The Laramie Republican

SPEAKS ON
FIRE LOSS

SUPERVISOR LOVEJOY OF THE CHEYENNE NATIONAL FOREST ADDRESSES LITERARY CLUB.

Points Out Tremendous Loss from Burning Timber on the Reserves,
Loss Falling to Albany County and to People Living Adjacent to Reserves—Many Present.

At the meeting last Friday of the Laramie Literary club a large number of members were present, the principal address being delivered by Hon. P. S. Lovejoy of this city, supervisor of the Cheyenne National forest, who took for his subject "The County and the National Forests."

The address was quite interesting. Mr. Lovejoy furnishing many figures and introducing many facts in connection with the fires in the forests in the past fifty years. The Republican reproduces the salient portions of the address herewith.

Supervisor's Address.

Whatever may be the legal equities in the great tracts of lands withdrawn from entry as national forests, which the state, or through it, the county, may have, and whatever the motives originating or ending the present scheme of things, the communities in and near the national forests have certain natural, hereditary and interminable relations and interests with the resources of those lands.

Considering the Timber,

I desire to consider exclusively the timber and the counties. Exclusive of patented and state lands, there are about 380,000 acres of absolute forest land in the Medicine Bow range north of the Colorado line. Of this area almost 200,000 acres have been burnt or cut over within the last fifty years.

Half the public timber in those mountains has been burnt or cut within the last fifty years. A small portion of the old cuttings was legally done under statutory privileges. It is not pleasant thing to consider the circumstances under which the rest of those cuttings took place, and the butchered wastes that followed those operations are today in an excellent state of preservation.

Gross Income Comes Back.

Under the present regulations timber which is mature and ready for market can be sold at its assessed value, each tree removed is marked for cutting and the brush is piled for burning. All the merchantable parts of the tree must be used and removed. Twenty-five per cent of the gross income of the forests is refunded to the counties.

Carelessness Shown.

Nine fires out of ten are started by carelessness. Someone's carelessness, during the past fifty years, has lost the counties of Albany and Carbon not less than six and one-half millions of dollars.

Fires have run over about 145,000 acres of timbered land. The timber burned has been or will soon become a total waste. Reasonably good timber in these mountains will run 10,000 feet B. M., to the acre, and most of the fires have run through the easily reached good timber. The timber above the foothills is one great band of jack pine come in after fire.

Twenty-nine Millions Lost.

Figuring a little, 145,000 times 10,000 equals 1,450,000,000. That is about the figure of feet B. M. lost irrevocably to the counties through fire.

Laid down in Laramie as lumber at $20 per thousand feet, the cash value of that burnt wood equals $29,000,000.

I believe that much timber to have been destroyed in our mountains by fire, but for cold calculation, deductions should be made for inaccessibility, for old trees which would have rotted before the lumberman could have reached them, for undeveloped markets and inferior species and lighter stands. To calculate on a basis of one-half the estimated stand should be sufficiently conservative.

What does the loss of 725,000,000 feet of timber amount to in dollars? At this figure the 725,000,000 feet would have a cash value of $14,500,000, as it stood on the ground. The twenty-five per cent share of the counties in this sum would equal $3,625,000 in actual and perfectly good cash.

Perpetual Income.

The calculation gives an equal annual income of $290,000 forever, and the capital still intact and growing. Of this sum the county would have received twenty-five per cent, or $72,500 each year, and would have had the guarantee of that amount each year as surely as though it owned securities bearing that in interest—always provided no fires come in to ravish and destroy.

Lumber Going Up.

It should be borne in mind that this would not have represented any form of double taxation, or an extra charge on one for his neighbor's benefit. The price of native lumber has been raised $10 a thousand feet in ten years, on a stumpage change of $2.50. Fully ninety per cent of the timber cut from this range has gone into the roadbed of the Union Pacific, in competition with Pacific and Southern timber. It was and is used by the railway because it is better and cheaper.

The road would operate if there were no timber here. The nation and the county are entitled to a fair profit on their timber if it competes in an open market.

Charred and Rotting Logs.

It should be especially born in mind that that timber is not available, as ties, or anything else, but is today lying scattered over 145,000 acres, charred and rotting logs.

I do not know who started the fires. I do know that nothing was ever done about it and that you and I will never live to see that loss made good.

Hard to Calculate.

