New Methods of Fire Hazard Reduction to be Tried on Logging Areas by Lumber Company

A forest protection experiment of wide interest to lumbermen and foresters generally, as well as significant of the cooperative effort by which the U. S. Forest Service and the industry are attempting to solve Pacific Coast forest problems, wes announced today by District Forester S. B. Show. On an experimental area of. 22,W acres of national forest and private land which is being operated by the Fruit Growers Supply Company, an elaborate system of fire lines and intensive fire patrol will be substituted for brush piling and burning. Since the company is also going to assume responsibility for fire control and since the privately owned land will be handled in the same way as the government land, this is a departure not only in method of dealing with fire hazard in government pine sales, but, also in recognizing joint interest.

The Fruit Growers Supply Company, composed of several thousand California citrus growers, conducts large lumber operations for its members and has mills at Hilt and Susanville. In 1919, to assure a perpetual timber supply, it supplemented its holdings in Lassen County by purchasing the timber on about 100,000 acres of national forest land under contract and management plan for a TAyear cutting and reforestation cycle. This bound the company to various fire prevention requirements under Government direction, including piling and burning all slash on the government area at a cost of about 50 cents a thousand board feet.

The company employed trained foresters on its own behalf and conducted fire control experiments on its interspersed private lands. After six years' observation, including the bad fire year of L924, and after having received the benefit of similar experiments by progressive pine operators elsewtrere through a survey by the research department of the Western Forestry and Conservation Associition, it concluded that under the local condition and for the long term involved, not only a material saving in cost, but also equal security of timber and young growth could be effected for both ownerships by a uniform plan of intensified protection, with slash left undisturbed in compartments surrounded by fire breaks cleared to. facilitate stopping fire and with intensive fire patrol. The company accordingly asked the Forest Service to be allowed to submit such a plan in detail offering to assume responsibility for its continued operation.

To this the forest service readily consented without committing itself to the general application of this method on other sales, but as encouragement of sincere, well-equipped experiment; and after modification the company plan was accepted for that portion of the joint holding to be logged in the next five years. It will be carried out with close co-operation between the Fruit Growers Supply Company's superintendent at Susanville, E. B. Birmingha'm, and forest supervisor W. B. Durbln, of the Lassen National Forest. A record of all costs will be carefully kept.