oy, 
TIMBER GROWING IN DOUGLAS FIR REGION 37 
to prohibiting the entrance of the general public upon his lands, to 
protect himself against the small minority who will not be careful 
with its tobacco and camp fires. 
_ An effective but rather heroic measure for preventing fire from 
being started by logging operations is to suspend all logging during 
the acute fire season. ‘This is already being done by a few operators 
when the fire season is coincident with dull markets or they can ac- 
cumulate enough logs in the spring to stock their mills through the 
summer. It is likely this practice will become more common, 
and it has much to commend it purely as a measure of business 
economy. | 
INDIRECT PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE, OR FIREPROOFING LAND 
Considerable emphasis has been placed upon the desirability of 
“fireproofing” logged-off land, or putting it m such a condition that 
it will be less subject to fire, and fires wil be easier to control. This 
involves various measures other than direct protection, such as snag 
“‘falling,’”’ close utilization, slash disposal, and clearing rights of way. 
There is almost no limit to the work that might be done to make 
reforestating areas less inflammable. The measures already recom- 
mended as minimum will by no means leave the land immune to 
fire; they give only the probability of reasonably satisfactory reforest- 
ation. An owner who wishes to grow full crops, to lose none of his 
second growth by accidental fires, and to have it unthinned and 
unscarred by spot fires, is warranted in taking more intensive steps 
at the time of logging to fireproof his iogged-off lands to make them 
really safer for reforestation. This will mean a larger initial invest- 
ment, but it will yield dividends in fuller crops and lower fire- 
prevention and fire-fignting bills. 
Kach owner should study his particular problems—the local 
infammability, the human risks, the general hazard to which his 
lands are subjected—and then decide how far he must go to attain 
the degree of security he ought to have as a business proposition. 
There are several ways m which fireproofing may be intensified, 
any or all of which may be advisable, depending upon the condition 
of the tract in question: 
(1) Snag “falling.”? Jt is assumed that all snags 20 inches or more 
in diameter will come down as a minimum requisite. It is still 
safer to have them all down. This recommendation includes ‘‘fall- 
ing,’ prior to slash burning, those understory small hemlocks and 
other small trees that are not worth logging, have no value as seed 
trees or for the future crop, and are sure to be killed but not con- 
sumed by the slash fire, and so to add to the inflammability of the 
area. 
(2) Leaving natural firebreaks of uncut timber along the creeks 
where, as 1s commonly the case, there is a strip of fire-retardant 
and unmerchantable hardwoods—maple, alder, cottonwood, willows, 
and swamp undergrowth. If such areas are not logged through 
they may function very successfully in partitioning off a fire. The 
coniferous trees in such strips, if any, will furthermore act as seeders, 
obviating the necessity for reserving isolated seed trees on the logged 
land near these strips. 
