The function of fire as an aid to reproduction of the forest in some instances has been discussed in a preceding chapter. The protection question is of even greater importance, for whether we consider mature timber or reforestation, no forest management is worth while if the investment is to burn up. It can be divided broadly under two heads, reduction of risk due to operative methods and general protection. Whichever we consider, the interest of every lumberman is at stake. The fire question affects him in many ways beside the danger of direct loss. The sale value of timber in any region is increased by knowledge that progressive protective methods prevail among those operating there. Nothing more effectively removes public carelessness with fire, or lack of helpful sympathy with the lumber industry in general, than evidence that the lumberman himself is devoting every effort to safeguarding instead of wasting this great public resource. Of operative methods reducing fire risk, one of the most important is disposal of logging debris. The deliberate accumulation of immensely inflammable material, almost always where extremely likely to be ignited, is a form of actually inviting disaster practiced by no property holders except lumbermen. Nowhere is it carried to such an extreme as in the West, where the refuse left on the ground is of so great volume as to preclude human control if it is once fired at a dry time, and where accidental fire is often more of a certainty than a liability. Of late, however, the more progressive lumbermen of the fir region have adopted the practice of firing their slashings annually at a time when the surrounding woods will not burn, and the pine men of Idaho and Montana have quite widely endorsed brush piling. Idaho has a piling law. Oregon already has a slash burning law which is partially observed. The greatest objection to such a law is that neither reforestation nor economical protection indicates the same practice in different types of forest and it is extremely difficult to make the law both flexible and effective. More will be accomplished by voluntary adoption of the method best suited to each condition. BRUSH PILING In the more open pine stands of the interior, where both logging debris and original combustible ground cover are small, slashings threaten the adjacent timber less than in denser forests, but are of peculiar danger to the valuable young growth usually left on the area itself. As we have seen in a previous chapter on western yellow pine, reproduction in dry localities may require scattering the brush over the ground and keeping fire out, and there may be abnormally dense stands suggesting clean slash burning, but as a rule brush piling is the best course. In view of the importance of this subject the following extracts are taken from a circular issued by the Forest Service: "_Advantages of Brush Burning_