A NATIONAL FOREST POLICY 



63 



burnings extending over fifty or a hundred years. It 

 is impossible to fire these pine forests on any extended 

 scale without destroying at least a large part of the 

 small growth and at the same time eating out the 

 butts of the old trees little by little. A careful investi- 

 gation has shown that on the areas deliberately fired 

 by advocates of light burning, the extent of the destruc- 

 tion is essentially the same as in any ordinary fire in 

 the pine woods. 



Light burning means nothing more nor less than 

 the continuance of the frequent ground fire, which 

 steadily and irresistibly destroys the western pine for- 

 ests. At its best, this practice is simply a measure for 

 the protection of old timber. It is part of the pro- 

 cess of timber mining, which values nothing but the old 

 growth and turns land into unproductive waste. To 

 the gutting of the forest by heavy cutting, it adds the 

 gutting of repeated ground fires. An area cleaned by 

 light burning has no advance young growth to replace 

 the virgin timber after cutting. Its general application 

 would mean that our western pine forests would be 

 replaced by brush fields unless enormous expenditures 

 are made for artificial planting. 



Forestry practice in the United States doubtless will 

 develop further uses for carefully controlled fire as a 

 means of protection. The extent to which this method 

 can be used in the southern pineries is a matter to be 



determined by investigation. In the western pineries, 

 where the tree species and climatic conditions are 

 totally different, the experience of the Forest Service 

 in fifteen years of fire protection, timber cuttings and" 

 forest renewal makes the basic facts of the situation ab- 

 solutely clear. Light burning has no place in a system 

 of forestry which seeks to perpetuate our western pine 

 forests and make them continuously productive. The 

 plausible arguments advanced in advocacy of light burn- 

 ing make this proposal exceptionally dangerous. It 

 tends to weaken the confidence of the public in a genuine 

 system of fire protection. It tends to weaken the sup- 

 port given by timberland owners to joint and organized 

 protective efforts, such as the Forest Service and many 

 western associations have been largely successful in 

 bringing about. It tends to prevent progressive fire pro- 

 gressive fire protection legislation in the Western States. 

 It tends to encourage incendiarism. It is essentially a 

 challenge to the advocates of a national policy of forestry 

 for it strikes directly at the effort to keep timberlands 

 productive rather than permit them to become waste. 

 The American Forestry Association and the United 

 States Forest Service will therefore oppose the light- 

 burning theory with all the resources at their command ; 

 and they both feel that the issue which this proposal 

 has raised should be met squarely by the forestry in- 

 terests of the United States. 



INCREASE IN FOREST RESEARCH NECESSARY 



THE time has come when we must grow timber. 

 Under the pressure of necessity we must make 

 the best of the knowledge we have of methods, 

 imperfect though that knowledge may be. The han- 

 dling and perpetuation of our forests in the last analysis 

 must, however, rest on a solid foundation of careful and 

 thorough forest investigations. Too few people today 

 realize the value and importance of agricultural experi- 

 ment stations in furthering the interests of the farmer and 

 showing the way to more scientific and more profitable 

 farming. An even smaller number recognize as yet that 

 forestry as a pursuit, closely resembling agriculture, can 

 be furthered in much the same way. Results are ob- 

 tained with farm crops in one, or at most, two or three 

 years. It takes only a few years to produce new vari- 

 eties of farm crops, and the farmer obtains the first 

 year an increased return from the use of scientific 

 methods developed by the experiment stations. If in- 

 vestigations in agriculture are important under these 

 circumstances when the mistake of one season may be 

 corrected the next, how much more important it is that 

 the growing of trees, involving decades or perhaps a 

 century, should be scientifically conducted and that ex- 

 periments along this line, also requiring very long pe- 

 riods, should be initiated at once? One may not hope 



to plant a tree and also see it ready to cut for lumber. 

 All the more reason, then, why the person who starts 

 the business should have a clear, scientific understanding 

 of what the results are likely to be. On the National 

 Forests in the West a start has already been made to 

 meet the demands of forest management for accurate 

 knowledge by establishing several experiment stations. 

 The work at these stations should be materially strength- 

 ened. In the East, however, where the economic condi- 

 tions are more ripe for the handling of the forests as a 

 permanent resource, there is, in spite of a large number 

 of agencies and forest schools interested in the problem, 

 a lack of co-ordinated effort toward securing accurate 

 scientific knowledge. 



The establishment of several forest experiment sta- 

 tions in the East to solve the problems of New England, 

 of the Southern Appalachians, of the South Atlantic and 

 Gulf States, and of the Lake States, is particularly- 

 urgent. This need has been long felt and can no longer 

 be neglected. Every timber owner, every forester, for- 

 est school, and the various wood-using industries which 

 are vitally dependent upon the forests should see to it 

 that forest practice in the East should be based on the 

 results of investigations conducted at forest experiment 

 stations, just as agricultural practice is becoming more 



