38 BULLETIN 1493, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
(3) Fire-line construction. Firebreaks along rights of way or 
ridges, which break up a tract mto units for better protection, are 
good insurance. They should be a consideration in every plan for 
intensive management. They serve also as routes of travel. Fire 
lines are of course useless unless they are kept cpen to travel, that the 
fire patrols may get quickly to all parts of the tract. The planting 
of fire-retardant hardwoods along the fire lines as a spark or flame 
screen has also been proposed and is being tried. 
PROVISION FOR ASSURED REFORESTATION THROUGH SEED TREES 
OR PLANTING 
It is not expected that such minimum measures for securing 
natural reseeding as are recommended earlier in this bulletin will 
effect complete stocking in many instances. Those simple measures 
rely upon seed stored in the ground and surviving the slash burn, seed 
blown from near-by standing timber, and seed from defective trees 
left standing. The chances are good that with successful slash 
disposal and fire control most areas will be reseeded fairly satisfactorily 
through one agency or another or all together. But these crude 
measures can not be expected to be uniformly successful in good seed 
years and bad, to provide against loss of all natural reforestation in 
the event of second fires, or to result in a complete stand of new 
erowth on every acre. 
For owners who propose to practice intensive timber growing and 
get full crops from their land two methods of supplementing and assur- 
ing reforestation are possible: (1) Leaving more seed trees; (2) plant- 
ing the failed areas. In some regions these supplementary provisions 
will be more necessary than in others, and their cost will vary con- 
siderably from one tract to another. Whether one or the other is 
used will depend upon circumstances—the character and value of the 
seed trees that are available for leaving, the security of the area 
against second fires, and the financial policy of the owner. The 
decision as to how to secure maximum reforestation at minimum 
outlay is thus a technical question, involving study of local conditions, 
which can best be made by an experienced forester. 
LEAVING ADEQUATE SEED TREES 
In addition to leaving unmerchantable Douglas firs with good 
crowns for seed trees, as already recommended, intensive forest man- 
agement should be prepared to leave seed trees of merchantable value 
where there are not other sufficient sources of seed. This is, of course, 
provided that the stumpage investment thus involved is not greater 
than would be the cost of planting to attain the same result. It must 
be remembered that, as a 44-inch Douglas fir has some 3,000 board 
feet in 1t, sound seed trees of even this size involve a large investment. 
Where the proper kind of seed trees are available and they do not 
represent an investment out of proportion to the good they can do, 
the aim should be to leave two per acre. To get this number more 
may have to be designated before logging, for the operation and the 
slash burn will inevitably destroy some. They should be trees of 
seed-bearing capacity, of a size to withstand the logging operation 
and the slash burn, likely to be windfirm, and with healthy crowns, 
whether their boles are of good merchantable character or not. 
