OCR Text |
Show j Forest Fires Costly The attention of land owners lis directed to the 212, b71 forest fires in the United States last year. This means one every two and a half minutes. A loss of nearly $30,000,000 was caused by the burning of 30,000,000 acres of I forest land. Exactly what these figures mean is seen by a statement of die U. S. Deparment of Agriculture Agricul-ture which asserts that an average aver-age timber production of two hundred board feet an acre an-inually an-inually on tne total burned-over iarea, would represent enough lumber to build a third of a million mil-lion six-room frame houses. This I ought to mean something to the individuals who own forest land, i Tr.e Forest Service points out that of 585,422,000 acres of forest land needing it, there are 152,-167,000 152,-167,000 acres without organized fire protection. Seventeen per cent of the unprotected area was burned over in 1 03 J, but less than one per cent of the protected area suffered fire damage. These figures demonstrate that adequate forest fire protection is economically sound and that land owners should insist upon proper safeguards to protect forest land from fire. |