The Winslow Mail

FOREST DAMAGE.

PRESIDENT COOLIDGE has proclaimed American Forest Week beginning yesterday and extending to May 3. The purpose in proclaiming this week was to call particular attention to the rapid depletion of our forests by fire, wasteful utilization and other causes and thereby to stimulate interest in future forest protection.

There has been a change in name from Forest Protection week to American Forest week.

This change was made to enlarge its scope of observance and to secure a greater co-operation from public and private organizations throughout the country. Under its present designation, it is no longer limited to fire protection, but will apply equally to reforestation problems, such as reclaiming idle timberlands which have been destroyed through fire in the past.

It has been estimated by competent foresters that the original forests of this country covered about 822 million acres. Today there is estimated to be only 133 million acres of virgin forest remaining and 250 million acres of second growth timber or young trees which, of course, are now of no commercial value. Thus it will be seen that only about 42 per cent of the original timber resources of the nation remain. Furthermore, there is conservatively estimated to be eighty-one million acres of land suitable for no other purpose than forest growth which is now idle, and all of it needs protection against recurring fires in order to re-establish the forests which once grew upon this vast domain.

The principal enemy of forests has always been fire. It has been estimated that more than 8,000,000 acres of virgin and second growth timberland is being burned over annually, causing loss of approximately $17,000,000 each year. On a country-wide basis it is estimated that 80 per cent of this loss is due entirely to preventable fires of human origin. The federal government has enacted a national forestry law which is intended to stimulate the action of the states in the conservation of public and private forests and by this act has launched the federal policy of forest rehabilitation.

In Arizona and New Mexico there is estimated to be approximately 10,000,000 acres of land containing saw timber, or about 7 per cent of the total area of the states. If the saw timber type and woodland forests are included, about 27 per cent of the total area of the two states is timbered. The saw timber type of the two states, including national forests, Indian reservations, state and public domain and private lands, contains approximately 35,000,000,000 feet of timber.

With this vast storehouse of virgin timber within the two states, the importance of protecting it from fire is paramount.

It has been the policy of the forestry service in handling the timber stands to dispose of the timber as a crop, marketing only the ripe timber, and so arranging the cutting cycle that there will be a new stand ready to replace the present stand at the end of the cutting period.

Although the people of Arizona, as a rule, have been quite careful in preventing fire, which in this region also is the greatest enemy of the forest, there still is much room for improvement. In 1924 33 per cent of the 620 fires occurring in the national forests of Arizona were due to human carelessness. Although this record was a marked improvement over the previous year, which was 53 per cent, it is believed that with the further co-operation of the press and other public agencies, it will be possible to reduce this number very greatly.

The total area burned over in Arizona was 43,000 acres, and the total estimated damage $26,000. In addition to the above it cost the federal government $86,000 to suppress the fires occurring on national forest lands of the state.