484 



Sienna Club Bulletin 



a greatly increased use of the national forest range to enable greater 

 production of meat, wool and leather — such are some of the uses of for- 

 ests, each legitimate when in its proper locality and under proper con- 

 trol. Let stockman and lumberman grant that forests are needed for 

 playgrounds as well as to make lumber-piles and stockyards. Let them 

 also realize that love for the forest is a sentiment greatly to be desired, 

 which is already a force in public opinion and is destined to become 

 stronger. On the other hand, let camper and hunter and forest-lover 

 concede that forests must have their purely commercial side, and that 

 it is right that it should be so. Our various interests must needs over- 

 lap. Each must yield something. In getting together, we all need 

 broad-minded common sense. 



Forest Industries Committee 



An example of this common-sense, get-together-around-the-table policy 

 is shown in the work of the Forest Industries Committee. No changes 

 have occurred in the organization and personnel of this committee as 

 described in the "Forestry Notes" of a year ago. In 1917 California 

 fires burned more than 15,000 acres of standing grain, valued in normal 

 times at more than $375,000; 233,000 acres of timber, valued at about 

 $315,000; and nearly half a million acres of grazing and brush land, a 

 large part of which would have supported grazing animals. Further- 

 more, Forest Service data showed that it took 1600 "man-months," or 

 the equivalent of 400 men working every day for four months, to put 

 out the 1000 man-caused, or preventable, fires which occurred on the 

 national forests of California in 1917. In the light of these facts, the 

 Forest Industries Committee decided to concentrate its energies for 

 1918 on a vigorous fire-protection campaign. 



the 1918 forest fire record 



The campaign produced results. On the national forests there was a 

 reduction in 1918, as compared with 1917, of about forty-nine per cent in 

 the number of man-caused fires, seventy-two per cent in the amount of 

 damage done, and seventy-seven per cent in the cost of fighting them. 

 This result was due in part to the vigorous law-enforcement campaign 

 of the Forest Service, which secured 100 convictions out of a total of 

 no arrests for starting forest fires. Outside the national forests, 

 twenty-six counties were organized in 1918 for protection against grain, 

 grass, brush and timber fires. Two counties had been organized in 1917. 

 In the twenty-eight counties thus operative in 1918, there were 412 rural 

 fire companies, with over 500 sets of fire-fighting equipment and more 

 than 6000 members pledged to fight fire. The territory thus protected 

 is estimated at over 16,000 square miles, and includes about fifty-six per 

 cent of the grain-producing area of the state. Fire-protection ordi- 

 nances have been passed by fourteen counties. 



