522 Forestry Quarterly. 



to securing reproduction. In the fir-larch type there is very often 

 an advance seedling growth, frequently 8 or lo feet high, besides 

 a large number of poles below merchaatable size. Brush burning 

 on an area of this sort must, of necessity, destroy a large amount 

 of seedling and pole growth, besides being so expensive that it 

 often deters a prospective purchaser from buying the timber. 



The problem in white pine, spruce and cedar timber is some- 

 what different. The amount of brush in timber of this sort is so 

 large, and the fire risk in the white pine belt is so great, that, in 

 most cases, extreme care must be taken to prevent fire in the 

 slashings. 



In the old, over-mature white pine stands which are character- 

 istic of the merchantable white pine type of the Lolo Forest, the 

 only feasible system which has been proposed for securing nat- 

 ural reproduction is the reservation from cutting of scattered 

 groups, strips or single trees well distributed over the area, con- 

 stituting ID to 15 percent of the total stand. If the brush is to 

 be burned in a stand of this sort, it must necessarily be piled, in 

 order to prevent the total destruction of the seed trees. The cost 

 -of piling and burning brush on a mixed stand in the white pine 

 type is estimated at 60 cents per thousand feet. In a stand aver- 

 aging 25 M feet to the acre this involves the enormous expendi- 

 ture of $15.00 per acre, several times the cost of planting. 



The obvious alternative, then, is to cut clean, burn the slash 

 broadcast and plant the burned area with nursery stock. No 

 very accurate figures are at hand for the cost of broadcast burn- 

 ing, with the area controlled by cleared fire lines, but an estimate 

 of 20 cents per thousand feet is certainly conservative. 



Let us then take a specific instance and compare the cost of 

 the two methods. A timber sale has recently been made to the 

 Mann Lumber Company on Big Creek on the Lolo National 

 Forest, covering an area of 3,600 acres, estimated at 80,000 M 

 feet, a mixture of white pine, spruce, Douglas fir, larch, cedar, 

 hemlock, and white fir. The contract provides that, except on 

 clean cut areas, the brush shall be piled and burned. The clean 

 <:ut areas will be practically nil, so that they need not be consid- 

 ered. In this particular case a part of the area is fire-killed 

 timber where there will be no brush disposal; but to make the 

 case typical of average conditions, it will be assumed that it is 

 entirely a green timber stand. 



