MAN'S DAMAGE TO THE FORESTS Clearing of wooded lands was the pioneer's duty and necessity. He had to make room for the civilisation that followed him. The Eastern country was so generally covered with forests that farms could be made only by clearing the land. This made trees the chief enemy to be overthrown—the greatest of all the weeds that the farmer battled against.
Wasteful lumbering came next, and took the best logs from the virgin forests, leaving all the "slash" behind to dry and feed terrible forest fires. An unreasonable rate of taxation dis couraged the buying and holding of lands by lumber companies. When the sawmills left, the land was waste, unfit for the use of man.
Fire is the greatest enemy of forests in this country. Hunters carelessly leave their campfires still alive; cinders from locomotives ignite dry rubbish; farmers burning brush over cleared land let the fires get beyond control. Spite against the owners sometimes finds expression in firing a forest. Lightning sets fires and winds spread them.
Fortunes are swept away each year in standing timber; lives and property are destroyed in the track of the fire. Young growth of seedling trees, the forests of the future, are wiped out. Tree seeds are consumed, and the leaf mould, that precious porous blanket that holds the food and drink for all the trees, that is the nursery of seedlings and the anchorage of the old trees—this is reduced to an ash heap. All the organisms of the soil that con
verted the forest litter into loam are killed; and the litter is also gone, so that there is no means of restoring promptly the supply of humus necessary for seed to germinate.
Trees fall over in such a "burn." Grass, one of the forest's ancient enemies, creeps in. The sun and wind steal the soil water: it runs off as floods in spring rains, overflowing streams that run dry in summer. Gullies are formed where the cracked soil washes. Insects and fungi attack trees, young and old, which were crippled but not killed by the fire. A severe fire destroys the forest equilibrium utterly, reducing the area to a desert state.
Fires under control are sometimes justified in forests of indifferent quality. Tracts covered with blueberry and black berry are systematically burned in Maine and other states because the new growth fruits better than the old canes. In other regions forests are fired to open them and improve the grazing. A great many fires are set for this purpose by sheep men in remote mountainous woodlands belonging to the Government or to private parties who know nothing of this systematic wholesale stealing.