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Our Forests in July

By Charles H. Shinn

F one could overlook the whole of California in these midsummer days, he would note that thousands of tired men, women and children were climbing towards the snow-peaks, or returning to the valleys, were resting in camps by mountain streams, lakes and meadows, were sitting around camp fires and telling tales of romance and adventure. He would see other armies of toilers, not pleasure-seekers, looking after sheep and cattle, building roads, felling timber, running sawmills, hauling out the forest products. From San Diego to Siskiyou, the whole mountain land would be throbbing with magnificent life.

Then, coming down to details, this state-wide on-looker would begin to observe what political text books call "the system of checks and balances" which one somehow finds everywhere -system, supervision, slowly devel

oping order, knowledge growing from less to more, expert scalers estimating the board feet in logs, keen-eyed rangers counting in the sheep and cattle, fire outlooks on lonely peaks far above the forests, aviators, perhaps, flying overhead to report the first upcurling ribbons of smoke from newstarting fires.

Not in the least a pipe-dream, this last, for the experiment of using aircraft over our forests has been initiated over large areas in California, New Mexico, Arizona and elsewhere. Army airplanes are beginning to fly while these lines are being written; doubtless by the time you, dear reader, scan this page, the newspapers will be telling how some young American who won his fame over the war front is reporting fires and saving American forests. While on this subject, it is also worth saying that the vast possibilities in the use of air ma

chines were seen from the first by many in the Forest Service, and also by many mountain men and lovers of the great out-doors, so that suggestions about using overhead scouts have come from all over California.

Seeing these things, you if in a National Forest on a camp this July, will perhaps remember some of the beginnings-the rude home-made fire-rakes of the late Nineties which forest guards used; the total lack of telephones, the three or four days spent by hungry sleepless men in the gulches and on the high divides, corralling a big fire. You will remember dozens of hero tales of pioneer forest

stations alone and done it quite as well as any man could.

The past twenty years' history of fire-fighting experiments in California deserves a book to itself, so full is the period with thrilling incidents and steadily evolving experience. At one time, for instance, a number of firebreak lines were cut through thick brush at high cost, so as to protect valuable bodies of timber. But they grew up again very fast indeed, and it was soon found that except under special conditions fire lines are not altogether a success, but that the lookout towers, telephones, the ability to rush a lot of fully-equipped fire fight

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work that have become splendid traditions helping to create still greater loyalties to the growing spirit of American forestry.

You will have watched the building of those first rude fire-outlook cabins on hill tops near the western fronts of the National Forests, back in the first ten years of this century, to be rapidly followed by much more useful fire stations on higher peaks, miles away from neighbors, where men lived and worked in isolation for months; where brave women sometimes lived sharing their husbands' vigils. In a few cases women have kept these fire outlook

ers to the spot quickly (in these days largely by machines) are the things that count.

Now we shall have aircraft besides. But the really important matter, as everyone knows, is the growing unity of effort and spirit of fellowship among all the people who believe in forests. Anybody who spends a little time in one of the eighteen National Forests of California and Nevada soon discovers all this. "Some thing brings us together," a newcomer said one July: "It's partly the wild life, the outdoorness; it's still more the forests and their primeval soli

tude. When we go home again we are better and more useful people for our summer days up here."

But all this health-giving beauty and potential wood-product resources over thousands of square miles are at the mercy of a careless match, a forgotten camp fire, an ignorant, foolish or criminal person who starts a blaze in our dry season, and perhaps destroys thousands of acres of timber, lessens the water-storage capacity of our mountains, and injures the American people.

The statistics sent out by lumbermen's associations and the Forest Ser

fornia, burning over some 12,000

acres.

Now, when everyone, young and old, settlers, tourists, hunters, fishermen, prospectors, cattlemen and all the rest of us, realize the vast issues involved in the fight to save our forests from any fire loss whatever, fires in California can be reduced to merely those started by lightning, perhaps fifty a year, and the total acreage to less than a thousand, the losses to "next to nothing."

