Canadian Forestry Journal, January, ipi6. 



353' 



at present with only a very scant 

 •covering of grass and in places the 

 sand has commenced to drift very 

 tadly. The object of the larger re- 

 serves is to afford protection for the 

 remaining merchantable timber that 

 exists, also for the vast areas of 

 young forest coming up. These big 

 reserves are essentially forest land 

 and not adapted under present con- 

 ditions for agriculture, though there 

 are numerous other uses to which 

 they are being put under the ad- 

 ministration of the Forestry Branch. 



There will continue to be an in- 

 creasing demand in the country for 

 lumber which these reserves will 

 eventually supply as well as fuel 

 and fence posts which are in con- 

 stant demand by the farmers. 



During the past summer the Do- 

 minion Forestry Branch had about 

 fifty fire rangers on duty patrolling 

 this vast expanse of wooded coun- 

 try outside of the Forest Reserves. 

 Travel was by foot, canoe, saddle 

 horse and motor boat depending on 

 the locality the ranger was in, it be- 

 ing his duty to be on the lookout for 

 fires and put them out whenever 

 found, to warn settlers and travellers 

 about the danger of fire, and to keep 

 trails and roads open so as to make 

 the districts accessible. 



Towers and Fireguards. 



Besides these fire rangers who are 

 ■employed only for the summer there 

 are about forty forest rangers on the 

 Forest Reserves who are employed 

 the year around, their chief duties in 

 summer being fire protection, super- 

 vision of the cutting of hay and 

 grazing, also game protection. In 

 winter the supervision of the wood 

 cutting takes up most of their time 

 not otherwise spent on improvement 

 to the reserves. 



These men on the reserves are 

 supplied with houses to live in and 

 stables for their horses; fuel and 

 hay are allowed free, and there are 

 as a rule, very attractive places 

 where they have a small garden and 



a pasture for their stock. Many of 

 the Reserve houses have telephone 

 connections, which are of material 

 benefit in time of fire as are also the 

 lookout towers which are built in 

 locations where they give a very 

 wide range of vision of the sur- 

 rounding country. These towers 

 have proved of very great aid in 

 helping to locate fires and enabling 

 the rangers to get to them in the 

 shortest space of time. Fireguards 

 are being cut and ploughed around 

 the boundaries of the different re- 

 serves, thus furnishing a protection 

 from fires that may originate out- 

 side of the reserve as most of them 

 do, usually from settlers burning 

 brush for clearing up their home- 

 steads. 



Along the boundaries of the re- 

 serves fireguards are cut from 12 to 

 25 feet wide and then three to five 

 furrows are turned with the plow 

 on each side of the clearing. All in- 

 flammable matter and brush is kept 

 out and burned off the intervening 

 space, and the plowed land is kept 

 freshly disked whenever it grows up 

 with long grass or bushes. In the 

 early spring while the frost is still 

 in the ground and the snow in the 

 woods, the hay meadows and 

 sloughs are burned off by the rang- 

 ers with the aid of neighboring set- 

 tlers, thus further insuring adequate 

 protection from prairie fires. 



Two-thirds is Waste. 

 The name "Reserve" when applied 

 to these forest areas is rather a 

 nuisance, for it gives the general 

 public the wrong impression. They 

 think that these areas are with- 

 drawn from use, but this is not the 

 case ; for when these areas are set 

 aside it is for the benefit of the pub- 

 lic, all the people, and the small 

 settler has just as much right as the 

 big man. But when I say "use" I 

 do not mean "abuse." which has 

 been the case all through until the 

 regulations were put into effect. 

 The settler is almost as free on the 

 reserve after it is created as before, 



