A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



809 



without doing much damage, it would be extravagant to maintain 

 a protective system designed to insure keeping all the fires small, 

 and impossible to obtain a showing of results in this respect which 

 would compare favorably with those easily attainable and necessary 

 to seek under the opposite conditions. 



In the section of this report entitled " Protection Against Fire" 

 the regional expenditures for the protection of State and private 

 lands are compared on the basis of the ratio between the annual 

 expenditures and the total acreage of these lands needing protection. 

 For the period 1927-30 the annual per acre expenditures averaged, 

 on this basis, as follows: 



Cents 



Central 0. 40 



South . 43 



South Rocky Mountain .89 



New England 1. 94 



Cents 

 Lake 2. 01 



Middle Atlantic 2. 77 



Pacific coast 3. 28 



North Rockv Mountain __ _ 5. 90 



Neither as an indicator of the varying cost of adequate protection 

 in the several regions nor as an indicator of the relative intensiveness 

 with which the States are actually applying protection does this 

 showing accurately reflect the situation. In the two regions in which 

 the lowest expenditures are shown only a minor fraction of the forest 

 area in need of protection is receiving it. The coverage in the cen- 

 tral region is only a little more than one third and in the South only 

 about one fourth complete. In all the other regions but one, how- 

 ever, it is close to complete, and in that one is more than 92 percent 

 complete. Further, some expenditures are included outside those 

 made in maintaining the State protective systems. With due allow- 

 ance for these facts, the figures serve to give an approximate idea of the 

 cost of the protection that is being given in these eight forest regions. 

 The costs shown do not at all indicate the absolute per acre needs 

 of the several regions and indicate only in a very rough and tentative 

 way their comparative needs, concerning which more will be said 

 later. It should be borne in mind also that the expenditures of the 

 individual States within a region often vary substantially. 



Table 5 compares the results during the period 1926-30, by regions, 

 in terms of the total number of fires, the number per 100,000 acres 

 protected, their average size, and the ratio between area protected 

 and protected area burned. 



TABLE 5. Regional results of protection as shown by the number and average size 

 of fires and by the ratio between area protected and area burned over. Average for 

 years 1926-30 



