Imperial Valley Press

Motorists Urged To Aid In Saving Country's Woods

Ninety per cent of the forest fires in the United States are due to carelessness of those who enter them. And the number of people who annually visit the country's forest preserves is increasing at the rate of 25 per cent a year. Last year more than 80,000 acres of forest were burned over in the state of Maine alone.

The above are a few of the facts discovered by the Motorists' League for Countryside Preservation, which has been organized to educate the motoring public to a sense of the responsibility which is his as he tours from camp site to camp site, from state to state.

While one of the aims of the League is to get motorists to clean up as they go; never to leave a stopping place the worse for having stopped there, the menace of fire resulting from smoldering camp fires is not being overlooked in the organization's plans.

Clifford Sloan in an article in Motor—The National Magazine of Motoring—reports that of the 633 forest fires started in the Adirondacks over 400 were actually traced to camp fires left smoldering and that the auto camper was responsible in nearly every case.

"There is in the work of the Motorists' League for Countryside Preservation," Mayor George A. Hoverter of Harrisburg, Pa., wrote, "the spirit of spontaneous interest that nothing can stop. It proposes to deal with a real problem, of which the public is entirely aware, but which it has never taken steps to correct."

"The number of forest fires started throughout last year by unthinking motorists, is only one of the conditions which prove the vital quality of the work now being undertaken by the League."

"Clean up as you go' is a splendid slogan for all of us."

The rapid increase in the number of visitors to forest parks is illustrated by the record of those who motored to the National Forests last year. Of the 5,356,000 visitors it is estimated that over 70 per cent came by automobile. An actual count of California and Colorado alone shows 2,000,000 motorists entered these parks.

Conservation commission figures show that tourists, fishermen and hunters spend annually about $18,000,000 in the Adirondacks alone. Thus it can readily be seen the Motorists' League faces a big problem, one that will increase each year.