Reasons Why Forest Conditions Are Poor 
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Fire—The Number One Problem 
ANY of the undesirable forest conditions 
in Florida are the result of land-use prac- 
tices—practices associated with farming, 
turpentining, and logging. Of these practices, fre- 
quent burning of the woods has most influenced the 
character of the forest. 
Since the days of the early white settlers, woods 
burning has been practiced with a deep-seated con- 
viction that it is as essential to the proper handling 
of wooded land as plowing is to growing cotton. In 
1926, it was estimated that at least 75 percent of the 
pine land in the State burned over annually and that 
not more than 10 percent ever escaped fire for 3 
years in succession (1). Not until as recently as the 
mid-thirties was there any appreciable downward 
trend in the area burned by wildfires. 
This long history of frequent burning of the 
stands had two main effects on the character of the 
forest. First, it served to extend the occurrence of 
the fire-resistant longleaf pine to the very edges of 
the swamps, bottom lands, and upland hardwood 
lands. 
The second, and perhaps the more important, ef- 
fect of repeated burning was that of keeping the 
stands open and understocked. Even though longleaf 
pine existed over a wide area only by virtue of re- 
peated fires, these same fires took a heavy toll of 
young trees before they became large enough to sur- 
vive the flames. This annual toll of young trees by 
fire, coupled with the uncertain seed-bearing habits 
of longleaf pine, made the restocking of the stands a 
very slow process. Even in many of the virgin stands, 
the trees were widely scattered. Full stocking in these 
stands frequently represented a gradual accumulation 
_ of trees over many years. There is little doubt that 
the too frequent fires down through the years have 
been responsible for a good deal of the poor stock- 
_ ing in Florida. 
Fire protection on other than national-forest land 
had its beginning in Florida with the enactment, by 
The Timber Supply Situation in Florida 
KKK 
the 1927 State Legislature, of a law creating a Board 
of Forestry. One of the provisions of this law author- 
ized the Board to enter into cooperative agreements 
with landowners for the prevention and control of 
woods fires. The landowners paid for half the cost 
of prevention, and, in most instances, for the cost of 
fire suppression. Federal funds made available to the 
State under the provisions of the Clarke-McNary 
Law were used to offset private expenditures, while 
the State provided the funds for a skeleton organiza- 
tion to supervise the work (5). 
By 1935, the Board had succeeded in extending 
organized fire prevention and control to 1.4 million 
acres of private forest land (6). However, real prog- 
ress in reducing the area burned over annually by 
fire took place after 1935. The strengthening of fire 
laws and a basic set-up for county cooperation was 
followed by a steady increase in area under organ- 
ized protection (fig. 31) and significant reductions 
in the total area of forest land burned over annually 
(fig. 32). As of July 1, 1950, more than 30 of the 
67 counties were under organized fire protection (fig. 
33). This area, together with national-forest land 
and protection units comprising parts of 19 other 
counties amounted to over 14 million acres, or two- 
thirds of the total forest area in the State. 
Estimates of area burned over, of course, are nec- 
essarily rough—especially on unprotected area. How- 
ever, the trend is unmistakable. During the 5-year 
period 1930-34, the average annual burn amounted 
to nearly three-fourths of the total forest area in the 
State. By 1946, the annual burn had dropped to less 
than a fifth of the total forest area. During 1950, 63 
percent of the unprotected area and 3 percent of the 
protected area was burned over by wildfires, resulting 
in a total burn of about 4.8 million acres. 
This reduction in wildfires accounts to a large ex- 
tent for the significant increase in amount of young 
timber and the replacement of longleaf pine by slash 
pine over extensive areas of the better flatwood sites, 
which took place between the two forest surveys. The 
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