Produced by Tom Roch, Barbara Kosker and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images produced by Core Historical
Literature in Agriculture (CHLA), Cornell University)
THE TRAINING OF A FORESTER
[Illustration: A FOREST RANGER LOOKING FOR FIRE FROM A NATIONAL FOREST
LOOKOUT STATION _Page 32_]
THE TRAINING OF A FORESTER
BY
GIFFORD PINCHOT
WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1914
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1914
PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.
To
OVERTON W. PRICE
FRIEND AND FELLOW WORKER
TO WHOM IS DUE, MORE THAN TO ANY OTHER MAN, THE
HIGH EFFICIENCY OF THE UNITED STATES FOREST SERVICE
PREFACE
At one time or another, the largest question before every young man is,
"What shall I do with my life?" Among the possible openings, which best
suits his ambition, his tastes, and his capacities? Along what line
shall he undertake to make a successful career? The search for a life
work and the choice of one is surely as important business as can occupy
a boy verging into manhood. It is to help in the decision of those who
are considering forestry as a profession that this little book has been
written.
To the young man who is attracted to forestry and begins to consider it
as a possible profession, certain questions present themselves. What is
forestry? If he takes it up, what will his work be, and where? Does it
in fact offer the satisfying type of outdoor life which it appears to
offer? What chance does it present for a successful career, for a career
of genuine usefulness, and what is the chance to make a living? Is he
fitted for it in character, mind, and body? If so, what training does he
need? These questions deserve an answer.
To the men whom it really suits, forestry offers a career more
attractive, it may be said in all fairness, than any other career
whatsoever. I doubt if any other profession can show a membership so
uniformly and enthusiastically in love with the work. The men who have
taken it up, practised it, and left it for other work are few. But to
the man not fully adapted for it, forestry must be punishment, pure and
simple. Those who have begun the study of forestry, and then have
learned that it was not for them, have doubtless been more in number
than those who have followed it through.
I urge no man to make forestry his profession, but rather to keep away
from it if he can. In forestry a man is either altogether at home or
very much out of place. Unless he has a compelling love for the
Forester's life and the Forester's work, let him keep out of it.
G. P.
CONTENTS
PAGE
WHAT IS A FOREST? 13
THE FORESTER'S KNOWLEDGE 18
THE FOREST AND THE NATION 19
THE FORESTER'S POINT OF VIEW 23
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF FORESTRY 27
THE WORK OF A FORESTER 30
THE FOREST SERVICE 30
THE FOREST SUPERVISOR 46
THE TRAINED FORESTER 50
PERSONAL EQUIPMENT 63
STATE FOREST WORK 84
THE FOREST SERVICE IN WASHINGTON 89
PRIVATE FORESTRY 106
FOREST SCHOOLS 114
THE OPPORTUNITY 116
TRAINING 123
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
A FOREST RANGER LOOKING FOR FIRE FROM A NATIONAL
FOREST LOOKOUT STATION _Frontispiece_
STRINGING A FOREST TELEPHONE LINE 32
FOREST RANGERS SCALING TIMBER 43
WESTERN YELLOW PINE SEED COLLECTED BY THE FOREST
SERVICE FOR PLANTING UP DENUDED LANDS 47
A FOREST EXAMINER RUNNING A COMPASS LINE 59
BRUSH PILING IN A NATIONAL FOREST TIMBER SALE 95
FOREST RANGERS GETTING INSTRUCTION IN METHODS OF
WORK FROM A DISTRICT FOREST OFFICER 105
FOREST SERVICE MEN MAKING FRESH MEASUREMENTS IN
THE MISSOURI SWAMPS 136
THE TRAINING OF A FORESTER
WHAT IS A FOREST?
First, What is forestry? Forestry is the knowledge of the forest. In
particular, it is the art of handling the forest so that it will render
whatever service is required of it without being impoverished or
destroyed. For example, a forest may be handled so as to produce saw
logs, telegraph poles, barrel hoops, firewood, tan bark, or turpentine.
The main purpose of its treatment may be to prevent the washing of soil,
to regulate the flow of streams, to support cattle or sheep, or it may
be handled so as to supply a wide range and combination of uses.
Forestry is the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield
for the service of man.
Before we can understand forestry, certain facts about the forest itself
must be kept in mind. A forest is not a mere collection of individual
trees, just as a city is not a mere collection of unrelated men and
women, or a Nation like ours merely a certain number of independent
racial groups. A forest, like a city, is a complex community with a life
of its own. It has a soil and an atmosphere of its own, chemically and
physically different from any other, with plants and shrubs as well as
trees which are peculiar to it. It has a resident population of insects
and higher animals entirely distinct from that outside. Most important
of all, from the Forester's point of view, the members of the forest
live in an exact and intricate system of competition and mutual
assistance, of help or harm, which extends to all the inhabitants of
this complicated city of trees.
