112 



Canadian Forestry foiinial. 



ing on the reserves between Lake 

 ^^'innipeg and the Rockies. There was 

 not nearly enough timber land reserved 

 to supply the needs of this great region. 

 The obvious thing to do was to create 

 more reserves and protect not merely 

 the mature timber but also the young 

 trees as carefully as if they were dollar 

 bills. "If the floor of this room were 

 covered with dollar bills," Mr. Ross went 

 on, "he would be judged insane who 

 would let a fire get started amongst 

 them, yet this is the very kind of thing 

 that is going on in the case of young tree 

 growth." In Europe it was said "It is 

 only Turks and Americans (including 

 Canadians) who burn the forest." In 

 the case of the Dominion Forest Re- 

 serves, however, it was the policy of the 

 Forestry Branch of the Department of 

 the Interior to do everything in its 

 power to protect the timber from fire, 

 to lessen the amount of waste incident 

 to lumbering operations, to stop timber 

 thieving, and so to manage the reserves 

 as to secure continuous crops of timber 

 from them. Other nations had been 

 able not only to secure but actually to 

 improve both the quantity and quality 

 of the crop — so why not Canada? So far 

 the great difficvilty had been to secure 

 men with the necessary technical train- 

 ing and administrative ability to take 

 charge of the work. In the United 

 States the technically trained men were 

 snapped up by the Federal and State 

 Governments and the lumber and pulp 

 companies as soon as they graduated. 

 With the recently established forest 

 schools at the University of Toronto and 

 the University of New Brunswick, it 

 was hoped that men would soon be 

 available for this work. 



Mr. Ross then took up in detail the 

 different reserves in the three provinces 

 showing the location, size and character 

 of each and mentioning the problems 

 connected with them. He noted that, 

 the rainfall being only about one-third 

 that of Ontario and the average velocity 

 of the wind almost exactly twice as 

 great, it was a difficult inatter to fight 

 fire in the western reserves. The only 

 way in which they could be protected 

 was to patrol them summer and winter; 

 to have efficient fireguards and have 

 roads that would enable the rangers to 

 get quickly from one part of the reserve 

 to another. In 1908 one hundred and 

 fifty miles of roads were made along the 



boundaries and through dift'erent parts 

 of the reserves. This work should be 

 continued. 



In 1Q08 twenty-five squatters were 

 removed from the Turtle Mountain 

 Reserve in Manitoba and given land 

 elsewhere. The same was true of Riding 

 Mountain Reserve from which one 

 hundred and twenty-five squatters had 

 been removed. The removal of these 

 required great tact on the part of the 

 officers of the Forestry Branch, but 

 without their removal it would have 

 been folly to attempt to place the re- 

 serves under management. The great 

 thing to be done now was to protect the 

 young growth, have the dead timber 

 removed and get tree growth started on 

 the open spots. Citing the case of the 

 Turtle Mountain Reserve where there 

 was a bare patch of fifty-five square 

 miles, Mr. Ross pointed out that it 

 would cost $264,000 to plant this with 

 nursery stock so that it will be necessary 

 to let Nature do her own seeding or find 

 some cheaper method than planting. . In 

 1908 Mr. Knechtel tried the experiment 

 of placing tree seeds in the long grass 

 and covering them with sand. The 

 experiment had so far been successful. 



On the Spruce Woods Reserve east of 

 Brandon, there had been planted 35,000 

 Scotch pine grown from seeds at Indian 

 Head Nursery Station. From the 

 swamps of the reserve thousands of 

 young tamarack seedlings had been 

 obtained and planted at Indian Head 

 and were making remarkable growth. 

 In 1908 forty bushels of spruce cones 

 were collected there and used for plant- 

 ing on the different reserves. 



The Duck Mountain and Riding 

 Mountain Reserves were important as 

 regulators of streams in Northern 

 Manitoba and as game covers, being the 

 home of elk, moose, black and cinnamon 

 bears and smaller game. 



Referring to the Saskatchewan re- 

 serves as a whole, Mr. Ross noted that 

 the area was only 740 square miles, 

 poorly timbered, containing less than 

 60,000,000 feet of saw timber and about 

 700,000 cords of wood. That was not 

 much for a population of 3 50,000. He 

 asked if the people should not begin to 

 agitate for the creation of more forest 

 reserves in the northern part of the 

 province. To create timber land by 

 planting nursery stock would cost a 

 million dollars for six townships. If 



