i 9 2 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



fires occurred and we find that some of them burned many 

 hundreds of years ago. In the records kept by the age old 

 sequoias of California we find the histories of great fires in the 

 years 245, 1441, 1581 and 1797. 



So we can not blame the white man for the presence of fire 

 in our forests. But it is unfortunately true that since settlement, 

 fires have increased, both in number and in area burned. Even 

 from the first the white men were lavish in their use of fire. 

 Hunters, settlers, and prospectors all preferred open, park-like 

 forests without young trees, or undergrowth and the easiest 

 way to bring about this result was to run fire through the 

 woods. For many years there was no public sentiment against 

 setting fires to the woodlands. On the contrary it was a settled 

 custom in many regions to burn the timber lands each spring. 

 Old ways are hard to change and in spite of every effort to 

 stamp out this evil the number of fires is still increasing. Each 

 year over fifty thousand sweep across our forests. Each year 

 they burn an average of twelve million acres. In the United 

 States alone over three thousand victims have been sacrificed to 

 the forest fire God. 



Not all of these thousands of fires are equally destructive 

 some do great damage, some little, but of one thing we can 

 be quite sure each one of the fifty thousand fires has caused 

 some damage, whether it be great or small. Each has left the 

 country a little poorer, a little less livable, than it was before. 

 In the Northwest and in the northern Rockies especially, for- 

 est fires are often terrific tempests of flame that run destructively 

 over vast areas killing in their paths every tree, big or little, 

 burning and destroying beasts and birds alike, drying out the 

 soil and shriveling up even the seeds that are in the soil. 



