WOODS BURNING IN THE SOUTH 



Prepared by the Forest Service 



The South needs productive forest lands to maintain its pros- 

 perity but it cannot have them while uncontrolled woods burning 

 continues. 



Yearly burnings reported in the South amount to nearly 40,000,- 

 000 acres of forest and cut-over land, or about four-fifths of the 

 total forest area burned in the United States. This represents a 

 loss running into many millions of dollars. 



Uncontrolled and unlawful woods burning, like the boll weevil, 

 the malaria germ, and the cattle tick, drags down business and 

 undermines the general welfare. Because of it only a small per- 

 centage of merchantable second-growth timber which could have 

 replaced the virgin stand is now available on cut-over lands. Be- 

 cause of it land values have suffered, industries and population have 

 moved out, and idle acres have multiplied. Because of it every year 

 millions of young forest seedlings, which in a short time would 

 have constituted a valuable asset to landowners, have been licked 

 up by the flames. 



Unlike the West, where serious fire losses are caused by lightning, 

 the South has the power to eliminate its uncontrolled, destructive, 

 forest fires, for they are man-caused and can be prevented by curb- 

 ing the careless fire user and dealing firmly with the malicious fire 

 setter. Sound economic policy demands that this power be exerted 

 and that the brand of the woods burner be extinguished. The 

 South cannot afford to let the woods burner block economic progress. 



Causes of Fire 



Most of the woods fires in the South are started by hunters, 

 smokers, stockmen, and others upon lands which they do not own. 

 To these fires are added the fires escaping from railroad engines, 

 logging operations, field clearings, and "warming fires." There 

 has thus grown up the belief in many quarters that woods burning 

 is as inevitable as the seasons. Many landowners feel that it is 

 hopeless to try to keep fires from their land. So they become, in 

 their helplessness, advocates of winter or spring burning. And one 

 of the chief reasons they advance is that such burning is a means 

 of defending their property against fires set by others. Yet often 

 these protection burners make a bad situation worse by permitting 

 their fires to spread beyond their own land. 



The Menace of Woods Burning 



An individual has the right to burn his own land, provided he 

 confines the fire to his property and otherwise conforms to the law; 

 but he is grievously at fault, unfair to his neighbors, and unmindful 

 of the welfare of his community when he permits the fire set on his 

 land to spread to the land of another. Forestry cannot be safely 

 practiced in the South until the man who sets fire to the woods of 

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