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Show FIRE MENACES FEDERAL FORESTS Recently published figures show that more than one-half of the land area of the eleven states west of the Dakotas and Texas is owned own-ed and controlled by the federal government. About half of this land comprises national forests which are one of the principal assets in most western states. State and private forest service agencies trained their guns on the Interior Department for fire hazard conditions existing on timbered tim-bered sections of the public domain atj a recent hearing before the Senate Public Lands Committee at Portland. Charges were preferred prefer-red against the Interior Department alleging that no fire patrol or provisions for fighting conflagrations on the Oregon domain were made and the Department was selling timber oc the timber tracts and allowing the slashings to remain in the woods, contrary to state and federal regulations. E. T. Allen, representing the Western Forestry For-estry Conservation Association, testified that there were 2,000,000 acres of unappropriated timber lands in the public domain in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Utah for which the Interior Department provides pro-vides no fire patrol or other protective measures. State and federal laws require private owners to provide adequate ade-quate patrols to reduce the danger of fires, but such work is virtually useless if adjoining timber lands in the public domain are not protected. pro-tected. The situation in regard to timber ocers a fine illustration of the conditions which develop when federal regulation in the hands of departments, bureaus and commissions in Washington is allowed to encroach upon and control local resources in the several different states. There is no excuse for further imperiling the great timber resources re-sources of the West by a shortsighted national policy in regard to fire prevention. |