The Cordova daily times., 1921-03-16
FORESTS MUST BE PROTECTED
 AGAINST FIRE

WASHINGTON, March 16.-A de-
 mand is growing on the part of the wood-using industries and the public
 at large for a national policy of for
 estry which will insure adequate fu-
 ture supplies of timber and other
 forest products, according to Chief
 Forester w. E. Greeley. Figures gathered by the forest service this
 year, his annual report states, showed the extent of the depletion of the na-
 tioa's forests, and have served to
 focus attention on the fact that the
 country is short of growing forests
 and that something must be done at
 once. The acute shortage and sky rocketing prices of lumber and news. print early in the year also contri.
 buted to the growth of the movement. ! The forest service is advocating a
 program based on the conviction that l the problem is national and not local.
 and must be handled as such. Nation
 wide protection from forest fire for
 all classes of forest land, Colonel ] Greeley states, is the first and most ] essential step. It is his belief that
 the. police powers of the states offer
 the best means of enforcing reason able requirements against forest de- struction
 i The expense of fire protection, the forester says, should be borne jointly ] by the landowner and the public He
 holds that federal legislation is need 1 ed to provide for a comprehensive i plan of cooperation with the states i in fire prevention and the develop
 ment of forestry practice, and the extension of the national forests
 through purchases, through the in clusion of other timberlands now in
 federal ownership and through ex-
 change.
 There are still large quantities of i timber in the United States, the re- port states, but they are not in the
 right place More than 50 per cent 1 of what is left lies west of the Great
 Plains, far from the bulk of the country's population, agriculture, and
 manufacture. The country is taking about 26 billion feet of wood from forests each year and is growing only 6 billion.
 We have used up our forests with out growing new ones," says the re- port. At the bottom of the whole problem is idle forest land. The
 United States contains 326 million acres of cut-oyer or denuded forest containing no saw timber; S1 million acres of this amount have been com. pletely devastated by forest fires and methods of cutting which destroy or prevent new timber growth "The area of idle or largely idle 1 land is being increased by from three to four million acres annually as the l cutting and burning of forests con- tinues." These facts, together with the steadily increasing distance be. i tween the average sawmill and the home builder, have had a vital bear 1 ing on the high cost of lumber. which during the year reached a prohibitive figure for many uses and checked l the building of homes which is so urgently needed" The cost of fire fighting by the forest service for the fiscal year end ing June 3I, 1920, as reported by Colonel Greeley, was approximately $SOO,OO0, The cost was somewhat in- ! creased by the high prices of SUD- plies and the prevailing wage scale. The appropriation for this import
 ant work is only $250,OO0 a year. AS
 result a deficiency appropriation
 must again be sought. It has been necessary to go to congress for such appropritions in six out of the nine years that have passed since the fire fighting funds were cut from Sl,- l50,000 for the fiscal year 1912 to $350-,000 for 1913, with subsequent i further reductions. l It is generally believed that an ex-
 penditure for fire fighting of from
 $6OO,O00 to $8OO,OOO a year will be ! necessary to meet all emergencies adequately.