ROLE OF FIRE IN CALIFORNIA PINE FORESTS 61 
result in wiping out completely all small reproduction within the 
exterior boundaries of fhe haeed area. Sapling and pole reproduc- 
tion suffer less seriously. In exceptional cases dense thickets may 
even be accidentally benefited by fire through thinning out the smaller 
competing individuals. ri 
In general, surface fires, even light ones, cause material loss to 
merchantable timber and excessive loss to reproduction. 
COUNTING THE DIRECT COST 
The direct cost of light burning, either where individual trees are 
rotected or where the fire is controlled by the previously prepared 
Fes can not be set at less than 30 cents per acre. On the Lassen 
County area, as has been shown, the cost, on the basis of present wages, 
probably would amount to at least $1 an acre, a sum sufficient to give 
_10 years of intensive fire protection. Since this cost must be repeated 
indefinitely to obtain a permanent reduction of hazard, the cost to any 
owner of a large acreage would soon become impossibly high. 
The yearly cost per acre of the Forest Service fire-exclusion plan in 
California has averaged between 114 and 3 cents, depending upon the 
degree of hazard. ‘This protection has reduced the total timbered 
area burned over each year to an average of only 0.6 percent. If 
the potential timberlands in the brush fields were included in the 
computation, the rate of annual loss would be higher; but as light 
burning proper has not even been proposed for use as a protec- 
tive measure in this type, it need not be considered. Therefore, 
the average annual cost of protection, plus loss under a fire-exclusion 
policy, even with the present moderate degree of protection, is far less 
than'the average cost plus loss of controlled burning. 
Wherever light burning has been practiced, material loss has resulted. 
The best that can be expected, unless expensive protection Is given to 
the individual trees, is the burning down of previously scarred trees. 
Occasional flare-ups also may be expected which result in heat 
killing. Insect epidemics are as prone to appear on lightly burned 
as on heavily burned areas. The immediate value of trees killed in 
any Case is many times as great as the cost of fire prevention would 
have been. 
In short, no light-burned area thus far studied has failed to exhibit 
the same evil effects of fires that the practice itself is designed to 
revent. The magnitude of loss differs from that caused by summer 
es in degree rather than in kind. Even if forests are handled only 
for the merchantable timber they contain, the loss caused by repeated 
surface fires is large enough to be reckoned with. 
If forests are to be handled not only for harvesting the mature 
timber but for the protection of repeated crops of timber as well, 
general burning, whatever its intensity, then adds to the loss of mer- 
chantable timber the still more serious loss of the advance reproduc- 
tion that must form the basis of the succeeding crop. 
POSSIBLE BENEFICIAL USES OF FIRE 
The possible beneficial use of fire must naturally be such as will le 
without the range of acceleration of damage, attrition, and site 
- deterioration, or it must take these into account and outweigh them 
with superior advantages in the particular results for which it 1s 
employed. 
