30 BULLETIN 1060, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
in the Quinault Indian Reservation. In Oregon they are confined 
to the Siuslaw National Forest and several military and lighthouse 
reservations. 
FIRE PROTECTION. 
The most important factor in the management of the Sitka spruce 
type is fire protection. Without effective fire protection all other 
steps in forest conservation are useless. The virgin forests of the 
Sitka spruce type in the coastal belt are perhaps less likely to suffer 
from fire than the Douglas fir forests of the Cascade Range, but they 
are by no means immune. Systematic organized fire protection dur- 
ing the two or three dry summer months is essential for the safety 
not only of the virgin forest but also of the new crop of reproduc- 
tion which follows logging. In the course of lumbering, special 
precautions should be taken by operators to prevent the escape of 
fire, for an accidental and uncontrolled fire in dry slashings may gain 
such headway that it will do great damage to adjoining standing 
timber and especially to areas of second-growth timber on older 
cuttings. 
METHOD OF CUTTING. 
Clear cutting is the method of logging universally employed in the 
spruce region ; it is the only method practicable in these dense forests 
of very large trees. Moreover, Sitka spruce and western hemlock 
when isolated by the removal of a part of the stand are so subject to 
windthrow that any method of reserving seed trees of these species 
or of making a selection cutting is technically undesirable. Steam 
logging, moreover, fits in well with the requirements of the species, 
except so far as it increases the fire hazard, for it helps to expose the 
mineral soil. 
SLASH DISPOSAL. 
Slash disposal in the heavy forests of the Pacific coast regionj 
means the elimination of slash by broadcast burning. The objects 
are to reduce the fire hazard in the debris left after logging, to pro- 
vide a proper seed bed for reproduction, and to retard the spread of 
insect and fungous diseases. 
By far the most important of the above objects is to reduce the fire 
hazard. Since this is so the necessity for burning slash depends 
largely upon the fire menace of the region. Although in the spruce 
belt of Oregon and Washington the rainfall is abundant and fogs 
are frequent throughout most of the year, there are two months or 
more in the summer when slashings become dry, and uncontrollable 
fires may start and do untold damage. Because of this Sitka spruce 
slashings in this region should ordinarily be burned. 