The trees in a forest are all helped by mutually protecting each other
against high winds, and by producing a richer and moister soil than
would be possible if the trees stood singly and apart. They compete
among themselves by their roots for moisture in the soil, and for light
and space by the growth of their crowns in height and breadth. Perhaps
the strongest weapon which trees have against each other is growth in
height. In certain species intolerant of shade, the tree which is
overtopped has lost the race for good. The number of young trees which
destroy each other in this fierce struggle for existence is prodigious,
so that often a few score per acre are all that survive to middle or old
age out of many tens of thousands of seedlings which entered the race of
life on approximately even terms.
Not only has a forest a character of its own, which arises from the fact
that it is a community of trees, but each species of tree has peculiar
characteristics and habits also. Just as in New York City, for example,
the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Hungarians, and the Chinese
each have quarters of their own, and in those quarters live in
accordance with habits which distinguish each race from all the others,
so the different species of pines and hemlocks, oaks and maples prefer
and are found in certain definite types of locality, and live in
accordance with definite racial habits which are as general and
unfailing as the racial characteristics which distinguish, for example,
the Italians from the Germans, or the Swedes from the Chinese.
The most important of these characteristics of race or species are those
which are concerned with the relation of each to light, heat, and
moisture. Thus, a river birch will die if it has only as much water as
will suffice to keep a post oak in the best condition, and the warm
climate in which the balsam fir would perish is just suited to the
requirements of a long leaf pine or a magnolia.
The tolerance of a tree for shade may vary greatly at different times of
its life, but a white pine always requires more light than a hemlock,
and a beech throughout its life will flourish with less sunshine or
reflected light than, for example, an oak or a tulip tree.
Trees are limited in their distribution also by their adaptability, in
which they vary greatly. Thus a bald cypress will grow both in wetter
and in dryer land than an oak; a red cedar will flourish from Florida to
the Canadian line, while other species, like the Eastern larch, the
Western mountain hemlock, or the big trees of California, are confined
in their native localities within extremely narrow limits.
THE FORESTER'S KNOWLEDGE
The trained Forester must know the forest as a doctor knows the human
machine. First of all, he must be able to distinguish the different
trees of which the forest is composed, for that is like learning to
read. He must know the way they are made and the way they grow; but far
more important than all else, he must base his knowledge upon that part
of forestry which is called Silvics, the knowledge of the relation of
trees to light, heat, and moisture, to the soil, and to each other.
The well-trained Forester must also know the forest shrubs and at least
the more important smaller forest plants, something of the insect and
animal life of his domain, and the birds and fish. He must have a good
working knowledge of rocks, soils, and streams, and of the methods of
making roads, trails, and bridges. He should be an expert in woodcraft,
able to travel the forest safely and surely by day or by night. It is
essential that he should have a knowledge of the theory and the practice
of lumbering, and he should know something about lumber markets and the
value of lumber, about surveying and map making, and many other matters
which are considered more at length in the Chapter on Training. There
are as yet in America comparatively few men who have acquired even
fairly well the more important knowledge which should be included in the
training of a Forester.
THE FOREST AND THE NATION
The position of the forest in the housekeeping of any nation is unlike
that of any other great natural resource, for the forest not only
furnishes wood, without which civilization as we know it would be
impossible, but serves also to protect or make valuable many of the
other things without which we could not get on. Thus the forest cover
protects the soil from the effects of wind, and holds it in place. For
lack of it hundreds of thousands of square miles have been converted by
the winds from moderately fertile, productive land to arid drifting
sands. Narrow strips of forest planted as windbreaks make agriculture
possible in certain regions by preventing destruction of crops by
moisture-stealing dry winds which so afflict the central portions of our
country.
Without the forests the great bulk of our mining for coal, metals, and
the precious minerals would be either impossible or vastly more
expensive than it is at present, because the galleries of mines are
propped with wood, and so protected against caving in. So far, no
satisfactory substitute for the wooden railroad tie has been devised;
and our whole system of land transportation is directly dependent for
its existence upon the forest, which supplies more than one hundred and
twenty million new railroad ties every year in the United States alone.
The forest regulates and protects the flow of streams. Its effect is to
reduce the height of floods and to moderate extremes of low water. The
official measurements of the United States Geological Survey have
finally settled this long-disputed question. By protecting mountain
slopes against excessive soil wash, it protects also the lowlands upon
which this wash would otherwise be deposited and the rivers whose
channels it would clog. It is well within the truth to say that the
utility of any system of rivers for transportation, for irrigation, for
waterpower, and for domestic supply depends in great part upon the
protection which forests offer to the headwaters of the streams, and
that without such protection none of these uses can be expected long to
endure.
