our forests and we must dispose of 

 the litter in some other manner. 



We use the backfire to remove the litter in order to 

 stop a crown fire, and under most adverse circumstances. 

 When the crown fire reaches the area backfired the live 

 trees alone will not sustain it and it is stopped. Even in 

 the drouth of summer, the backfire does little or no harm 

 to the live trees. When the backfire is used to stop a 

 , crown fire, it only limits the destruction ; it may be tiscd 

 in the spring to prevent it. The backfire is a controlled 

 surface fire working against the wind, which prevents it 

 from becoming a crown fire. 



The following rules for surface fire control may be 

 safely used by any engineer or forester experienced in 

 forest fire fighting: 



I. Burn the forest litter, by means of surface fires, 

 during and at the end of the wet season, in intervals of 

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