Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-04-24
Georgia S Vital Interest in
Forest Protection Week

OF all States interested in Forest Pro-
lection Week, which will be observed
April 22-2S, Throughout the Union,
none is more vitality concerned than Georgia.
Every farmer, every manufacturer, every
merchant, every householder, every citizen
within the Commonwealth wide borders has
conservation of our woodland resources.
Agriculture alone is involved to the extent of
scores of millions Of dollars, merely in the
matter of lumber consumption. To meet, at
home, this one need of Georgias three hun
dred and eleven thousand farms, if they con-
sumed the average required for efficient
eighty per cent of our present total lumber
production. Wood-using manufactures rep
resent nearly fifty per cent of the States
industrial establishments and employ twenty
two per cent of her wage earners; while 1um-
bering and naval stores have yielded her
people, within the last twenty-five years up
IDENTIFY our business interest in the protection
and perpetuation of forest wealth is of
magnitude that demands attention.
Yet, this wealth now is being wasted at
rate which threatens its utter depletion. OF
Georgia's original area of virgin forest less
than one-twentieth remains; and how rapidly
this is shrinking may be inferred from the
fact that within decade our output of Ium-
Der has decreased fifty per cent, not for lack
of demand, but because of diminished sources
g., of supply. The most appalling and least ex-
cusable form of waste Is the forest fire. In
the country as a whole, authorities say,
twice as many acres of timberland are burned
over annually as are cut over in numbering
operations, such fires numbering an average
of thirty-three thousand year. That Geor-
gia's proportion Of them is excessively large
appears from the official record which shows
that within a six-year period there werS
bounds-twice as many as were reported
from any other State! The direct monetary
losses resulting are estimated at four and
quarter million dollars. If to these, says the
State board Of forestry, are added such dam
ages as "the destruction of small trees, the
killing of game, the drying up Of fish streams,
the burning up Of soil fertility, the removing
of the ground cover from mountain land
with CONSEQUENT erosion and floods) and the
rendering and keeping idle of an area of
five million acres, 1t Is readily apparent that
the total loss reaches staggering figure"
These conditions are the more deplorable
in that few simple measures, we'll designed
and we'll administered, would prevent them.
The forests of the entire country, say careful
students of the problem, could be safeguard
ed against fire for about three cents an acre.
We need, to begin with. legislation under
which stop can be put to forest fires which
are Of other than accidental origin. Twenty
five per cent of these fires in Georgia are in
cendiary, seventeen per cent are from brush
burning, while to carelessness or design are
x5cribed ninety per cent OF the total If
twenty-seven States have found it feasible
and highly desirable to muster their energies
to the prevention of forest fires, surely Geor-