Of the two basic materials of our civilization, iron and wood, the
forest supplies one. The dominant place of the forest in our national
economy is well illustrated by the fact that no article whatsoever,
whether of use or ornament, whether it be for food, shelter, clothing,
convenience, protection, or decoration, can be produced and delivered to
the user, as industry is now organized, without the help of the forest
in supplying wood. An examination of the history of any article,
including the production of the raw material, and its manufacture,
transportation, and distribution, will at once make this point clear.
The forest is a national necessity. Without the material, the
protection, and the assistance it supplies, no nation can long succeed.
Many regions of the old world, such as Palestine, Greece, Northern
Africa, and Central India, offer in themselves the most impressive
object lessons of the effect upon national prosperity and national
character of the neglect of the forest and its consequent destruction.
THE FORESTER'S POINT OF VIEW
The central idea of the Forester, in handling the forest, is to promote
and perpetuate its greatest use to men. His purpose is to make it serve
the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time. Before
the members of any other profession dealing with natural resources, the
Foresters acquired the long look ahead. This was only natural, because
in forestry it is seldom that a man lives to harvest the crop which he
helped to sow. The Forester must look forward, because the natural
resource with which he deals matures so slowly, and because, if steps
are to be taken to insure for succeeding generations a supply of the
things the forest yields, they must be taken long in advance. The idea
of using the forest first for the greatest good of the present
generation, and then for the greatest good of succeeding generations
through the long future of the nation and the race--that is the
Forester's point of view.
The use of foresight to insure the existence of the forest in the
future, and, so far as practicable, the continued or increasing
abundance of its service to men, naturally suggested the use of
foresight in the same way as to other natural resources as well. Thus it
was the Forester's point of view, applied not only to the forest but to
the lands, the minerals, and the streams, which produced the
Conservation policy. The idea of applying foresight and common-sense to
the other natural resources as well as to the forest was natural and
inevitable. It works out, equally as a matter of course, into the
conception of a planned and orderly development of all that the earth
contains for the uses of men. This leads in turn to the application of
the same principle to other questions and resources. It was foreseen
from the beginning by those who were responsible for inaugurating the
Conservation movement that its natural development would in time work
out into a planned and orderly scheme for national efficiency, based on
the elimination of waste, and directed toward the best use of all we
have for the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time.
It is easy to see that this principle (the Forester's principle, first
brought to public attention by Foresters) is the key to national
success.
Forestry, then, is seen to be peculiarly essential to the national
prosperity, both now and hereafter. National degradation and decay have
uniformly followed the excessive destruction of forests by other
nations, and will inevitably become our portion if we continue to
destroy our forests three times faster than they are produced, as we are
doing now. The principles of forestry, therefore, must occupy a
commanding place in determining the future prosperity or failure of our
nation, and this commanding position in the field of ideas is naturally
and properly reflected in the dignity and high standing which the
profession of forestry, young as it is, has already acquired in the
United States. This position it must be the first care of every member
of the profession to maintain and increase.
In the long run, no profession rises higher than the degree of public
consideration which marks its members. The profession of forestry is in
many ways a peculiarly responsible profession, but in nothing more so
than in its vital connection with the whole future welfare of our
country and in the obligation which lies upon its members to see that
its reputation and standing, which are the measures of its capacity for
usefulness, are kept strong and clear.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF FORESTRY
In the United States, forestry is passing out of the pioneer phase of
agitation and the education of public opinion, and into the permanent
phase of the practice of the profession. The first steps in forestry in
this country, as in any other where the development and destruction of
natural resources has been rapid, were necessarily directed mainly to
informing the public mind upon the importance of forestry, and to
building up national and State laws and organizations for the protection
of timberlands set aside for the public benefit. The right to be heard
with respect by the men who were already in control of the larger part
of our total forest wealth had to be won, and has been won. What is
more, in the teeth of the bitterest opposition of private special
interests, the right of the public to first consideration in the
protection and development of the forest and of all the resources it
contains had to be asserted and established. That has now been done.
In the United States these steps in the movement for the wise use of the
forest have been taken mainly in the last dozen or fifteen years, during
which the Federal forest organization has grown from an insignificant
division of less than a dozen men to the present United States Forest
Service, of more than three thousand members. During this period, also,
forestry, both as a profession and as a public necessity, has won
enduring public recognition, and at the same time more public timberland
has been set aside for the public use and to remain in the public hands
than during all the rest of our history put together. To-day the
National Forests are reasonably safe in the protection of public
opinion, not against all attack, it is true, but against any successful
attempt to dismember and turn them over to the special interests who
already control the bulk and the best of our forests. The public has
accepted forestry as necessary to the public welfare, both in the
present and in the future; State forest organizations are springing up;
forestry has won the right to be heard in the business offices as well
as in the conventions of the private owners of forest land; and the
time for the practice of the profession has fully come.
