386 



Canadian Forestry Journal, February, ipi6. 



The Success of Co-operation 

 in Forest Protection 



In Past Four Years, the St. Maurice Association of Limit Holders 



Has Made Splendid Record. 



By 



S. Laivrence de Carteret, 



President, The St. Maurice Forest Protective Association of Quebec Province. 



Preparatory to discussing the 

 work of the St. Maurice Forest Pro- 

 tective Association a short summary 

 of the conditions existing previous 

 to its formation will not be out of 

 place. 



Formerly each limt holder obtain- 

 ed appointments as fire rangers from 

 the Department of Lands and For- 

 ests, for such men as he deemed ne- 

 cessary for the patrol of his limits. 

 Naturally he desired to protect his 

 timber but at the same time wished 

 to eliminate any avoidable expense, 

 hence the majority of the men ap- 

 pointed as fire rangers were woods 

 and drive foremen, woods clerks, 

 cache keepers and dam tenders, im- 

 provement gang foremen, scalers, 

 &c. To the most of these men fire 

 ranging was a secondary occupation 

 which the}^ considered of minor im- 

 portance, consequently an efficient 

 patrol was a mmus quantity. 



Individual Efforts Fail. 

 With the location of a new Trans- 

 continental railway through the 

 heart of the territory came the men- 

 ace of fires resulting from construc- 

 tion gangs, steam shovels and work 

 trains. Settlers located in and near 

 the limits had long been a source of 

 danger, and as new townships were 

 opened up along the new railway 

 their number increased. Disastrous 



fires resulted from all these sources, 

 Some of the limit holders affected 

 thereby increased their efforts to 

 cope with the increasing fire danger^ 

 others took their losses as inevitable, 

 and the inadequacy of scattered in- 

 dividual action was plainly evident. 



Since 1903 the lumbermen of the 

 St. Maurice Valley had driven logs 

 on a co-operative basis and between 

 1908 and 1911 some of the owners of 

 limits along National Transcontin- 

 ental Railway had conducted a suc- 

 cessful patrol of the right of way, so 

 the co-operative idea was not new. 



These then were the conditons 

 leading to the desire for better pro- 

 tection for the limits as a whole re- 

 gardless of ownership lines. In the 

 latter part of February, 1912, a num- 

 ber of the limit holders in the St. 

 Maurice Valley decided to invite all 

 the owners in the Valley to join to- 

 gether in the formation of a co-oper- 

 ative forest protective association. 



Association's Objects. 



This was consummated when on 

 March 2nd, 1912, sixteen timberland 

 owners, whose holdings totalled 

 over seven million acres, united in 

 organizing the St. Maurice Forest 

 Protective Association, its chief ob- 

 jects being as follows: — 



To organize and establish an effi- 

 cient system of fire protection, em- 



