MICHIGAN ROADS AND FORESTS 



Michigan Forestry Association. 



The Michigan Forestry Association was organized in Grand Rapids August 30, 1905, having for its object the promotion of a ra- 

 tional system of forestry in Michigan. The society is managed by the following roster of officers: President, John H. Bissell, of Detroit; 

 Vice-President, Morrice Quinn, Saginaw; Secretary, Henry G. Stevens, Detroit; Treasurer, W. B. Mershon, Saginaw, W. S. Board of 

 Directors S. M. Lemon, Grand Rapids; H. N. Loud, Au Sable; Thos. B. Wyman, Munising; E. C. Nichols, Battle Creek; R. Hanson, Gray- 

 ling; Geo. N. Brady, Detroit. 



A WORD ON THE 



PRESENT SITUATION 



(By Filibert Roth, Michigan Forest Warden, 



Before Michigan Forestry Association 



Commission at Battle Creek.) 



A terrible calamity has come to our State. 

 Dozens of human lives have been lost; dozens 

 of innocent, law-abiding, useful citizens of our 

 State have fallen victims to forest fires. Hun- 

 dreds of families for weeks and weeks suffered 

 the "Horrors of Smoke," horrors equal, if not 

 more terrible, than those of storm and snow. 

 The mother and her children, alone in the lit- 

 tle clearing, with the father ten. or twenty 

 miles away at some mill, for weeks were sur- 

 rounded by a veil of smoke so dense that they 

 could not leave their home, that they could 

 not see the sun, that they could not see and 

 know whether the fires were few or many, 

 near or far. Through long nights and dark 

 days these poor people waited and suffered. 

 To some of them relief came, the fires were 

 checked or else swept by. For hours such 

 families suffered the pangs of death, finally to 

 recover and find themselves in a blackened 

 waste, alone in the midst of death and deso- 

 lation. 



But in some cases it was otherwise. Out of 

 the terrible, the ghostly veil of smoke came 

 the fire, and with a rush it swept over the 

 home, it destroyed as it went, and the poor 

 sufferers at last were overtaken by a horrible 

 death. Suffocated in their homes, on the 

 smoke enveloped trail, in the dark impene- 

 trable woods, or burned at the track and in 

 the very train which was to bring relief. Oh 

 horror! 



In the presence of such calamity it seems 

 little less than sacrilege to speak of losses in 

 money and property; and it seems equally 

 idle to prate of what should have been done 

 and might be done in the future. And yet we 

 may perhaps be pardoned if we stop here to 

 read in this calamity a lesson which may help 

 us to do better in the future. Experience 

 seems the only teacher of nations, and calami- 

 ties are her greatest lessons. And what can 

 we learn today? 



State Neglects Its Duty. 



The great State of Michigan, with its two 

 and one-half million people, with abundance 

 of wealth and credit, stands idly by while one- 

 half of the State is wrapped in fire and smoke. 

 Michigan as a State neglects to perform the 

 fundamental function of all government; 

 namely, the protection of the lives and prop- 

 erty of her citizens. The State has refused to 

 use its power to furnish the protection for 

 which thousands of its citizens are paying and 

 have been paying millions of dollars in taxes. 



Today one-half of the State is unsettled, wild 



land. About eleven million acres are in woods 

 and should be preserved, and probably twelve 

 million acres are cut-over (largely burned 

 over) lands. There are millions of acres that 

 can and will be settled by farmers, and mill- 

 ions more that should be left to forest, or re- 

 planted. But all this calls for protection 

 against fires. 



Michigan today needs every stick of timber 

 it has. It is importing a large part of its 

 building timber now. Hundreds of miles of 

 its territory are waste lands; our rivers have 

 suffered; the seasons have become erratic. 



And still our State waits. 1't refuses to en- 

 act law and neglects to enforce what it has. 

 Every year we have these fires sweeping thou- 

 sands of acres of land. All summer long, in 

 fact since early spring of this year, hundreds 

 of fires have burned in nearly all parts of the 

 north counties. 



Has the State used its power to stop them? 

 Have the counties used their power to offer 

 organized resistance to this danger? Have 

 they made any effort to prevent these fires; 

 to find and restrain the men who set them, and 

 to combat the fires when started? From all 

 accounts, NO. The settler, the owner of land 

 and timber, was left to fight as best he could. 

 Everybody's business was nobody's business. 

 The fires multiplied, the dry season made their 

 spread easy, the whole matter was allowed to 

 grow into a terrible repetition of the disasters 

 of 1871 and 1881. 



Loss of Life Disgrace to Michigan. 



What have all these fires done for our State? 

