522 



Yearbook^ of Agriculture 1949 



of these lands have not found justifica- 

 tion for making the business invest- 

 ments required to embark on good 

 forestry practice in the face of the 

 present certainty of heavy fire losses. 



The most promising solution in sight 

 lies in the possibilities occurring from 

 the use of fire as a silvicultural tool. 

 We are in no way advocating the burn- 

 ing of longleaf woodland for the pri- 

 mary purpose of grazing benefits. That 

 is just what we must get away from. 



Available experience does hold the 

 hope that planned burning for seedbed 

 preparation, brown spot control, re- 

 moval of brush encroachments, and 

 removal of dangerous fuel accumula- 

 tions will together produce enough 

 burned land on a managed area to 

 meet the needs of the stock. Also, when 

 cattlemen are informed of the burning 

 program and pattern, and find they 

 can depend upon its execution, much 

 of the cause for wildfire will have dis- 

 appeared. 



WHEN THE PROGRAM of prescribed 

 burning began in the winter of 1943, 

 there were approximately 3 million 

 acres of national forest lands in the 

 longleaf and longleaf-slash types. Re- 

 connaissance of the lands disclosed that 

 far more needed burning than we had 

 facilities for. Then and since, the prob- 

 lem has been to select the most critical 



conditions for the priority of treatment. 

 The net areas treated in five different 

 seasons and the costs per acre were : 



1943-44: 142,677 acres $0 114 



1944-45: 180,091 acres 



1945-46: 154,617 acres 



1946-47: 110,126 acres 



1947-48: 216,055 acres 



104 

 116 

 155 

 153 



The average area burned annually 

 represents 5.35 percent of the national 

 forest longleaf-slash pine lands. 



The main purposes for burning and 

 the area in acres involved in each 

 were: 



Seedbed preparation 228, 000 



Brown spot disease control 365, 000 



Longleaf seedling release 14, 500 



Control of brush encroachment 50, 000 



Fuel reduction 121,500 



Scrub oak control 2, 000 



Planting preparation 16, 000 



Wildlife burns 3, 000 



Loblolly exploration 3, 500 



The distribution of prescribed burns 

 by States was: 



Acres 

 Alabama 55, 100 



Florida 333, 600 



Louisiana 100, 800 



Mississippi 216, 700 



North Carolina 11,100 



South Carolina 41, 100 



Texas 45, 100 



The major efforts of the first year 

 were concentrated in Florida. There 

 (particularly on the Osceola National 

 Forest, with its dense stands of ad- 

 vanced reproduction and heavy flash 

 fuel) the burning was extremely risky, 

 with chances of severe losses. But a 

 force of men experienced in handling 

 wildfires was available there; we be- 

 lieve that whatever the risk from burn- 

 ing, the risk from doing nothing was 

 even greater. The conditions appeared 

 to be worse there than elsewhere in 

 the South, so that successful prescribed 

 burning would assure solution and 

 techniques on which to base success- 

 ful operations elsewhere. 



Research men currently recorded 

 the factors present and the methods 

 involved in each burn, measured ap- 

 parent damage, and thereafter have 

 annually remeasured the representa- 

 tive plots to compute delayed or slowly 