THE WORK OF A FORESTER
What does a Forester do? I will try to answer this question, first, with
reference to the United States Forest Service, and later as to the
numerous other fields of activity which are opening or have already
opened to the trained Forester in the United States.
THE FOREST SERVICE
The United States Forest Service is responsible both for the general
progress of forestry, so far as the United States Government is
concerned, and for the protection and use of the National Forests. These
National Forests now cover an area of one hundred and eighty-seven
million acres, or as much land as is included in all the New England
States, with New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland,
Virginia and West Virginia. The head of the Service, whose official
title is "Forester," is charged with the great task of protecting this
vast area against fire, theft, and other depredations, and of making all
its resources, the wood, water, and grass, the minerals, and the soil,
available and useful to the people of the United States under
regulations which will secure development and prevent destruction or
waste.
The United States Forest Service consists, first, of a protective force
of Forest Guards and Forest Rangers, who spend practically the whole of
their time in the forest; second, of an executive staff of Forest
Supervisors and their assistants, who have immediate charge of the
handling of the National Forests; and third, of an administrative staff
divided between headquarters in Washington and the six local
administrative offices in the West, where the National Forests mainly
lie.
The work of a Forest Ranger is, first of all, to protect the District
committed to his charge against fire. That comes before all else. For
that purpose, the Ranger patrols his District during the seasons when
fires are dangerous, or watches for signs of fire from certain high
points, called fire-lookouts, or both. He keeps the trails and fire
lines clear and the telephone in working order, and sees to it that the
fire fighting tools, such as spades, axes, and rakes, are in good
condition and ready for service. If he is wise, he establishes such
relations with the people who live in his neighborhood that they become
his volunteer assistants in watching for forest fires, in taking
precautions against them, and in notifying him of them when they do take
place. [Illustration: STRINGING A FOREST TELEPHONE LINE]
Fighting a forest fire in some respects is like fighting a fire in a
city. In both, the first and most necessary thing is to get men and
apparatus to the site of the fire at the first practicable moment. For
this purpose, fire-engines and men are always ready in the city, while
in the forest the telephones, trails, and bridges must be kept in
condition, and the forest officers must be ready to move instantly day
or night.
It is far better to prevent a forest fire from starting than to have to
put it out after it has started; but in spite of all the care that can
be exercised with the means at hand, many fires start. Each year the
Forest Service men extinguish not less than three thousand fires, nearly
all of them while they are still small. At times, however, when the
woods are very dry and the wind blows hard, in spite of all that can be
done, a fire will grow large enough to be dangerous not only to the
forest but to human life. Thus in the summer of 1910, the driest ever
known in certain parts of the West, high winds drove the forest fires
clear beyond the control of the fire fighters, many of whom were
compelled to fight for their own lives.
The worst of these fires were in Montana and Idaho, where the whole
power of the Forest Service was used against them. The Forest Rangers,
under the orders of their Supervisors, immediately organized or took
charge of small companies of fire fighters, and began the work of
getting them under control. But so fierce was the wind and so terrible
the heat of the fires and the speed with which they moved, that in many
places it became a question of saving the lives of the fire fighters
rather than of putting out the fires. As a matter of fact, nearly a
hundred of the men temporarily employed to help the Government fire
fighters lost their lives, and many more would have died but for the
courage, resource, and knowledge of the woods of the Forest Rangers.
Take, for example, the case of Ranger Edward C. Pulaski, of the Coeur
d'Alene National Forest, stationed at Wallace, Idaho. Pulaski had charge
of forty Italians and Poles. He had been at work with them for many
hours, when the flames grew to be so threatening that it became a
question of whether he could save his men. The fire was travelling
faster than the men could make their way through the dense forest, and
the only hope was to find some place into which the fire could not come.
Accordingly Pulaski guided his party at a run through the blinding smoke
to an abandoned mine he knew of in the neighborhood. When they reached
it, he sent the men into the workings ahead of him, hung a wet blanket
across the mouth of the tunnel, and himself stood there on guard. The
fierce heat, the stifling air, and their deadly fear drove some of the
foreigners temporarily insane, and a number of them tried to break out.
