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ROLE OF FIRE IN CALIFORNIA PINE FORESTS 7 77 
In the brush fields, so far as our present experience goes, something 
more than the intensive use of man power is required to guarantee 
successful protection. A very comprehensive system of protective 
measures will be needed, such as will include the construction of fire- 
breaks, trails for rapid communication, and similar improvements 
serving to break up large units into smaller ones and make for easier 
fire control. It is clear that such expenditures are investments 
rather than carrying charges against the initialcrop. This distinction 
between carrying charges and capital investment in the land is one 
of fundamental importance when the financial aspects of reforestation 
are considered. 
If the brush areas continue in their present condition, the cost and 
success of protecting adjacent timber stands will be vitally affected. 
A weakness of the minimum-cost theory is that it tends to consider 
each acre of land by itself, as something apart from the forest area or 
region as a whole, whereas the problem is as complex as the forest 
region itself. What is accomplished in the regeneration of the brush 
fields is of the greatest importance not only to the brush fields but to 
adjacent virgin forests. It follows, therefore, that the cost of pro- 
tecting the brush fields is properly chargeable not only against the 
particular area but against near-by lands. 
In restocking brush fields the overwhelmingly important element 
in the cost of produeins timber is fire protection, a great part of 
which is capital investment; but the impossibility of stating pre- 
cisely which part of such expenditure is a capital investment makes 
any but the most simple and direct fire-protection theory impractic- 
able in actual application. 
To determine the justifiable protection expenditures for chaparral 
areas is even more difficult than for restocking brush fields. The 
damage resulting from fire in ch@parral can not be readily discerned 
nor accurately valued, since it consists mostly of indirect damages 
such as injury to watersheds, erosion, ete. The minimum-cost theory 
of protection applied rigidly to these areas would lead to the same 
absurdities as in the restocking brush fields. 
If the facts and figures given in this bulletin point to any one con- 
clusion relative to a desirable theory of: fire protection, it is that the 
degree of protection in the California pine region can not be mathe- 
matically restricted but must in all instances be sufficient—once it is 
determined that a given area is to be devoted to forest growing—to 
insure the continuity of the forest on such a high level of quality 
and quantity as to justify the total effort of forest management. 
The minimum-damage theory provides for this. It recognizes fire 
not merely as an enemy of the timber crop now standing, but as a 
ruthless foe to the very existence of the forest, and one whose 
destructive work is always cumulative and always aimed at finally 
reducing forest land to worthless desert or chaparral. 
Applied with a reasonable degree of intelligence, the minimum- 
damage theory is amore economical method of attacking the fire 
problem than the minimum-cost theory. It provides a complete 
rather than superficial and immediate plan of action. It considers all 
forms of loss and total damage rather than merely the more obvious 
and less important losses. It takes into account the full possibilities 
of the land, as well as the immediate crop, and so protects the capital 
