26 Forestry Quarterly 



replace the forest. The phrase "carrying his own insurance" 

 would seem to be wholly misapplied in the case of the forest 

 owner. 



Most of our American forests are subject to total destruction 

 by fire, and practically all of them are subject to very serious 

 damage. The amount of damage suffered in the past cannot be 

 approximated save very crudely on a stumpage basis. A great 

 amount of our burned forests have had only nominal stumpage 

 values so that calculations on this basis are practically useless. 

 Statistics bearing on the acreage burned over are more valuable. 

 Calculations of the damage caused by fires, based on the cost of 

 replacement of forest on the burned acreage, would, of course, 

 indicate losses many times as great as those based on current 

 stumpage values. Should an efifort be made to calculate losses on 

 the assumption that a given acreage of burned forest will ulti- 

 mately be replaced and maintained as forest, the result would 

 doubtless show a financial loss well into the billions of dollars. 

 Plummer^ estimated an average annual stumpage loss in the 

 United States of $25,000,000 and that 10,000,000 acres a year 

 were burned over. With any reasonable value assigned to the 

 damages to young stands and to site, the indicated losses would 

 certainly be more than doubled. 



Fire insurance eases the situation for the insured individual 

 who suffers loss, but, of course, the whole group of policy holders 

 actually reimburses all loss. Insurance being general, the policy 

 holders add the costs of insurance to the costs of their business 

 and the general public actually pays the bill of losses plus the 

 administrative costs of the insurance companies. An individual 

 who pays for a certain degree of fire protection which proves 

 inadequate, and who has not insured his property, on suffering 

 fire damage has his business either wiped out or must replace 

 the damage out of what would otherwise be profit. In every 

 case there is an economic loss in addition to the money loss of 

 the property owner. It seems to come to this : the general pub- 

 lic must pay the bill whatever happens; the uninsured owner 

 must add to his costs of operation the cost of protection plus 

 losses. Since the forest owner cannot insure his property, the 

 costs of protection plus the value of his losses is a legitimate 



« Bulletin 117, U. S. Forest Service. 