In order to reach this much-desired result public education must be constant, beginning in the primary grades

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vice prove that fires on our timber lands in 1918 cost the Pacific Coast $6,500,000 in the destruction of merchantable timber, besides, of course, the losses to livestock, the killing of small trees, the destruction of soil fertility and lessening of water supplies. We had 6249 separate fires, and 321,827 acres were burned over. More than two million dollars was spent by the Government and by private individuals in checking and finally putting out these forest fires. It may be added that 1030 of these fires were on the National Forests of Cali

of the schools, extending throughout all social groups of men, women and children. Here is an immense field for the best work of boy scouts, campfire girls, normal schools, outing clubs, and all sorts of associations, but especially for every force that has to do with agriculture and horticulture.

Another book might be written upon the sad, silly, and yet often amusingperformances of careless people who go to the mountains. Once, not twenty miles from Truckee, a couple of men camped on the sawdust pile of an old, abandoned mill, built their fire, sprang

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from their blankets a few hours later, and ran for their precious lives! Their camp, horses and wagon were wiped out; the fire burned for a week or so, destroying much timber. The men went into Truckee and asked a lawyer if there was any prospect that they could recover damages from the owner of the old mill site!

The late B. B. Redding, of the Southern Pacific, "one of Nature's noblemen," and a man whose love for wild life and the forests was beyond expression, once found some campers on the McCloud river who were setting fire to dead pitch-pine stumps, and also making huge piles of logs against the face of a granite cliff, so that when set afire the rock would split, explode, and fly off in huge masses. He reasoned unavailingly with them. "Came up to have a good time," they said. From that incident dated Mr. Redding's desire for fire patrols, more stringent laws, and a broader public education. It was a long time agoabout 1878, I think, but John Muir, John Sweet, Sam Williams of the

Hilgard, and old John Rock, the nurseryman, were among the men who talked Forest Protection with men like B. B. Redding, in those times.

Dr. Hilgard of the State University, used to say: "Start school gardens; show the infants how a seed grows, and becomes at last a tree. Take them to the mountains; show them the best way to camp, how to live, how to find their way around, what to do in case of accidents. Make them, in brief, children of the great outdoors. Then, when we have Government forests" (this was about 1880) "every Californian will know how to stand up for them."

But more than thirty years of time -and the world-war lies between more than forty years, if one goes back to B. B. Redding's experiences, have elapsed. Where are we now? There has been a far-reaching system of fireprotection created so as to discover, reach, and rapidly conquer every fire. There has been much written and said towards the education of the public. Best of all, a policy has been developed which aims at interesting every owner of a piece of land upon which forest trees grow, whether just a wood

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"Bulletin," Prof. Joseph LeConte, Dr. Fire Lookout Tower, Tahoe National Forest

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lot or whole square miles of virgin timber. Colonel Henry S. Graves, Chief of the Forest Service, in a recent address before the Lumbermen's Congress at Chicago, discussed this policy in the most thoughtful and practical manner. He outlined the vital importance of forest renewal private lands, in other words the restoration of timber growth on cut-over lands. This involves changes in the present methods of taxing forest lands, and many other things, but it rests upon the full recognition by the American people of the necessity of saving, utilizing, restoring and forever continuing our forest resources. First of all, this means cutting out the fires. Let us all help to enforce the State and Federal fire laws. Let us forever get rid of the notion that "light summer burning" is ever a good thing in our forests. forests. That long-discredited

theory is of the Piute Indian order; it clears off great areas; it destroys the reproduction as well as much larger growth; it changes forests in brushcovered and worthless areas. Systematic fire protection is the only scientific method known to foresters.

Now for the practical turn-the "what to do this very year: First keep posted on Forest Service, and University literature; get acquainted with forests and forest people; use safety matches, and pinch out the stubs. Secondly, consider the immense place which forests and wild life occupy in our civilization, and how empires that wasted these resources have gone down in pain and in darkness. Then, once for all, say to yourself 'We can put an end to fire-losses in the California forests, excepting of course, the few that come from summer lightning strokes.'"

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