382 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



large amounts on State and private lands. The destruc- 

 tion would be likely to exceed even that of 1910, the most 

 appalling tire season ever encountered by the Forest Ser- 

 vice, when over 4,000,000 acres of National Forest land 

 were burned over in the West, and 6,500,000,000 board 

 feet of timber, valued at nearly $15,000,000, was lost." 

 To meet the emergency the Secretary of Agriculture 

 requested the Secretary of the Navy to detail hydroplanes 

 for an air survey of the Storm-swept region in order 



SEVEN FEET IN DIAMETER AND SIXTEEN FEET HIGH. NO 

 TRACE OF THE REST OF THE TREE COULD BE FOUND AL- 

 THOUGB THE FOREST WAS SEARCHED FOR SEVERAL 

 HUNDRED YARDS IN THE VICINITY OF THE STUMP 



that the amount of damage might be determined, since 

 it was impossible to traverse the uprooted forests on the 

 ground. A request has also been made* to the Secretary 

 of War that the railroad constructed by the Spruce Pro- 

 duction Corporation, extending from Port Angeles to Lake 

 Pleasant, on the Olympic Peninsula, be equipped with 

 rolling stock and operated at its maximum capacity. This 

 railroad is the one important line of communication into 

 the devastated area, and will afford a means of salvaging 

 a considerable amount of the down timber. (Photo- 

 graphs by Webster and Stevens, Seattle.) 



"C 1 R. INGALSBE, mineral examiner for the forest 

 - 1 service in Montana and Idaho, has resigned his po- 

 sition to enter private practice. The Missoulian. 



NEWSPAPERS AND FIRE PREVENTION 



A BURNING cigarette butt beside a woods-road in 

 ** northern Maine may mean much to the business man- 

 agement of the Texas Daily Bugle. Sounds like a joke 

 but is it? The Daily Bugle, say specialists of the Forest 

 Service, United States Department of Agriculture, repre- 

 sents the newspaper industry dependent on forests for 

 its existence; the smouldering cigarette portrays forest 

 fires caused by human carelessness. Newspaper is made 

 from wood. Fires destroy the forests and lessen the 

 supply of raw material with a resultant increase in the 

 price of paper stock. Hence, the relation between the 

 the cigarette butt in Maine and the newspaper in Texas. 



This is the day and age of newspapers. There are in 

 this country 21,000 papers with a total daily circulation 

 of over 28,000,000 copies. Sixty dailies have a circula- 

 tion exceeding 100,000 copies each, and one Sunday 

 paper claims 1,000,000 circulation. Newsprint is a 100 

 per cent product of the forest, but few persons stop to 

 think that there is real relation beween their daily paper 

 and the problem of forest protection. 



The paper industry of the United States uses about 

 5 y 2 million cords of wood a year. This is equivalent to 

 from 40 to 80 years' growth of timber on approxmately 

 500,000 acres of forest land. No concerted effort has 

 been made to replace the amount taken from the forests, 

 and the yearly drain has depleted the capital stock to 

 something like 50,000,000 cords of spruce, the most desir- 

 able wood, in the regions of centralization of the pulp 

 and paper industry. This indicates only a little more 

 than 10 years' supply in sight, and it is predicted by the 

 Forest Service that within this period the paper mills 

 of the Northeast and Lake States will be hard put to 

 secure pulp wood to keep their mills and machinery 

 busy. 



The pulp and paper industry is at present centered in 

 the New England States, New York, and, to a lesser 

 extent, in the Lake States. The bulk of raw material, 

 exclusive of some 1.300,000 cords of pulp wood imported 

 from Canada, comes from these States. During the past 

 five years 25,000 forest fires in these regions burned over 

 more than 4-*4 million acres and occasioned a loss of 

 $33,850,000. The damage done to pulp-wood stands by 

 these conflagrations amounts to a staggering total. 



In the use of our forests to provide material for the 

 industrial development of the Nation, fire and devasta- 

 tion have usually followed lumbering, instead of the 

 desired and natural reestablishment of forest cover. 

 Fire has taken the rejuvenating life out of some 81 mil- 

 lion acres of our forest land, and, practically unhamper- 

 ed by man, has played pranks with the wood-using in- 

 dustries. The "red plague" continues to spread year by 

 year, largely through the carelessness of campers, log- 

 gers, settlers, and railroads. From 60 to 80 per cent of 

 the annual forest fire loss is due to human agencies and 

 is, therefore, preventable. The newspapers of the country 

 have been hampered by the extremely high prices of paper, 

 and one of the underlying reasons for this increased cost 

 is our diminished supply of pulp wood. 