 They have caused the loss of human lives 

 enough to shame barbarian Russia, and they 

 have destroyed our forests. This is all that 

 needs be said; they have destroyed our for- 

 ests. It was not the axe but the fire which de- 

 stroyed billions of feet of useful mature tim- 

 ber and completely destroyed the small trees 

 which should furnish us timber today. We 

 have at least twelve million acres of these 

 burned over lands today; the greater part of 

 this area has been burned for years; it has 

 been idle waste land and is so today. As for- 

 est, with the young trees left intact, these for- 

 ests could grow wood enough to produce a 

 3% income on at least $50 an acre. Their pres- 

 ent value would then be $50, and of this the 

 tree growth would form at least $45. Your 

 twelve million acres of waste lands would be 

 worth five hundred and forty million dollars 

 to the people of Michigan. Your forest fires, 

 possible through the negligence of the State, 

 have destroyed this five hundred and forty 

 million dollars. What else they have done 

 is insignificant compared to this, except the 

 destruction of life. 



Our forest fires have burned year after year, 

 we have never been without them, and it is 

 only when people and houses burn up that we 

 think them thrilling enough to repnrr. Year 

 after year thousands of acres are burned over, 

 the young growth is destroyed and the good 

 work of nature once more put to naught. And 

 while the local paper and our authorities tell 

 you "No damage," the fact is otherwise. The 

 damage in any destruction of property is mea- 

 sured exactly by the amount of money it 

 would take to put the property in the same 

 shape in which it was before the damage was 

 done. To replace the millions and millions of 

 useful young trees from one to thirty feet in 



height which the fires of each year have de- 

 stroyed, would be an undertaking of great 

 magnitude and one which the coming genera- 

 tion of this people will fully appreciate. For 

 they must plant or do without. 



STATE FORESTRY CONFERENCE. 



Charles W. Garficld has returned to Grand 

 Rapids from the forestry conference at Madi- 

 son, Wis-, at which eight states and two Cana- 

 dian provinces were represented. Mr. Gar- 

 leld reports that the conference was a very 

 successful one, an dthat the representatives of 

 the states and provinces united harmoniously 

 on the propositions regarding fire laws, and 

 agreed upon certain measures to be put into 

 a bill to be presented to the legislatures in 

 order to secure uniform laws for the .three 

 pine states, Michigan, Minnesota and Wis- 

 consin, where conditions are almost identical; 

 whereas, owing to different conditions, the 

 other sections represented are less interested 

 in these measures. Measures adopted were 

 based on suggestions from lumbermen, and 

 leading features are a patrol system to pre- 

 vent fires, to have the expense of the patrol 

 system met by a small acreage tax on the 

 region put under the fire law, which in Michi- 

 gan would probably be in the northern penin- 

 sula, and the northern third or two-thirds of 

 the southern peninsula, and that lumbermen 

 be compelled to burn the brush on their hold- 

 ings. Ontario was represented at the confer- 

 ence, and, while the representative had no 

 authority to speak officially, he assured the 

 delegates of his belief that Ontario would be 

 glad to co-operate on similar lines with the 

 others. 



Mr. Garfield was continued as chairman of 

 the conference and the next meeting is sub- 

 ject to his call. 



NATIONAL RESERVES IN MICHIGAN. 



A Washington correspondent says that there 

 will soon be a formally dedicated federal for- 

 est reserve in the upper peninsula of Michigan, 

 and perhaps two. Last year, when the gov- 

 ernment withdrew from entry some 75,000 

 acres of the remaining public ;domtain in 

 Michigan, there were some 20,000 acres of the 

 lands designated in Chippewa county. They 

 are referred to in the records as the Iroquois 

 forest reserve. The bulk of the acreage with- 

 drawn last year was located in losco and Os- 

 coda counties, in lower Michigan. 



Eleven thousand acres of government land 

 in Luce county has been withdrawn at the in- 

 stitution of the federal forest service, giving 

 Michigan three national forests. Gifford Pin- 

 chot, the head of the forest division, has ap- 

 proved the projects for the dedication of the 

 federal forest in Oscoda and Tosco counties 

 that was contemplated when the land therein 

 was withdrawn last year, and he has prac- 

 tically approved of the dedication of the Chip- 

 pewa county reserve. The Luce forest will 

 be called the Marquette forest, in honor of 

 the early missionary and explorer. 



FORESTRY NOTES. 



There is an oak in Ray, Macomb county, 

 said to be the biggest oak in Michigan. It 

 measures twenty-nine feet in circumference, 

 and, although rotten at the core, is still vigor- 

 ous Probably that giant oak is the county's 

 oldest inhabitant. It is possible that it ante- 

 dates the famous old Charter Oak of Massa- 

 chusetts. It should be carefully preserved. 



