Report of C3operintendent of Forests 



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To tf)e Forest, Fist) and Game Commission: 



GENTLEMEN. — In carrying on the forestry work of the Commission during 

 the past year special attention has been given, as usual, to the protection 

 from fire of the forests in the Adirondack and Catskill towns, both public 

 and private. The results are satisfactory and encouraging.* While many other 

 States, especially those of the Northwest and Pacific slope, have suffered severe 

 losses from forest fires, the wooded areas of New York have been comparatively 

 free from any serious or extensive damage from this source, the fires in this 

 State having occurred, for the greater part, on waste lands or tracts that had been 

 burned over previously, some of them repeatedly. 



The total area thus injured in 1902, as shown by the reports of the town 

 firewardens, embraced 21,356 acres, three fourths of which, or thereabouts, consisted 

 of waste land, on which there was no standing timber of merchantable value. 

 The actual area of forest land overrun by fire amounted to only 4,345 acres, of 

 which 458 acres belonged to the Forest Preserve. 



The total loss on this standing timber, as taken from the estimates in the 

 firewardens' reports, amounted in the aggregate to $9,150. The total number 

 of days worked by the men ordered out to fight fire was 2,405. As the State 

 refunds to the towns half of the expense incurred in such work, the amount due 

 from the Commission in settlement of these claims is estimated at $2,700. The 

 exact sum cannot be stated now, as a few of the firewardens' accounts have not 

 yet been adjusted by their respective towns, the auditors having taken exception 

 to some of the items, or having refused to pay the bill entirely. There will be no 

 rebate to towns which are still in debt to the State for money advanced to hire 

 men during the fires of 1899. 



As usual the causes of these fires were various, the principal ones being in 



*The great fires of 1903 had not occurred at this time. For a full account of this disaster see 

 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Forests for 1903, page 101. 



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