44 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



The plan to use fire as a preventive of fire is abso- 

 lutely good. Everything depends, however, upon hozu it 

 is used. The Forest Service has used fire extensively 

 ever since it assumed charge of the public timber lands 

 in California. We are selling 200,000,000 feet of timber 

 and on all the lands which we logged over we see to it 

 that the slashings and litter upon the ground are piled 

 up and burned. This must be accomplished, of course, 

 in such a way that no damage results to the younger 

 tree growth, such as seedlings, saplings, thickets and 

 poles of the more valuable species. If we should burn 

 without preparing the ground beforehand, most of the 

 young trees would be killed. In government timber 

 sales the purchasers are required to do this work. Under 

 average conditions in California it costs them about $2.50 

 an acre. It is very probable that the Government could not 

 do it for less. If, now, we should extend this operation 

 to all our most valuable timber lands which have not been 

 logged off (approximately 8,000,000 acres) and provided 

 we repeated the process every three or four years, as 

 would be necessary to obtain good results, it would cost 

 the Government something like $5,000,000 a year, while 

 our total appropriation in California for all work of the 

 Service is only $731,802.17. It would appear, therefore, 

 that if we should perform the work as thoroughly as it 

 is now done in the case of lands covered by lumber 

 slashings, the expense of the job would be out of all pro- 

 portion to its usefulness. 



It is true that the work might be done at less cost, but 

 in that case the results would most certainly be unsatis- 

 factory. "Light burnings" have never been undertaken 

 on an extensive workable scale in California. With the 

 exception of two or three lumber companies the Forest 

 Service is the only owner of timber in the State of Cali- 

 fornia which has used and is using fire in a practical way 

 for cleaning-up purposes. 



What ''light burning" has been done on private lands 

 in California, accompanied by preparation of the ground 



