- ‘TIMBER GROWING IN DOUGLAS FIR REGION 29 
much to prevention that there will be less necessity to spend money 
on suppression. : 
Prevention, direct and indirect, covers a wide field. It means 
educating the public to be careful with fire and to support forestry 
legislation and law enforcement. It means relentlessly getting 
after those responsible for fires. It means eliminating the causes 
of fires. The field of indirect prevention has been studiously worked 
by the present organizations with wonderful results, particularly 
in revolutionizing, within the decade and a half from 1910 to 1925, 
public sentiment toward forest fires. It is felt, however, that pre- 
ventive methods must be strengthened and extended into the field 
of preparedness, and that as additional funds are available a good 
proportion should go for prevention. Such phases as the following 
need attention: 
(1) Law enforcement, so that every section of the fire laws will 
be obeyed and none will be a dead letter. Violators of the law 
now usually go unpunished unless their act results in a fire. An 
insignificantly small proportion of those responsible for fires are 
brought to trial or punished. A special State constabulary might 
be assigned to this duty. 
(2) Employment of a force of wardens through a longer season, 
so that they may be on hand for the spring and fall brush burning, 
and for the early and late danger seasons, and have time for pre- 
paring their districts for the fire season. 
(3) Development of a closer-knit organization which will have 
more intensive supervision and a higher standard of responsibility. 
In some districts a highly developed organization like the central- 
dispatcher system is needed. 
(4) Elimination of fire traps. Many fires may be traced to areas 
of special inflammability, like roadside débris, or untended railroad 
rights of way, settler’s slashings, and logging slash. By vigorous 
work on the part of wardens these risks can be eliminated before the 
beginning of the danger season. The law in both States already 
provides amply for this. ; 
Many other features of preparedness which need strengthening 
might be mentioned, such as the building of more lookouts, trails, 
telephone lines, and firewarden tool caches, but the above illus- 
trate for the purpose of this bulletin what must be done before safety 
is given to our forest land. 
MORE MONEY FOR GENERAL PROTECTION 
Effective protection extended to cut-over land and better preven- 
tion everywhere inevitably mean that more money must be available. 
The present funds available for forest protection are not enough to 
give the degree of security desirable for the growing of successive 
crops of timber, no matter how wisely they are spent. More money 
must come from somewhere before timber growing is on a substantial 
basis in the Northwest. 
It is rather bold to attempt an estimate of the amount of money 
which ought to be spent for forest protection. No amount of money 
could reduce the fire losses absolutely to zero, for accidents will 
happen anywhere sometimes. On the other hand, since practically 
all fires in the Douglas fir forests are man-caused, there would be 
little need for an expensive fire-prevention and fire-suppression force 
