THE PERSONAL EQUATION IN BRUSH DISPOSAL 

 By K. E. Kimball 



Men love to leave the consideration of important questions to bicker 

 about details of execution. This is sometimes a clever means of avoid- 

 ing dissentions in conventions. Again it is a smoke screen to hide the 

 importance of the real issue. Take the matter of a National Forest 

 policy. It would seem that far too much has been said about the details 

 of its execution and particularly about slash disposal. 



This slash disposal matter has been held up as a regular "bogie man." 

 It has been made to appear that a policy of forest conservation and re- 

 forestation must stand or fall by the adoption or rejection of this detail. 

 Absurd statements have been made concerning the cost of brush dis- 

 posal and equally absurd statements as to its necessity. No one who 

 has seen U. S. Forest Service systems of brush disposal in operation 

 will be mislead regarding costs, and no one who has had to fight forest 

 fires in a logged-over region has any weak-kneed ideas as to the de- 

 sirability of slash removal. However, this is not what I started out 

 to talk about. I am going to take the need for brush disposal for 

 granted and say a little out of my own experience about costs, and 

 particularly about an element of costs which seems to have escaped 

 general comment. 



The White Mountain National Forest has some mighty bad slash 

 areas and the region has suffered heavily from forest fires. The timber- 

 sale contracts now in force on the Forest all contain a brush-disposal 

 clause. The writer has been a close observer of the attempts to en- 

 force these clauses and of the attempts at evasion. It goes without 

 saying that the clauses have been enforced, but right here is where the 

 thing I want to talk about comes in. Call it the personal equation, the 

 personal factor, the human element, or what you will ; I believe it is 

 the starting point from which brush disposal and its costs should be 

 examined. 



Probably illustratiuns will best present the point. Last winter the 

 observations to ascertain the actual cost of brush disposal under oper- 

 ating conditions on the National Forest were continued. Observers 

 were sent to operations under Forest Service supervision and notes 

 taken over an extended period. One observer was sent to a sale that 



