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A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



TABLE 4. Area burned on protected area, State and private land Yearly average. 



1926-80 



1 Includes mature merchantable timber and young timber. 



2 Includes protection areas whether forest or nonforest and areas of no watershed protection, or forest 

 values. 



From column 6 it will be noted that the New England, northern 

 Rocky Mountain, and southern Rocky Mountain groups are the only 

 ones showing less than 1 percent of area protected which is burned. 

 Further, the north Rocky Mountain and the south Rocky Mountain 

 groups are the only groups in which the percentage of actual area 

 burned is less than the percentage of allowable burn as defined above. 

 In New England it is indicated that fires covered about twice as 

 great an area as should be allowed under adequate protection. These 

 States spent, in 1932, 63 percent of the 1930 estimate of the adequate 

 allowance. (See table 3, column 16.) In the Middle Atlantic States 

 the area burned was about three times that allowable, while the 1932 

 expenditures were 109 percent of the estimated adequate amount. 

 In the Lake States the area burned was again about three times that 

 allowable, and the 1932 expenditures were 88 percent of the adequate 

 estimate. In the Central States the area burned was about three 

 times, in the South between two and three times, and in the Pacific 

 coast region approximately five times the theoretically allowable burn. 



For the entire country the area burned over each year from 1926 to 

 1930 within protected areas was 1.70 percent of those areas, whereas 

 the allowable burn was 0.88 percent. In other words, the area burned 

 was almost exactly twice what it is calculated should be permitted 

 to insure the production of full forest values on these lands. , 



AVERAGE SIZE OF FIRE 



A study of the figures by years from which the averages of column 8 

 of table 4 are made up shows that, over the country as a whole, there 

 was a decrease in the number of acres burned per fire, from 135.7 

 acres in 1926 to 86.8 in 1930. In the New England, Middle Atlantic, 

 and South regions, this trend toward smaller area burned per fire is 

 striking and evidences substantical progress. It is also to be noted in 

 many individual States of the other regions. The effect of the relative 



