WOMEN AS FOREST GUARDS 



By John D. Guthrie 



Captain, ^loth Engineers, U. S. A., Archangel, Russia 



The demands of war made vacant many positions in almost every 

 activity throughout the countries at war. These breaks in the civil 

 and industrial ranks were filled, and in many cases well filled, by 

 women. With the calling to the colors of all the available man-power 

 of France every man that could be spared from the forest personnel 

 went to the front or into some form of war activity, and in many cases 

 women filled the vacant places. The drain upon the forest personnel 

 on the National Forests of the United States was heavy and was 

 alleviated to some extent by the use of men who were not subject to 

 the draft, or were relieved from it, by older men, and, in some cases 

 at least, by the employment, and with apparent success, of women fire 

 lookouts on some of the Federal Forests. 



So far as is known by the writer none of these women lookouts were 

 given formal appointments as forest guard by the U. S. Department 

 of Agriculture. Also so far as is known there is no Federal legal 

 restriction prohibiting the formal appointment of a woman as a forest 

 guard, or as forest officer in other grades. With woman suffrage as 

 an eventual certainty we may have some time not only female forest 

 guards but female forest rangers and even supervisors. 



I have known of several rangers' wives who were the equals of their 

 ranger husbands in knowledge of forest business and forest regula- 

 tions and might have proven themselves far more efficient as forest 

 officers than their spouses, had they worn the badge. In early English 

 forest law the position of forester ( an officer in charge of a forest — 

 which however was primarily the hunting preserve of the king) was 

 an hereditary one and there were many women who held the position 

 of forester in early England; if I am not mistaken Sherwood Forest 

 at one time in its history had a woman forester — perhaps it was Maid 

 Marian. In France appareiuly the legal phase of the cjuestion of 

 appointing women as forest guards has come up since the war began. 



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