With drawn revolver Pulaski held them back. One man did get by him and
was burned to death. Many fainted in the tunnel. The Ranger himself,
more exposed than any of his men, was terribly burned. He stood at his
post, however, for five hours, until the fire had passed, and brought
his party through without losing a single man except that one who got
out of the tunnel, although his own injuries were so severe that he was
in the hospital for two months as a result of them. The record of the
Forest Service in these terrible fires is one of which every Forester
may well be proud.
The Ranger must protect his District, not only against fire but against
the theft of timber and the incessant efforts of land grabbers to steal
Government lands. To prevent the theft of timber is usually not
difficult, but it is far harder to prevent fake homesteaders, fraudulent
mining men, and other dishonest claimants from seizing upon land to
which they have no right, and so preventing honest men from using these
claims to make a living.
In the past, this problem has presented the most serious difficulties,
and still occasionally does so. There is no louder shouter for "justice"
than a balked habitual land thief with political influence behind him.
To illustrate the kind of attack upon the Forest Service to which
fraudulent land claims have constantly given rise, I may cite the
statements made during one of the annual attempts in the Senate to break
down the Service. One of the Senators asserted that in his State the
Forest Service was overbearing and tyrannical, and that in a particular
case it had driven out of his home a citizen known to the Senator, and
had left him and his family to wander houseless upon the hillside, and
that for no good reason whatsoever.
This statement, if it had been true, would at once have destroyed the
standing of the Service in the minds of many of its friends, and would
have led to immediate defeat in the fight then going on. Fortunately,
the records of the Service were so complete, and the knowledge of field
conditions on the part of the men in Washington was so thorough, that
the mere mention of the general locality of the supposed outrage by the
Senator made it easy to identify the individual case. The man in
question, instead of being an honest settler with a wife and family, was
the keeper of a disreputable saloon and dance hall, a well-known
law-breaker whom the local authorities had tried time and again to
dispossess and drive away. But by means of his fraudulent claim the man
had always defeated the local officers. When, however, the officers of
the Forest Service took the case in hand, the situation changed and
things moved quickly. The disreputable saloon was promptly removed from
the fraudulent land claim by means of which the keeper of it had held
on, and this thoroughly undesirable citizen either went out of business
or removed his abominable trade to some locality outside the National
Forest.
The actual facts were fully brought out in the debate next day, remained
uncontradicted, and saved the fight for the Forest Service. The whole
incident may be found at length in the Congressional Record.
The Forest Ranger is charged with overseeing and regulating the free use
of timber by settlers and others who live in or near the National
Forests. Last year (1912) the Forest Service gave away without charge
more than $196,000 worth of saw timber, house logs, fencing, fuel, and
other material to men and women who needed it for their own use. Usually
it is the Ranger's work to issue the permits for this free use, and to
designate the timber that may be cut. For this purpose, he must be well
acquainted with the kinds and the uses of the trees in his District, and
it is most important that he should know something of how their
reproduction can best be secured, in order that the free use may be
permitted without injury to the future welfare of the forest.
A Ranger oversees the use of his District for the grazing of cattle,
sheep, and other domestic animals. He must acquaint himself with the
brands and marks of the various owners, and should be well posted in the
essentials of the business of raising cattle, sheep, and horses. The
allotment of grazing areas is one of the most difficult problems to
adjust, because the demand is almost always for much more range than is
available and the division of what range there is among the local owners
of stock often presents serious difficulties, in which the Ranger's
local knowledge and advice is constantly sought by his superior officer.
There is a wise law, passed at the request of the Forest Service, under
which land in the National Forests which is shown to be agricultural may
be entered under the homestead law, and used for the making of homes.
This law is peculiarly hard to carry out because the ceaseless efforts
of land grabbers to misuse it demand great vigilance on the part of the
Forest Officers. In many cases it is the Ranger who makes the report
upon which the decision as to the agricultural or non-agricultural
character of the land is based, although in other cases the
examinations to determine whether the land is really agricultural in
character are made by Examiners especially trained for this duty.
Serious controversies into which politics enter are often caused by the
efforts of speculators and others, under pretext of this law, to get
possession of lands chiefly valuable for their timber.
The building and maintenance of trails, telephone lines, roads, bridges,
and fences in his District is under the charge of the Ranger, and in
many cases Rangers and Forest Guards are appointed by the State as
Wardens to see to it that the game and fish laws are properly enforced.
Next to the protection of his District from fire, the most important
duty of the Ranger has to do with the sale of timber and the marking of
the individual trees which are to be cut. The reproduction of the forest
depends directly on what trees are kept for seed, or on how the
existing young growth is protected and preserved in felling and swamping
the trees which have been marked for cutting, and in skidding the logs.
The disposal of the slash must be looked after, for it has much to do
with forest reproduction, and with promoting safety from fire. Then, the
scaling of the logs determines the amount of the payment the Government
receives for its timber, and there are often regulations governing the
transportation of the scaled logs whose enforcement is of great
consequence to the future forest.
