Fire and the Forest — Theory of Light Burning. 45 



beforehand, shows that wherever the fire has actually 

 burned, practically all young trees up to fifteen years of 

 age have been killed absolutely, as well as a large part 

 of those between the ages of fifteen and forty years. 



The operation, to be sure, has resulted in cleaning up 

 the ground to a considerable extent and will afford fairly 

 good protection to mature trees in case they are threat- 

 ened by fire in the future. If a fire comes along it will 

 naturally not have as much rubbish to feed upon and 

 may not be so hot as to injure the larger tree growth. 

 In other words, a safeguard has been provided for timber 

 which may be turned into dollars in the immediate future. 

 With this advantage has come the irreparable damage to 

 young trees. It has amounted, in fact, to the almost total 

 destruction of all wood growth up to the age of twenty 

 years. 



This is not forestry; not conservation; it is simple 

 destruction. 



That is the whole story in a nutshell. The private 

 owner of timber, whose chief concern is the protection of 

 trees which can be turned into money immediately and 

 who cares little or nothing about what happens to the 

 younger stuff which is not yet marketable, may look 

 upon the ''light burning" plan as being both serviceable 

 and highly practicable, provided the expense is reason- 

 able. On the other hand, the Government, first of all, 

 must keep its lands producing timber crops indefinitely, 

 and it is wholly impossible to do this without protecting, 

 encouraging, and bringing to maturity every bit of natural 

 young growth. Any attempt to artificially reproduce the 

 area of government forests as a whole would be im- 

 practicable from the standpoint of expense and has also 

 proved very uncertain of success. Forest organizations 

 the world over rely chiefly upon a natural regrowth to 

 take the place of the old timber, and planting and sowing 

 are resorted to only in cases where the natural regrowth 

 has failed or is exceedingly hard to obtain ; in such cases, 

 of course, planting is indispensable. 



