1404 



A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



interest, and indifference towards the forests. In spite of 25 years of 

 educational effort the number of human-caused fires is still surprisingly 

 high. We are still confronted with a severe handicap in attempting to 

 protect forests against fires, simply because the public has thus far 

 failed to grasp the nature and extent of the protection problem and 

 accordingly has made little progress toward eliminating the causes of 

 fire. Table 7 showing the number and causes of fires for 1926-30, 

 gives definite evidence of this heedlessness. 



TABLE 7. Average number of fires by cause, national forests, State, and private 

 lands (protected areas only), 1926-30 



The first task in any adequate fire-control program is to stimulate 

 by carefully designed educational means a proper and sympathetic 

 public attitude towards forest values, and to build up among the 

 leaders of opinion in the community an intelligent understanding of 

 the damage that fires may inflict and the means whereby their 

 destruction may be checked. 



The next step in the program, which must be predicated upon an 

 educated public consciousness, involves the enactment of sufficiently 

 stringent local, State, and Federal fire laws providing for the employ- 

 ment of reasonable safeguards in the legitimate uses of fire in the 



