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A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



TABLE 8. Average annual expenditures for fire protection on State and private 

 forest land, and cost per acre, by regions (average 1927-80) 



1 Incomplete record of expenditure on private land in New Mexico. 



Of these expenditures, the cost per acre rather than the total is the 

 more significant figure, because it makes possible a better comparison 

 of unit cost. For the territory outside the national forests, present 

 per acre expenditure is highest in the North Rocky Mountain, fol- 

 lowed by the Pacific Coast, Middle Atlantic, Lake, New England, 

 South Rocky Mountain, South, and Central regions, in the order 

 named. 



The North Rocky Mountain region on the upper end of the scale 

 (5.9 cents) is spending on its total area needing protection almost 15 

 times as much per acre as the Central and South. This wide spread 

 between regions is not, as stated previously, due merely to differences 

 in the inherent difficulty of the fire-control job but also, and probably 

 more, to the interest or lack of interest of the private landowner 

 and the State in fire control and the amount of money they are willing 

 to spend for such activities. As will be shown later, present expendi- 

 tures fall considerably short of the needs in every forest region and, 

 largely, in proportion to the excess in the ratio of present burned-over 

 acreage to the desired objective in allowable annual burn. 



In the national forests, where the fire-control problem has been 

 progressively met with increased appropriations for intensified pro- 

 tection effort, present expenditures for the whole national-forest area 

 more nearly approach ultimate needs. But even here, as indicated 

 in table 6, about 30 million of the 95 million acres requiring protection 

 are still burned over to a considerably greater degree than the objec- 

 tive set up, and in these areas protection costs must be materially 

 increased. 



The present per-acre costs for all national forests given in table 9 

 are very much higher than per-acre costs on State and private land, 

 but they include every direct and indirect item of expenditure. The 

 lowest costs per acre are found in the South Rocky Mountain and 

 New England regions and the highest in the Central and the South. 

 The high costs in the latter regions are in part due to the fact that 

 the units protected are comparatively small and require protection 

 against threatening fires from outside areas which are frequently 

 costly to handle. These costs will be reduced as additional territory 

 is added to round out these properties. The higher costs in the 

 Pacific Coast and North Rocky Mountain regions reflect the difficul- 

 ties of fire control in highly inflammable forests on adverse terrain. 



