Why Are Forest Fires More 



Numerous Now Than 



Formerly? 



History of the Age-Old Struggle by 

 Pacific Northwest Forests 



WESTERN FORESTRY C& CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION 



K. T. ALLEN, Forester 



The Pacific Northwest leads America in organization for forest fire 

 prevention. State and federal government do as much in other regions 

 in some more but it is here that cooperative patrol by private forest 

 owners originated and has reached its highest development. This move- 

 ment, started by a few Coeur d'Alene timbermen in 1906, has spread 

 from coast to coast, but is most effective in the territory from Northern 

 Montana to Northern California, where private owners, at an expense of 

 hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, maintain a chain of patrols 

 which safeguard a fifth of the nation's timber and cooperate or dovetail 

 with public protective systems to complete the greatest fire preventive 

 organization in the world. It extinguishes thousands of fires annually 

 and keeps the loss of the nation's forest resources, and of citizens' prop- 

 erty and lives, down to a negligible percentage. 



Yet the very activities of this great protective system, and the atten- 

 tion it calls to the forest fire evil, sometimes lead to queries as to the 

 reason why these matters demand increasing attention. "Once we had 

 no protection," say such inquirers, "but no one thought much about 

 forest fire danger. Why are there so many more fires than there used 

 to be? Is all this expensive effort really needed now, more than it was 

 then?" 



THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FIRES 



A better knowledge of this country we live in demands that this 

 question be answered. It is seldom asked except by those who do not 

 know the history of our forests, but to such, as well as to those who 

 do know it, this history, written with a flame-tipped pencil, should be 

 of absorbing interest. For we live in a fire-scarred land, swept from 

 time immemorial by conflagrations which have not only changed its face 

 from time to time but have, through slow ages, determined the very 

 trees and plants of the landscape as surely as the gardener of today 

 selects those best adapted for his purpose. Our forests exist where they 

 do exist, and contain the species which make them familiar, just because 

 they have evolved defenses against this perpetual enemy. And the balance 

 is a precarious one, like all in Nature. Man can tip it either way. 



Go where you will in the great western forests extending from 

 Montana to California and the signs of recurring fires are there to read. 

 All are familiar with the open recent "burn," perhaps hardly beginning to 

 show tiny seedlings spreading as far as the wind carries from scattered 

 surviving trees or from the edges. Almost as recognizable are older 

 burns already green with thicket-like second growth but bristling with 

 charred or whitened snags. Every succeeding stage also exists in equal 



