e
instances has been discussed in a preceding chapter. The protection
question is of even greater importance, for whether we consider
mature timber or reforestation, no forest management is worth while
if the investment is to burn up. It can be divided broadly under
two heads, reduction of risk due to operative methods and general
protection. Whichever we consider, the interest of every lumberman
is at stake. The fire question affects him in many ways beside the
danger of direct loss. The sale value of timber in any region is
increased by knowledge that progressive protective methods prevail
among those operating there. Nothing more effectively removes public
carelessness with fire, or lack of helpful sympathy with the lumber
industry in general, than evidence that the lumberman himself is
devoting every effort to safeguarding instead of wasting this great
public resource.

Of operative methods reducing fire risk, one of the most important is
disposal of logging debris. The deliberate accumulation of immensely
inflammable material, almost always where extremely likely to be
ignited, is a form of actually inviting disaster practiced by no
property holders except lumbermen. Nowhere is it carried to such
an extreme as in the West, where the refuse left on the ground
is of so great volume as to preclude human control if it is once
fired at a dry time, and where accidental fire is often more of a
certainty than a liability. Of late, however, the more progressive
lumbermen of the fir region have adopted the practice of firing
their slashings annually at a time when the surrounding woods will
not burn, and the pine men of Idaho and Montana have quite widely
endorsed brush piling. Idaho has a piling law. Oregon already has a
slash burning law which is partially observed. The greatest objection
to such a law is that neither reforestation nor economical protection
indicates the same practice in different types of forest and it is
extremely difficult to make the law both flexible and effective.
More will be accomplished by voluntary adoption of the method best
suited to each condition.

BRUSH PILING

In the more open pine stands of the interior, where both logging
debris and original combustible ground cover are small, slashings
threaten the adjacent timber less than in denser forests, but are
of peculiar danger to the valuable young growth usually left on
the area itself. As we have seen in a previous chapter on western
yel