our forests. This work will furnish employ- 
ment for thousands of men. 
Expansion and Improvement of Fire Protection 
One-fifth of our forest land area still lacks any 
organized protection from fire, and the protec- 
tion given the other four-fifths is by no means 
adequate. To bring our fire protection to a 
suitable standard cails for: 
Building hundreds of new lookout stations and 
repairing hundreds of old ones. Prompt discoy- 
ery of fires is the first essential in effective fire 
control. 
Improving telephone and radio communication 
systems. More telephone lines and radio instal- 
lations are needed in forest areas so that fire- 
fighting forces can be promptly called into action 
and keep in constant touch with their sources of 
equipment and supply. Rapid communication 
is as essential in fighting fire as it is in military 
operations. 
New equipment warehouses and improvement of 
existing ones. Adequate supplies and equipment, 
and facilities for keeping them in repair, are 
necessary for fire control. 
_ Building emergency airplane landing fields. 
Aircraft is being used more and more in fire- 
control work to reconnoiter going fires and to 
deliver men and supplies to remote sections of 
the forests. Emergency landing fields located 
in back-country areas will make flying over 
forest country safer and will make possible the 
quick delivery of men and equipment to points 
near a fire that could otherwise be reached only 
by long, slow travel over mountain trails. 
Construction of firebreaks. A firebreak is a line 
or trailway several feet wide cleared of all brush 
and other inflammable material. In the piney 
woods of the South, in the Lake States, and else- 
where, well-located firebreaks are a big help in 
checking the rapid spread of forest fires. 
Hazard reduction in areas of special danger and 
along roads, railroads, and in the vicinity of 
camp grounds and recreation areas. In such 
areas the removal of brush, snags (standing dead 
trees), and accumulations of debris will greatly 
reduce the danger of fire. 
Surveying and mapping. In many areas, addi- 
tional surveys will be needed to provide the 
information required for effective fire control. 
Surveys must be made, for instance, to determine 
the best locations for lookout stations, and for 
location of roads and trails and telephone sys- 
tems, airplane landing strips, and firebreaks. 
Fuel-type maps, which show the location of 
various types of vegetation and how susceptible 
they are to fire, are basic to intelligent fire-control 
planning. 
Each year fires damage forests on more than 
30 million acres—an area larger than all of New 
York State. They cost us some $45,000,000 a 
year in timber and property losses alone, not 
counting the much greater losses from watershed 
damage and erosion, young growth destroyed, 
blackened scenery, interruptions to farming and 
business activities and to tourist travel, and many 
other losses which cannot easily be measured 
in dollars. That organized fire protection can 
greatly reduce these losses has been fully demon- 
strated. In the 11 Southern States, for example, 
acreage burned on protected areas in 1943 was 
held to less than 3 percent of the area protected, 
whereas 27 percent of the unprotected area 
burned over. For the United States as a whole, 
86 percent of the total acreage burned and 76 
percent of the reported damage occurred on the 
one-fifth of our forest land that still lacks or- 
ganized protection. 
Control of Destructive Forest Insects and Diseases 
Destructive diseases and insect pests cost us 
millions of dollars in damage to timber each 
year. The chestnut blight, a fungus disease 
which came into this country from the Orient, 
already has wiped out our native chestnut as a 
commercially important forest tree. No prac- 
ticable method of checking this disease has been 
found. For several other serious diseases and 
insect pests, we still look to research to find 
feasible methods of control. 
However, effective control methods have been 
developed for some of the most destructive 
insects and diseases. The white pine blister 
rust, a fungus which attacks the valuable white 
pine of the Eastern and Lake States and the 
western white pine and sugar pine of the West, 
is one disease for which control is possible. Like 
malaria, which is spread by mosquitos, the blister 
rust disease is spread by an alternate host—in 
this case, currant and gooseberry bushes. It 
can be controlled, therefore, by the removal of 
wild, as well as cultivated, currants and goose- 
berries from areas of white pine growth. 
Approximately 28 million acres of forest land 
in the East, in the Lake States, and in Idaho, 
Washington, Oregon, and California have white 
pine growth susceptible to blister rust. Exten- 
sive areas have already been worked over for 
eradication of the disease-spreading bushes, but 
control work on additional areas and follow-up 
treatment to get bushes or sprouts that were 
missed in the first clean-up or have grown since 
will be needed. The white pines are among our 
most valuable timber trees. The total stand of 
timber potentially susceptible to blister rust has 