[Illustration: FOREST RANGERS SCALING TIMBER]
Nearly all of these duties the Ranger may perform in certain cases
without supervision, if his judgment and training are sufficient, but
the marking especially is often done under the eye or in accordance with
the directions of the technical Forester, whose duty it is to see that
the future of the forest is protected by enforcing the conditions of
sale.
These are but a part of the duties of the Ranger, for he is concerned
with all the uses which his District may serve. The streams, for
example, may be important for city water supply, irrigation, or for
waterpower, and their use for these purposes must be under his eye.
Hotels and saw-mills on sites leased from the Government may dot his
District here and there. The land within National Forests may be put to
a thousand other uses, from a bee ranch on the Cleveland Forest in
southern California to a whaling station on the Tongass Forest in
Alaska, all of which means work for him.
The result of all this is that the Ranger comes in contact with city
dwellers, irrigators, cattlemen, sheepmen, and horsemen, ranchers,
storekeepers, hotel men, hunters, miners, and lumbermen, and above all
with the settlers who live in or near his District. With all these it is
his duty to keep on good terms, for well he knows that one man at
certain times can set more fires than a regiment can extinguish, and
that the best protection for his District comes from the friendly
interest of the men who live in it or near it.
A Forest Guard is in effect an assistant to the Ranger, and may be
called upon to carry out most of the duties which fall upon a Ranger.
The foregoing short statement will make it clear that preliminary
experience as a Ranger may be of the utmost value to the man who
proposes later on to perform in the Government Service the duties of a
trained Forester. It is becoming more and more common, and fortunately
so, for graduates of forest schools to begin their work in the United
States Forest Service as Rangers or Forest Guards. The man who has done
well a Ranger's work, like the graduate of an engineering school who,
after graduation, has entered a machine shop as a hand, has acquired a
body of practical information and experience which will be invaluable to
him in the later practice of his profession, and which is far beyond the
reach of any man who has not been trained in the actual execution of
this work on the ground and in actual daily contact with the
multifarious uses and users of the forest.
THE FOREST SUPERVISOR
[Illustration: WESTERN YELLOW PINE SEED COLLECTED BY THE FOREST SERVICE
FOR PLANTING UP DENUDED LANDS]
The Supervisor is the general manager of a National Forest. The
responsibility for the protection, care, and use of it falls upon him,
under the direction of the District Forester. The Supervisor is
responsible for making the use of his forest as valuable and as
convenient as possible for the people in and around the area of which he
has charge. He deals with the organizations of forest users, such as
local stock associations, and issues permits for grazing live stock in
the forest. Permits for cutting small amounts of timber are granted by
him, and he advertises in the papers the sale of larger amounts and
receives bids from prospective purchasers; keeps the accounts of his
forest; and makes regular reports on a variety of important subjects,
such as the personnel of his forest force, the permanent improvements
made or to be made, the permits issued for regular and special uses of
the forest and for free use of timber and forage, the number and kinds
of predatory animals killed, the amount of forest planting accomplished,
and the expense and losses from forest fires. He has general oversight
of the roads, trails, and other improvements on his forest; and prepares
plans for the extension of them. In particular, he directs, controls,
and inspects the work of the Ranger and Guards, and in general, he
attends to the thousand and one matters which go to adjusting the use of
the forest to the needs of the men who use it, and on which depends
whether the forest is well or badly thought of among the people whose
cooperation or opposition have so much to do with making its management
successful or otherwise.
The Supervisor spends about half his time in the office and half in the
field, inspecting the work of his men and consulting with them, meeting
local residents or associations of local residents who have propositions
to submit for improving the service of the forest to them, or for
correcting mistakes, or who wish to lay before the Supervisor some one
of the numberless matters in which the forest affects their welfare. The
usefulness of the Supervisor depends as much upon his good judgment, his
ability to meet men and do business with them, and his knowledge of
local needs and local affairs, as it does upon his knowledge of the
forest itself. As in the case of every superior officer, his attitude
toward his work, his energy, his good sense, and his good will are or
should be reflected in the men under him, so that his position is one of
the greatest importance in determining the success or failure of each
National Forest, and hence of the Forest Service as a whole. More and
more of the trained Foresters in the Service are seeking and securing
appointments as Forest Supervisors because of the interest and
satisfaction they find in the work. Such men handle both the
professional and business sides of forest management. Many of their
duties, therefore, are described in the succeeding chapter.
The position of Supervisor is in many respects the most desirable a
trained Forester can occupy in the Forest Service, and the most
responsible of the field positions.
