Costs of Forest Protection 35 



edly, the Forest Service gets more forest protection for its 

 money than any other organization, in this country, or, indeed, 

 in the world. But the Forest Service would be the last to admit 

 that the quality of its protection was adequate, or nearly adequate. 



The record shows l.o3 acres to each 1,000 acres of timbered 

 land burned over each year for nine years. With a rotation 

 of 100 years this is to assume that 153 acres in each 1,000 acres 

 of timber will burn over during the rotation. Forestry is not a 

 business which can stand a loss of 15 per cent on each turn-over 

 of its stock. Assuming that there will be no more losses like 

 those of 1910, even though similar seasons occur, and that the 

 average losses can be held down to a rate of 0.47 acre per 1,000, 

 the business of the National Forests cannot justify itself with a 

 loss of 4.7 per cent during a rotation. Of course such a method 

 of calculating is not strictly accurate, since it is not probable that 

 all the areas burned over would be total loss or that each fire 

 would run in a different tract, but the method is accurate enough 

 to prove that the rate of loss must be greatly reduced. If Euro- 

 pean experience counts, as we are perhaps learning that it does, 

 and if our forests are not to be expected to earn more than 3 or 4 

 per cent on their capital value, it is obvious that a loss of even 

 1 per cent on the income of the rotation is an exceedingly serious 

 matter. One per cent on the rotation amounts to a yearly burn 

 of 1 acre per 10,000, or 0.1 acre per 1,000 acres; which is about 

 one ninth the loss on the National Forests in the very favor- 

 able year of 1912. 



There was a reported loss of 19.90 acres per 1,000 in 1910. 

 While the losses were extraordinary, the season can hardly be 

 said to be without precedent, in view of the season of 1914. For 

 every region and for the whole country, repetitions of such condi- 

 tions are quite to be expected at intervals of, say, from 5 to 10 

 years. That means that very bad seasons are to be expected some 

 10 or 20 times during a rotation. Or it means that there must be 

 a perfect record, with no losses for 20 years, if the damages are 

 to be reduced to an average of even 1 :1,000 acres per year. Such 

 figuring is of use in attempting to form some notion as to the 

 relative quality of the protection we are receiving and the extent 

 of the effort and expense to which we must go. 



The statistics quoted indicate that it may be possible with the 

 present system on the National Forests, to hold the losses in 



