36o ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY. 



although furnishing fire wood and small dimension 

 material. Thousands of square miles of the high 

 elevations are occupied by the Subalpine Fir and 

 scrubby pines of no commercial value ; in addition 

 fire has not only damaged but destroyed thousands 

 of square miles. 



The following figures abstracted from the United 

 States Geological Report cited are illustrative. In 

 the Priest Forest Reserve, which comprises about 

 1000 square miles, of which 850 were found timber- 

 producing, at least 70 per cent of the timber once 

 standing is estimated as destroyed by fires dur- 

 ing the last thirty years, a loss in value of over 

 $100,000,000. "Excepting a small area of about 

 1600 acres along the Lower West Fork, there is 

 no body of timber of 1000 acres or even 500 acres 

 extent not scorched by fire. In the lower zones 

 there are over 200,000 acres on which the destruc- 

 tion is practically complete. In the subalpine 

 zone at least 40,000 of the 60,000 acres have been 

 more or less injured by fire." 



In the Bitterroot Reserve, which contains over 

 4,000,000 acres, of 1,000,000 acres examined only 

 60 per cent was found wooded, half with the com- 

 paratively valueless Lodge-pole Pine, 20 per cent 

 with inferior Red Fir, and only 30 per cent with the 

 valuable Yellow Pine, over 20 per cent of the origi- 

 nal stand having been destroyed by fire in the last 

 forty years. 



On the east slopes of the Cascades and Sierras 