What indirect losses have been occasioned by the fires cannot be calculated directly. An estimate on the loss may be useless. The loss from fire through the destruction of the timber and labor involved is real, such losses as decreased water flow during the irrigation season and loss in areas suitable for stock range are no less real but of different kind and harder to estimate.

Employment of Labor.

When a new industry enters a community its chief benefit to the community is through the labor employed. The rolling mills are not desirable economically in that they turn out fish plates and tie bolts, but since they employ labor.

Great Loss of Labor.

The loss to the counties from forest fires is bad enough in that the wood and the cash revenue are lost, but the great loss from fires in the timber, for the counties, comes through the loss of the labor which would have gone into the manufacturing of that timber.

About three-fifths of the market value of timber products is in labor. The two-fifths value is in the investment, profit and loss, taxes on the operators insurance, cost of operation such as salary, etc.

Loss of labor touches every merchant in the region, every bank and industry, and through them every citizen. Paid labor means thriving industry. This is not a treatise on economics but on economies.

Great Market Value

The market value of 700,000,000 feet of timber at $15 per M. is $10,500,000. (At $20 per M it is $14,000,000 and today it is poor lumber you can buy for $20). At the lower figure the labor costs on the burnt forests products would equal $6,300,000. The county would have furnished most of that labor, would have absorbed most of its income, would have had the taxes on the workers and of the balance of the market value.

$4,200,000, a great amount would have remained in the county as profits, salaries, taxes, investment and more workers.

By these figures the business of the counties has been reduced. Labor has been traded for black stumps, taxes for bare soil, profit for loss and good legitimate industry for total waste—and not necessary waste such as in clearing good ground for farms—just plain every day complete and unmitigated waste—

waste which took population, industry, income and property out of the counties and left nothing but a memory of "—only timber fires”—and smoke in the valley.

Thousands of Acres of Range.

I estimate that not less than 100,000 acres of reasonably good range has been destroyed and made inaccessible by the down timber and young pine and barren soil following the fires.

This range will doubtless come back within about 100 years as the young pine grows up and the down timber rots away. Perhaps the range is not needed or will not be needed for 100 years. Perhaps? If it had been needed it would have carried at the least estimate 2,000 head of cattle or 10,000 head of sheep for three months each year (at 50 acres per cow and 10 acres per sheep). Dividing this by 4 gives an equivalent of 500 cattle or 2,500 sheep, fed for a whole year, each year for a hundred years or 50,000 cattle and 250,000 head of sheep for the lost period. In money, with sheep at $5 and cattle at $30 per head, the value of the lost range would be about one and a half millions of dollars in meat. Where do the people who run stock in those mountains live?

Destroying Debris.

The destruction of the decayed leaf and wood debris that a forest makes sets back the rate and quality of growth of the succeeding generation of timber probably not less than ten per cent. Ten per cent more wood should have been laid on than will be laid on the trees which come back over the burned areas. That ten per cent equals hundreds of millions of feet of wood.

Where spruce is burnt, not like the pine, no young growth follows it. If it ever comes back to timber it must be artificially at a cost of not less than $5 an acre. Some time somebody will have to plant or sow our 50,000 acres of burned spruce land back to spruce. Sometime this will be done because it will pay in cash for doing it. The cost would not have been necessary if the fire had not run. The cost will approximate 5 times 50,000 or 250,000, and the outlay will not reduce anyone's taxes.

Losses Epitomized.

The total losses from timber fires which Carbon and Albany counties have sustained to date then total about as follows, reduced to dollars:

Area burnt, in acres, 145,000: timber burnt at 10 M feet B. M. per acre, 1,450,000,000; cash value manufactured at $20 per M $29,000,000; loss in cash refund (of 25 per cent on stumpage at $5 per M. B. M., based on one-half estimated timber destroyed, 700,000,000 feet). $875,000; loss in labor in manufacturing timber (at three fifths market value of $15 per M). $6,300,000; loss in investments for plants, supplies and equipment, profits taxes, etc., (two-fifths market value at $15 per M), $4,200,000; loss of range in equivalent value of stock fed, $1,500,000; loss of timber through decreased growing capacity of burnt over ground, (based on 10 per cent of 700,000,000 feet B. M.). $70,000,000: value of timber manufactured at $15 per M. $1,050,000: loss in labor in manufacturing timber (at three-fifths market value of $15 per M.). $630,000: loss in investments for plants, supplies, equipment profits, taxes, etc., (at two-fifths market value of $15 per M.). $420,000: loss in cash refund of 25 per cent. stump age at $2 per M, $87,500; loss in damage to roads, ditches, and soil through windfall and washing, and to irrigation through decreased water flow (arbitrary). $20,000; total loss to counties from forest fires based on half estimated timber burnt. $42,032,400.

