PROTECTION AGAINST FIRE Practically no attention has been given to providing fire lanes through American forests for the checking of fires when they start. This belongs to intensive forestry, and we have not come to that yet. Consequently fires find us unprepared. A small ground fire can usually be put out near its beginning by beating it with branches bearing mops of green leaves. A narrow track of dirt or sand thrown about the burning area will help to keep it within bounds. Throwing earth or sand on the smouldering leaf mould is one of the best means of choking out fire. If there is time, a belt can be burned across the path of the fire which will end it. Digging narrow trenches is also effective.
Fires that sweep the forest crown can be stayed only by openings that they cannot bridge—broad, natural fire lanes. With a wind blowing, such a conflagration flings firebrands in all directions, lighting new fires in the rubbish that litters the forest floor.
Fighting a forest fire is almost hopeless after it once gets under way. A ground fire may be impossible to locate, though the smoke indicates its existence, and approximately its place. Slash makes progress and fire fighting in the woods very toilsome The Enemies of Trees work. After a fire is believed to be extinguished it often smoulders and• breaks out with renewed violence later on. Or it may seem under control over most of its area, and by suddenly climbing a dead tree be out of reach, start a fresh blaze among the treetops and threaten a much larger territory. The broad-leaved trees
are less likely to spread a fire than the inflammable, resinous conifers.
Grating as practised in this country is sometimes as destruc tive to forests as fire. Over-grating is the proper term, for a flock of sheep is generally kept in a section of woods until every thing green within reach has disappeared. Sheep nibble and gnaw and crop roots and saplings, and their little feet pack and tear open the leaf mould, trampling out the life of all young growth they do not eat. They are especially destructive to young coniferous growth. A lease of a tract for grazing generally means desolation in the wake of the flock, as far as all under growth is concerned. Government lands have been grazed to their lasting damage by sheep men without leave from any authority. This is being stopped wherever reservations are patrolled.
Cattle do less harm in grazing than sheep and goats. They do not keep so close together, their feet do not cut into the soil so deep, nor do they strip all growths clean as they go, unless driven to it by drought. Horses do less harm than cattle. Hogs prevent much young growth by eating tree seeds, especially those of beech, oak and other nut trees.
Grazing should be prohibited in young woods, and permitted but sparingly in old forests. In fact, a forest should have no openings in its roof, and so no grass on the forest floor.