TIMBER GROWING IN DOUGLAS FIR REGION 15 
In the early days cutting was not so close as it is at present; many 
good-sized trees were left standi ing and naturally helped seed up the 
surrounding country. The heavy high-speed equipment used nowa- 
days tears down the patches of small timber and potential seed 
trees that would have survived the bull-team method or ground log- 
ging with small donkeys. 
A further factor militating against natural reforestation is the 
character of the country to which the logging industry has now 
spread. The land now being operated is steeper, rougher, and 
rockier than the valley and foothill country where the industry cen- 
tered two decades ago. It is a matter of common observation that 
the rougher the country the more disastrous are fires and the more 
does the logging tear up the ground and smash reserved trees. Also, 
the poor soil that goes with mountainous topography gives corre- 
spondingly poorer nurture to reproduction than do the deep soils 
of the foothills, and eresion on mountain slopes is a further handi- 
cap to tree seedlings. The land logged more than two decades ago 
was mostly agricultural land; that now being logged is mostly land 
unsuited to farming. 
There is no doubt that the tendency of modern logging is to make 
conditions less favorable for timber growing than did the logging 
of the early days. The urgency for taking positive, conscious 
measures to assure reforestation after logging is double what it 
was 25 years ago. 
MINIMUM MEASURES TO KEEP FOREST LAND 
PRODUCTIVE 
FIRE CONTROL THE PARAMOUNT CONSIDERATION 
Knough has been said above to show that Douglas fir and its 
associates would be quite able to perpetuate themselves after a 
fashion, even in spite of most destructive methods of logging, were 
it not for uncontrolled fires. The growing of continuous crops of 
timber in the Douglas fir region, therefore, is primarily contingent 
upon the control of fire. This is the paramount consideration. For 
this reason the followmg pages are devoted very largely to a dis- 
cussion of the problem of protection against fire. 
The specific measures set forth below are the practical essentials 
oi a forest-perpetuation program. Whether they should be put into 
effect by voluntary agreement, subsidy, law, or any other means 
need not be discussed here, nor is any distinction made here between 
the measures already enforceable under existing law and those 
which are not. Here are considered merely the principles of woods 
management necessary to grow successive crops of timber. The 
subject very conveniently falls under four main topics, which will 
be used as a basis for the discussion in this bulletin: 
Care of the virgin forest. 
Treatment of the forest and cut-over land during 
logging. 
Treatment of the new forest crop after logging. 
Regional cooperative system of forest protection. 
It should be borne in mind, however, that these four topics fall 
under two broad classes of protective effort: 
