38 MISC. PUBLICATION 10 9, IT. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 



than 50 per cent and have changed 2,000,000 acres of valuable timber- 

 bearing land into worthless brush wastes. 



4. Why does not the Forest Service " light burn " the national 

 forests ? 



The policy under which national forests are administered by the 

 Forest Service is to protect and wisely use the water, wood, and 

 forage resources of the forests in such a manner as to insure the 

 permanence of these resources. With this idea in mind, backed 

 by 25 years of field experience in fire fighting in California, the 

 Forest Service has proved that in the long run fire prevention and 

 not " light burning " is the best S3^stem for protecting • and conserv- 

 ing our rapidly disappearing forest resources. 



Repeated experiments have shown that it is both impracticable 

 and expensive to light burn large areas of forest land. For example, 

 to light burn the 12.000,000 acres of timber and brush land in the 

 national forests of the California region would cost, even at the 

 low figure of 50 cents an acre, $6,000,000 annually — an amount six 

 times as great as the present yearly expenditures by all Federal, 

 State, and private individuals for fire prevention and suppression 

 in all forest, brush, and range lands in California. 



5. How does light burning injure the forests? 



Light burning causes serious damage to the most valuable veterans 

 of the forest stand by burning them at the base and causing " cat 

 faces " — a loss that amounts to several dollars per acre in merchant- 

 able timber every time a fire runs through the forest. In addition, 

 the little trees and saplings which are the basis of the next forest 

 crop are killed outright, and after the burning of the top soil and 

 humus, the land is invaded by worthless brush which makes the 

 reestablishment of the forest more difficult. The brush is never 

 entirely killed by these fires, and each light burn makes more fuel 

 for a later and more destructive fire. 



6. Will light burning the forests keep down pine-beetle infes- 

 tations? 



No. Entomologists have proved that the pine beetles and other 

 destructive insects, which live in green, not dead trees, are increas- 

 ingly attracted to burned areas and readily attack and destroy trees 

 weakened by repeated fires. Experiments have shown that when 

 an area has been burned over, the volume of merchantable timber 

 destroyed by insect attack increases 250 per cent the first season 

 following the fire, also that the wood beetles of Avhich the old-timers 

 talk so much are in reality not destructive to green timber but live 

 in dead and fallen trees and logs. 



7. Will light burning improve grazing? 



Periodic burning at first increases the stand of forage plants, 

 but extensive experiments have shown that if this practice is con- 

 tinued, the noxious weeds and shrubs, which are more hardy than 

 the forage plants, will soon take possession of the range and turn 

 it into a weed and brush patch. Repeated fires eventually destroy 

 or seriously reduce the productivity of valuable range lands, as is 



