712 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



FIRE RUNNING THROUGH AN OLD BURN 



Forest officers find it next to impossible to suppress such fires in high winds because sparks fly from snag to snag in defiance of human efforts, 

 but much could be done to relieve the terrific danger of large unmanageable fires by the securing of appropriations State and Federal sufficient 

 to provide proper protection. 



usually been ineffective in dealing with the circumstantial 

 evidence on which the proof for fire law violations 

 ordinarily depends. The detective and police officer 

 are equipped with knowledge and skill well adapted to 

 successful handling of violations of law up to the point 

 where a knowledge of wood craft is required. Crime 

 and criminals are largely confined to cities and settled 

 regions. Few police officers are woodsmen. 



The arts of the woodsmen are not easily learned, 

 especially by mature men. It has been found much 

 easier to transfer something of the knowledge and skill 

 of the accomplished detective to the forest ranger, than 

 to add the ranger's knowledge of the woods to the detec- 

 tive's equipment. 



The rangers of the National Forests of California 

 were trained in some of the essentials of the art of .fol- 

 lowing clues and recognizing and handling evidence. A 

 vigorous fire law enforcement campaign was inaugurated. 

 The result was that arrests for fire law violations in- 

 creased 400 per cent the first year and then doubled again 

 the second year. Fires due to human agency began to 

 decrease in a gratifying fashion and, best of all, there 

 was abundant evidence that vigorous fire law enforce- 

 ment was highly effective in crystallizing and stimulating 



public sentiment in favor of fire protection. It is as 

 true in fire protection as in other things that nothing 

 breeds disrespect for a movement more than lax enforce- 

 ment of a law, and nothing rallies support for a move- 

 ment, about which opinion is divided, more effectively 

 than vigorous and impartial enforcement of whatever 

 laws there may be in effect on the subject. 



Law enforcement has its limitations, of course. The 

 heaviest losses on the National Forests during the three 

 bad years ending with 1919 were due to lightning fires. 

 Serious additions to our 81 million acres of non-pro- 

 ductive forest land have occurred, even on the National 

 Forests, because it often happens that from 25 to 100 

 lightning fires are started by a single dry electric storm 

 on an administrative unit in which the woods are dry 

 as a tinder box and there is only a guard to every one or 

 two fires. When this happens, the result is that some 

 fires get big, destructive, and unmanageable. All big 

 fires are more or less unmanageable. The only way to 

 make protection protect in a lightning country is to pro- 

 vide enough men, telephone lines, trails, and enough of 

 the spirit of "go-get-'em" to make it possible to catch 

 fires small. 



The best kind of a fire on the record of a protective 



