Naval Stores: The Forests 



297 



does go unburned for 10 or 15 years, 

 the accumulated herbaceous and the 

 shrubby fuels, draped with large quan- 

 tities of dead pine needles, make an 

 extremely hot and destructive fire. 



The cheapest way to control this fire 

 hazard is by carefully controlled or pre- 

 scribed burning whenever it is needed. 

 Such burning provides the necessary 

 fire protection and forage and makes 

 the area much more accessible and at- 

 tractive to naval stores and timber 

 operators. Deliberate burning is con- 

 trary to everything that foresters 

 taught in the recent past, but the prac- 

 tice of prescribed burning has so many 

 advantages in large portions of the re- 

 gion that a whole technique for it has 

 been perfected and put into use in the 

 past few years, particularly in the na- 

 tional forests of Florida in the flatwoods 

 section. The technique is described in 

 publications of the Southern Forest Ex- 

 periment Station and in an article by 

 John W. Squires in the Journal of 

 Forestry for November 1947. 



The chief purposes of prescribed 

 burning are usually to reduce the fire 

 hazard or to prepare the seedbed for 

 longleaf pine, but it has several other 

 uses. It may control disease (such as 

 brown spot needle blight in longleaf 

 pine) , improve the range, or hold back 

 undesirable vegetation. 



The first step is to examine the tract 

 and decide which places are to be 

 burned in a given year. The purpose 

 and type of burn should be clearly de- 

 fined in advance, and, on large areas, 

 maps should be prepared of the part to 

 be burned. On a large tract, the blocks 

 to be burned must be selected in such 

 a way as to protect other areas from 

 wildfires coming in from the outside. 

 The burning should be planned so that 

 it provides fresh forage where it is most 

 needed in range management. It must 

 also be made to fit in as well as possible 

 with current naval stores operation. 

 Burning should be done just before the 

 installation of new faces. Otherwise 

 raking of the litter away from the tur- 

 pentined trees is usually essential to 

 prevent burning of inflammable faces. 



In slash pine areas particularly, it 

 is important to postpone burning on 

 reproducing areas until the young 

 stand becomes well established. Even 

 in larger stands, the interval between 

 burns must be flexible if fire is to be 

 integrated properly with other forest 

 uses. Experience in the Florida flat- 

 woods indicates that perhaps one- 

 seventh of the gross acreage of a large 

 tract will be burned in a given year. 



After the selection of areas to be 

 burned, fire lines are plowed at inter- 

 vals of about 600 or 700 feet at right 

 angles to the particular wind direction 

 that is preferred for burning. The fire 

 is set with a drip torch on the down- 

 wind side of the strip, so that the fire 

 backs through the area against the 

 wind. In Florida, the fires are usually 

 set a day or two after a rain when there 

 is a northerly wind of 3 to 10 miles 

 an hour. 



Burning always does some damage. 

 The proper technique of prescribed 

 burning results in the lowest sum of 

 costs plus damages. On large areas this 

 sum should amount to about 21 cents 

 an acre for one burn, or perhaps 3 cents 

 an acre a year when prorated to the 

 gross acreage of the property. 



Although the techniques of burning 

 have been worked out, there is still 

 much to be learned about fitting the 

 burning into an integrated pattern of 

 timber management, turpentining, and 

 grazing. 



CATTLE GRAZING is more important 

 in the rather open stands of the naval 

 stores region than in any other forest 

 region in the East. Florida, which con- 

 tains most of the forest land in the 

 naval stores region, has more beef cattle 

 than any other southern State east of 

 the Mississippi; many of the cattle 

 graze on forest range. The cattle in- 

 dustry in Florida returns 48 million 

 dollars annually more than the gum 

 naval stores industry brings to the 

 whole naval stores belt. 



It is recognized that cattle grazing 

 ordinarily has no detrimental effects 

 on timber production in the turpentine 



