24 BULLETIN 1491, TJ. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
rights of way, along streams and around ponds frequented by fisher- 
men, where men are working in the woods, and near cities where 
people frequent the woods on holidays and Sundays. 
The methods for timber operators to employ in taking care of 
especially hazardous areas can be left to them, provided the meth- 
ods chosen are effective and conform to State laws. Posting fire 
warnings and educating woods workers and other people of their 
own community may go far to lessen the danger from fires. Clear- 
ing the ridge roads of leaves and other inflammable material in the 
spring and fall before the fire season gets under way would be a help- 
ful measure where the risk is great. This would probably cost $5 
or $6 a mile. Piling and burning the slash within 100 feet of a 
sawmill setting and in a strip 100 feet wide along the much-traveled 
roads and railroad rights of way would be a good measure. 
If the slash on particularly hazardous areas is not disposed of by 
piling and burning, intensive patrol during the fire season for a 
period of three to five years following logging operations is neces- 
sary. This would mean a cost of 3 or 4 cents an acre a year, figuring 
one man to each 10,000 acres. Several timberland owners might 
well form an association to carry on patrol work jointty at less ex- 
pense to each. Perhaps some system of bonuses under which pay- 
ments could be made on a graduated scale based inversely on the 
number of forest fires and acreage burned in the local school dis- 
tricts or political subdivisions would prove a most effective means 
of fire prevention and suppression. A plan of that nature was 
put into effect in Ripley County, Mo., on 6,000 acres of forest land 
owned by the University of Missouri. A bonus of $1 a year was 
paid to the local school district for each 40-acre subdivision on which 
no fires occurred and from which no timber was stolen. During a 
five-year period no fires occurred on the tract. 
On particularly hazardous areas the timber operator should be 
able within one to three hours after the discovery of a fire, and 
sooner if possible, to put on a crew of 10 to 15 men well equipped 
with fire-fighting tools. If given even an hour's start, some fires 
reach almost uncontrollable size and intensity. 
EDUCATION OF THE PUBLIC 
Along with any State and private system which provides for the 
detection and suppression of fires there must go a persistent educa- 
tional campaign designed to interest the whole community or region 
in the subject of fire protection and to convince the people that it is 
to their own interest to prevent forest fires. The forest-fire problem 
will not be solved in any region until fire prevention becomes a com- 
munity interest. The intensity of the organization necessary will not 
be governed mainly by any particular type of forest but rather by 
the sentiment in any district in favor of, indifferent to, or opposed to 
fires. 
MEASURES NECESSARY TO PRODUCE FULL TIMBER 
CROPS 
Where there is already in this region a reasonable degree of control 
over forest fires and over heavy pasturing of the woods and w T here 