Loss to Counties.

Now this loss is not the loss of the nation, except as an infinitesimal decrease in its total resources and a loss of about three millions of cash income distributed through some hundred years. The national treasury suffers but little from any loss in any county. Neither is the loss to the state great in proportion to its resources and the only cash loss to the state treasury is in the decrease in the taxes on the lost industries and investments. The loss falls fully 85 per cent on the counties adjoining the national forest. The waste originates in the county, is lost to the county and the ratio of this loss to the counties' total resources is high.

I say that the county including national forest lands has certain hereditary non-transferable and permanent economic relations with the forest, that no other county, no state, and the nation has not and can never have.

Land Cut Over.

Fifty thousand acres have been cut over, a part under law the rest by fraud and trespass. I have no quarrel with the poorly managed little sawmill which with its waste and carelessness, sent lumber to the valleys to build homes for pioneers. These mills took the oldest and biggest timber and while they left the brush and half the tree on the ground, the young trees were left, and the damage is not irreparable.

Work of Old Tie Man.

The old tie man was of another sort. Perjury and fraud were more necessary tools for him than the saw and broad ax. He took the middle aged straight, sound trees wherever he found them. He cut them off above the snow, no matter how deep it was, he left two-thirds of the tree on the ground, he smashed and rived what he did not cut, and after him the winds took the weakened stand he left and threw it. And often after that the fires come and they are yet to come in the great tie slashes.

Stupendous Devastation.

The county has lost, out of its resources, far more than fifteen millions of ties with a value of over $7,000,000. Fifteen millions of ties equals about half a billion board feet. With stumpage at $5, the value of this timber on the ground was $2,500,000. A twenty five per cent refund would have been $625,000. Twice as much wood was left on the ground as was taken off. There goes $1,250,000 more in cash.

The labor which would have gone into the manufacturing of that lost material would have equaled at least $9,000,000, and there would have been invested and in profits, etc., $6,000,000 more.

On top of this figure the inaccessibility of what is left and if you are fanciful compound interest for 50 or 100 years on the total loss.

Small Loss in Five Years.

The forest service has had its rangers in these mountains since 1905. Since that date the fires have started as before the seasons have been dry as before, timber is there to be burnt as before, but during those five years 65 acres only have been burned over.

Last year the entire appropriation made by congress for roads, trails buildings and telephone, for the 190,000,000 acres of national forests was $500,000. Those roads and trails and camps and telephone lines are the best and cheapest fire insurance ever invented, but the share of this forest last year was only about $2,500 of the sum appropriated by congress. Is the conclusion logical or fair? Or isn't our timber worth taking care of?

Fighting the Fires.

On the Cheyenne National forest we had last fire season about fifty miles of forest service telephone line and about as many miles of new trails. A line is slowly going up from Centennial to the top of the Snowy range where next season an old mountain-wise prospector will camp all summer with a field glass for company. His job will be to find smoke and report its location. Last summer each loose ranger had to cover about 60,000 acres. Only two camps had telephone connection. We need hundreds of miles of intersecting wires, hundreds of miles of repaired roads and new trails, twenty more men with good horses and places to live. But next summer, as last, half a dozen rangers with their pack horses will be charged with preventing, locating and putting out what fires may start and the tie slashings will be very dry and the winds will blow.

There will be a few more miles of telephone lines and roads and trails, perhaps an extra man or so, a few piles of dry wood for beacons on a few hill tops—and fires will start anyway. There will be some fast riding, a gathering of tired men, some hours or days hard work, a faint taint of smoke in the valleys—and, if we are lucky— afterwards a very small patch of black in the green—broken shovel or so and the fear of more to come.

Comes Home To People.

These things are good, and help, but the everlasting quietus can only be given our forest fires when the people in the mountains and the valleys realizing the extent that their everyday pocketbook is threatened by that careless man, back up those who are trying to prevent and put out fires and back up the law that penalizes the carelessness which lets fires start.

Responsibility at Home.

For the natural hereditary, interminable relations and interests of the county and the forests, place responsibilities on the people, of the county and until those responsibilities and self-interests are recognized and accepted by the people, no certain safety for the forest can be.