Costs of Forest Protection 27 



charge to be absorbed into his cost of doing business and to be 

 reimbursed in the sale value of his product. 



In the long run. the stumpage value of timber must equal the 

 cost of producing timber. Our forests must be protected, and 

 it will cost an aggregate of very great sums to protect them. If 

 we are to have forests, and if they are to pay for themselves, the 

 cost of protecting them is an integral part of the cost of produc- 

 tion. In a rather vague way this is already recognized. A tract 

 of uncut timber surrounded by inflammable slash, brings much 

 less on the market than a similar tract included within the boun- 

 daries of an efficient Fire Protective Association. An owner 

 bonding a timber tract where the fire danger is known to be 

 high, must pay more for the money he borrows, because the 

 bonding company will discount the issue so as to absorb what it 

 assumes the risk to be. That is, the stumpage is worth less if 

 unprotected. For the timber owner it is a matter of determin- 

 ing whether it is cheaper to pay for protection or sufifer what- 

 ever losses may occur. A property subject to great damage or 

 total loss, and non-insurable, if without protection, is certainly 

 an exceedingly poor investment, and the quality of the invest- 

 ment will be in inverse proportion to the period of investment. 

 An owner may be able to afford the risks for a few years previous 

 to logging, but he can less afford unmitigated risks if he must 

 wait for ten or more years for his timber to reach a satisfactory 

 sale value. An owner contemplating indefinite or permanent 

 forest maintenance without planning for the work and expenses 

 of protection would be a speculator of low intelligence. Only 

 the past rise in stumpage values, the concentration of great 

 holdings in few, financially strong hands, and the practice of 

 buying just ahead of logging have permitted timber investment 

 under past and prevailing conditions to be a tolerable business 

 venture. 



With the growth of stumpage values, the elimination of the 

 small scattered holdings and, above all, the forester's demon- 

 strations of the possibility of fire prevention and control, it is 

 the exceptional timber owner who is not ready to admit that he 

 can afford at least a little for a protective organization, even 

 though he expects to log his timber within a few years. The 

 growth of Private Fire Associations in numbers and in acreage 

 patrolled is proof of this conviction. But the ineffectiveness 



