46 



Sierra Club Bulletin. 



This experimental "light burning" has cost approxim- 

 ately 75 cents per acre. Therefore, to clean up and burn 

 the government timber lands in California even partially 

 and most unsatisfactorily, coupled with a most serious 

 loss in young growth (which in itself would prohibit 

 the operation), an expense of something like a million 

 and a quarter dollars a year would be necessary, provided 

 we repeated the process every three or four years, as 

 deemed necessary by those advocating the theory. 



As for the "old Indian fires," in California alone they 

 have reduced over 2,000,000 acres of valuable timber 

 lands to non-productive wastes of brush ; they have dam- 

 aged the mature stands of virgin timber which we now 

 have to the extent of reducing their original volume by 

 at least thirty-five per cent; and they have practically 

 eliminated most of the young growth in their paths up 

 to thirty years of age. This is a fact fully sustained by 

 the most casual observation on the ground. 



The accumulation of ground litter is not at all serious 

 and the fears of future disastrous fires, as a result of this 

 accumulation, are not well founded. Fires in the ground 

 litter are easily controlled and put out. On the other 

 hand, fires in brush or chaparral are very dangerous, 

 destructive, and difficult to handle. Brush areas under 

 and around standing timber are the worst things we have 

 to contend with. Brush is not killed by fire; it sprouts 

 and grows up again just as densely as before. The best 

 way to kill brush is to shade it out by tree growth, but to 

 do this we must let young trees grow. Fires and young 

 trees cannot exist together. We must, therefore, attempt 

 to keep fire out absolutely. Some day we will do this and 

 just as effectively as the older countries have done it for 

 the past 100 years. In the mean time we are keeping 

 fires down in California by extinguishing them as soon 

 as possible after they begin. It is true that fires will 

 always start ; that we can never provide against. On the 

 other hand, the supposition that they will always run is 

 not well taken. If we can stop small fires at the start, big 



