Figure 33. — National Joresn have made a far worse showing in ratio oj acres burned to acres protected than have private lands, but the yational forests have a 

 greater proportion of noncommercial timber on rugged, inaccessible areas where roads are few and no communities are present to furnish fire fighters. Even 

 so, fewer fires are now "big ones" and /ewer years are "bad ones' than in past decades. (Courtesy of I I6th Photo Section, IVashinglon Sational Guard.) 



effectiveness. There are too many factors to be considered, 

 of which two are ot especial significance. First, the 

 country in which these public forests lie is for the most part 

 more rugged than the remainder ot the forest land in 

 northern Idaho, more inaccessible, less adequately broken 

 up by roads, and more sparsely provided with potential 

 fire fighters (fig. 33). Second, lightning is a very much 

 more important cause of fire within the national-forest 

 boundaries than outside. Man-caused fires are more 

 likely to occur in settled areas or along transportation 

 routes, but lightning strikes in no such pattern. .As the 

 speed of attack is one ot the most important elements ot 

 fire control, the lightning fire will continue to account for 

 larger losses on the national forests, until such time as the 

 airplane or other means may overcome the factor of 

 inaccessibility. 



One of the most evident truths in forest-fire protection is 

 that greater burns can be tolerated on poor land than on 

 valuable areas. The I'orest Service as long ago as 1930 

 recognized this value distinction and attempted to put it 

 on a numerical basis.'' It was reasoned that whereas an 



* Washington Conference ok District Foresters, committee 

 REPORTS. |U. S. Forest Service], lOI pp., illus. Ogden, [I'tah]. IVO. 



annual fire loss in noncommercial forest as high as 120 

 acres in 10,(KX) may be tolerable, an annual burn in the 

 white pine type of more than 10 acres in 10,0CK) is not. 

 The tolerable or allowable losses for each ot the other 

 forest tvpes were placed within this range. 



It is obvious, then, that the national-torest area ot 

 northern Idaho, one-halt ot which is noncommercial, can 

 tolerate greater losses than the area in other ownerships, 

 of which only one-tenth is noncommercial. How much 

 greater cannot be stated precisely from available statistics, 

 but on the basis of 1930 standards the estimateii tolerable 

 annual burn within the five protective associations as a 

 group is 25 acres per 10,000 and that for the national 

 torcsts as a group is 70 acres.'' These are, ot c«.>urse, by 



'The forest-tyj>e statistics are not compilcvl by protective districts. 

 However, most o( the land protcctevl by the Forest Service is national 

 forest and most of the land pnitectevl b\ the asstxiations is private. 

 State, or county. Therefore, the tolerable burn tor the area protcctevl 

 by the l-'orest Service was assumevl to be the same as that h.»r the na- 

 tional-forest land alone. The bulk i}i the area protcctevl by the hv« 

 associations lies in Bonner, Latah, and Clearwater Counties. Thcrehire, 

 the tolerable burn for the protective associations was calculated on the 

 basis of the acreage of the various tyjvs held by all owners, except 

 national forest, in these three counties. 



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