14 BULLETIN 1493, U. 8. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
felled during logging to reduce the fire danger, to avoid accidents to 
employees, and to facilitate handling the yarding lines. Some of the 
larger snags are cut for fuel on most operations. The law requires 
that all snags about donkey settings be felled. 
Every up-to-date operator makes some effort at protection against 
fire, but there are few in this region whose precautions and pro- 
tective organization are really adequate to cope with the risks. 
Such activities are subordinated to the major business cf getting 
out logs. A point to be emphasized here is that at the present time 
every logging company’s protective system is intended primarily for 
the safeguarding of virgin timber, camps, felled logs, and equipment, 
and not for protecting reproduction on cut-over land. Logged-off 
land is protected and fires are fought thereon chiefly to keep fire 
from spreading to commercial timber or improvements, or to comply 
with the State law. 
In short, up to the present time the system of logging private 
lands in the Douglas fir region, with but few exceptions, provides no 
intentional measures to insure the reforestation of these lands. What- 
ever reproduction takes place does so, for the most part, in spite of 
present methods, not as a resuit of them. This is not stated as a 
criticism of the Douglas fir lumberman; it is a plain statement of 
fact and gives occasion for the recommendations to be made later. 
STATUS OF REFORESTATION UNDER PRESENT PRACTICES 
There is in the Douglas fir region so great an acreage of well-refor- 
esting cut-over land that 1t may very properly be asked whether 
methods of logging used in the past have not been satisfactorily con- 
ducive to new growth, and why therefore any change im present 
practices should be recommended. 
Competent authorities differ widely as to the proportion of logged- 
off land in private ownership which is reforesting. In the absence of 
reliable field data for the entire region it has been estimated in the 
course of this study that 60 per cent is reforesting and 40 per cent 
is barren of useful tree growth. Even if 60 per cent is growing a new 
crop, that is far from satisfactory, especially when it is borne in 
mind that much land so classified is not bearing a fully stocked or 
uniformly well-stocked stand of new growth and therefore can not be 
counted upon to yield the returns that the land should produce. 
Furthermore, most of that which is restocked is so subject to fire, 
because of inadequate protection, that some of it is sure to be added 
later to the denuded class. 
There is another factor to remember. The system of logging used 
20 to 40 years ago gave better reproduction than follows present- 
day methods. Hence a smaller proportion of the land being cut 
over to-day is reforesting than in the past. Under the “bull-team”’ 
method the fire risk was less than it is under the present donkey- 
engine and railroad method. Freshly cut-over land then had a 
better chance to escape being accidentally burned and reburned. 
The present-day precautions against fire and the vigilance of pro- 
tective organizations hardly compensate for the increased size and 
abundance of logging operations, their proximity to one another, 
with the attendant risk from men and engines—not to mention the 
increasing risk on cut-over areas from the general public and settlers. 