THE TRAINED FORESTER
To each forest where timber cutting has become important there are
assigned one or more Forest Assistants or Forest Examiners. These are
professionally trained Foresters. They are subordinate upon each forest
to the Supervisor as manager, but it is their work which has most to do
with deciding whether the Forest Service in general is to be successful
or is to fail in the great task of preserving the forest by wise use.
The Forest Assistant secures his position with the Service by passing an
examination devised to test his technical knowledge and his ability.
After he has served two years as Forest Assistant the quality and
quantity of his work will have determined his fitness to continue in
the employ of the Government. If he is unfit he may be dropped, for
there are many young and ambitious men ready to step into his place. If
he makes good he is promoted to the grade of Forest Examiner and is put
definitely in charge of certain lines of professional work; always, of
course, under the direction of the Supervisor, of whom he becomes the
adviser on all problems involving technical forestry.
The most important tasks of the trained Forester on a National Forest
are the preparation of working plans for the use of the forest by
methods which will protect and perpetuate it as well, and the carrying
out of the plans when made. This is forestry in the technical sense of
the word. It involves a thorough study of the kinds of timber, their
amount and location, their rate of growth, their value, the ease or
difficulty of their reproduction, and the methods by which the timber
can be cut at a profit and at the same time the reproduction of the
forest can be safely secured. A working plan usually includes a
considerable number of maps, which often have to be drawn in the first
place from actual surveys on the ground by the Forest Examiner. These
maps contain the information secured by working-plan studies, and are of
the first necessity for the wise and skilful handling of the forest.
They often constitute, also, most important documents in the history of
its condition and use.
On many of the National Forests the need for immediate use of the timber
is so urgent and so just that there is no time to prepare elaborate
working plans. Timber sales must be made, and made at once; but they
must be made, nevertheless, in a way that will fully protect the future
welfare of the forest. Whether working plans can be prepared or not, a
most important duty of the technical Forester is to work out the
conditions under which a given body of timber can be cut with safety to
the forest, especially with safety to its reproduction and future
growth. The principal study for a timber sale will usually include an
examination of the general features and condition of the forest, and the
determination of the diameter down to which it is advisable to cut the
standing trees, a diameter which must be fixed at such a size as will
protect the forest and make the lumbering pay. It will include also an
investigation, more or less thorough and complete, as the conditions
warrant, of the silvical habits of one or more of the species of trees
in that forest. The areas which form natural units for the logging and
transportation of the timber must be worked out and laid off, and
careful estimates, or measurements, of the amount of standing timber and
of its value on the stump must be made, as well as of the cost of
moving it to the mill or to the railroad.
The Forest Examiner must also consider, in many cases, the building of
logging roads or railroads, timber slides, etc., and must make a careful
study of the material into which the trees to be cut can best be worked
up, and of the value of such material in the market. Most of all,
however, he must study, think over, and decide what he will recommend as
to the conditions which are to govern the logging conditions by which
the protection of the forest is to be insured. These conditions, fixed
by his superiors upon the report of the Forest Examiner, determine
whether an individual timber sale is forestry or forest destruction.
This is the central question in the administration of the National
Forests from the national point of view.
The principal objects of the conditions laid down for a timber sale are
always the reproduction of the forest and its safety against fire.
Natural reproduction from self-sown seed is almost invariably the result
desired; and so the question of the seed trees to be left, and how they
are to be located or spaced, is fundamental, unless there is ample young
growth already on the ground. In the latter case this young growth must
not be smashed or bent by throwing the older trees on top of it, or
against it, and the young saplings bent down by the felled tops must be
promptly released.
In order to avoid danger to the young growth already present or to be
secured, as well as to protect the older trees from fires, the slash
produced in lumbering, the tops lopped from the trees up to and beyond
the highest point to which the lumbermen are required to take the logs,
must be satisfactorily disposed of--either by scattering it thinly over
the ground, by piling and burning, or often by piling alone.
These and many other conditions of sale must be studied out in a form
adapted to each particular case, and must be discussed with the men who
propose to buy, who often have wise and practical suggestions to make.
Similar questions on a less important scale present themselves and must
be answered in the matter of small timber sales, and of timber given
without charge under free-use permits to settlers and others.
When the terms of a contract of sale have been worked out and accepted
and the timber has been sold, then the Forest Assistant has charge of
the extremely interesting task of marking the trees that are to be cut,
in accordance with these terms. Usually this is done by marking all the
trees which are to be felled, but sometimes by marking only the trees
which are to remain.
The marking is usually done by blazing each tree and stamping the
letters "U. S." upon the blaze with a Government marking axe or hatchet.
