72 RESOURCES OF TENNESSEE. 



Although these birds and animals receive recognition for protection by 

 law, from hunters, yet their breeding places and lives are constantly en- 

 dangered and often destroyed through the ever recurring and little heeded 

 forest fires. 



Fire damage to grazing. For many years the mountains in the West 

 have been used for stock ranges. Although the vegetation is compara- 

 tively scant, requiring many acres on the average for each animal, the 

 area is so large that it has supported ye*arly hundreds of thousands of 

 head. For a long time the stockmen made a practice of burning off the 

 mountains with the idea of improving the grazing. But when those lands 

 were set apart as national forest reserves, and put under the administra- 

 tion of the federal government, one part of the work was to put an end 

 to forest fires. As is well known, it is often very difficult to get an old 

 practice stopped, especially if the ones who practice it thoroughly believe 

 in it. So when these grazing lands came under the management of the 

 federal government, and permits were issued to the stockmen to graze 

 their animals thereon, they still believed in the theory of burning as help- 

 ful to grazing. But through the government's patient and careful w^ork 

 of range protection from fires, the stockmen began to see that their graz- 

 ing lands were better if fires were kept out; that fires were a detriment 

 to the grass and forage. In other words, they were shown that they had 

 been doing the wrong thing by allowing their grazing lands to be over- 

 run by fire. 



The mountain lands of Tennessee afford grazing to numerous herds of 

 cattle every year. They form a sort of public range to stockmen who 

 live close enough to use them for that purpose, and no doubt suffer from 

 many forest fires, started in the belief that they are a benefit to the graz- 

 ing. The chances are also that many fires are set because they keep down 

 the underbrush so the stockmen can ride through more easily and find 

 their stock with less difficulty. While the men may be temporarily aided 

 personally by this burning, the damage to the woods is considerable. The 

 grazing also is injured, and the fire has the same injurious effect upon 

 the soil, water-flow and trees, as if it had been set for any other purpose. 

 It is reasonable to believe that when grass and weeds are constantly 

 burned off their growth is injured. Woodlands better serve the public 

 with the fallen timber left for wood, and the leaf cover left to help hold 

 rainfall, than when kept burned over; for repeated burning causes the 

 ground to remain bare, increases floods, and also produces defective 

 timber. 