It must be done in such a way that the loggers will have no excuse
either for cutting an unmarked tree or leaving a marked tree uncut, or
_vice versa_, as the case may be. The marking may be carried out by the
Rangers and Forest Guards under supervision of the Forest Assistant, or
in difficult situations he may mark or direct the marking of each tree
himself. Marking is fascinating work.
Later, while the logging is under way, the Forest Examiner will often
inspect it to see that the terms of the sale are complied with, that the
trees cut are thrown in places where they will not unduly damage either
young growth or the larger trees which are to remain, and that the other
conditions laid down for the logging in the contract of sale are
observed. The scaling of the logs to determine the amount of payment to
the Government will many times be under his supervision, although in the
larger sales this work, as well as the routine inspection of the
logging, is usually carried out by a special body of expert lumbermen,
who often bring to it a much wider knowledge of the woods than the men
in actual charge of the lumbering.
In nearly every National Forest there are areas upon which the trees
have been destroyed by fire. Many of these are so large or so remote
from seed-bearing trees that natural reproduction will not suffice to
replace the forest. In such localities planting is needed, and for that
purpose the Forest Examiner must establish and conduct a forest nursery.
The decision on the kind of trees to plant and on the methods of raising
and planting them, the collection of the seed, the care and
transplanting of the young trees until they are set out on the site of
the future forest, forms a task of absorbing interest. Such work often
requires a high degree of technical skill. It is likely to occupy a
larger and larger share of the time and attention of the trained men of
the Forest Service.
[Illustration: A FOREST EXAMINER RUNNING A COMPASS LINE]
The Forest Assistant's or Examiner's knowledge of surveying makes it
natural for him to take an important part in the laying out of new roads
and trails in the forest, or in correcting the lines of old ones, and
there is little work more immediately useful. The forest can be
safeguarded effectively just in proportion to the ease with which all
parts of it can be reached. Forest protection may be less technically
interesting than other parts of the Forester's work, but nothing that he
does is more important or pays larger dividends in future results.
In addition to his studies of the habits and reproduction of the
different trees for working plans or timber sales, or simply to increase
his knowledge of the forest, the Forest Examiner is often called upon to
lay out sample plots for ascertaining the exact relation of each species
to light, heat, and moisture, or for studying its rate of growth. He may
find it necessary to determine the effect of the grazing of cattle or
sheep on young growth of various species and of various ages, or to
ascertain their relative resistance to fire. In general, what time he
can spare from more pressing duties is very fully occupied with adding
to his silvical knowledge by observation, with studies of injurious
insects or fungi, of the reasons for the increase or decrease of
valuable or worthless species of trees in the forest, the innumerable
secondary effects of forest fires, the causes of the local distribution
of trees, or with some other of the thousand questions which give a
never-failing interest to work in the woods.
The protection of a valuable kind of tree often depends upon the ability
to find a use for, and therefore to remove, a less-valuable species
which is crowding it out, for as yet the American Forester can do very
little cutting or thinning that does not pay. Just so, the protection of
a given tract against fire may depend upon the ability to use, and
therefore to remove, a part or the whole of the dead and down timber
which now makes it a fire trap. For such reasons as these, the uses of
wood and the markets for its disposal form exceedingly important
branches of study for the Forest Examiner, who will usually find that
his duties require him to be thoroughly familiar with them.
It is more and more common to find each Forest Officer--Ranger, Forest
Examiner, or Supervisor--combining in himself the qualities and the
knowledge required to fill any or all of the other positions. The
professionally trained man who develops marked executive ability is
likely to become a Supervisor, just as a Ranger, with the necessary
training and experience, who may wish to devote himself to silvical
investigations may be transferred to that work. The point is that each
man has individual opportunity to establish and occupy the place for
which he is best fitted.
The success of the technical Forester, like that of the Ranger, and
indeed of nearly every Government Forest Officer, in whatever position
or line of work, will very frequently depend on his good judgment and
practical sense, the chief ingredient of which will always be his
knowledge of local needs and conditions, and his sympathetic
understanding of the local point of view. This does not mean that the
local point of view is always to control. On the contrary, the Forest
Officer must often decide against it in the interest of the welfare of
the larger public. But the desires and demands of the users of the
forest should always be given the fullest hearing and the most careful
consideration. To this rule there is no exception whatsoever.
PERSONAL EQUIPMENT
Forestry differs from most professions in this, that it requires as much
vigor of body as it does vigor of mind. The sort of man to which it
appeals, and which it seeks, is the man with high powers of observation,
who does not shrink from responsibility, and whose mental vigor is
balanced by physical strength and hardiness. The man who takes up
forestry should be little interested in his own personal comfort, and
should have and conserve endurance enough to stand severe physical work
accompanied by mental labor equally exhausting.