only the regional forester, Mr. Iverson, but your district forester, Ivan Sack, performed in this important area.

Because fires don't know the boundary lines and, of course, they sweep into your State lands and private lands and the cooperative agreements in our State have worked very well. What I was interested in giving was one the total loss within the national forest themselves acreage wise and estimated valuewise.

FIRE LOSS ACREAGE

Mr. GREELEY. The acreage, Senator, for 1960 fire losses for the area protected by the Forest Service was 421,517.

Senator BIBLE. 421,000?

Mr. GREELEY. Yes. Dollarwise, in terms of damage, of which I assume you are speaking.

Senator BIBLE. Yes, sir; that is right.

Mr. GREELEY. Our methods for estimating damage are not really very precise.

Senator BIBLE. Just in round figures.

Mr. GREELEY. Our best estimate is that it would run around $41 million of damage and then in addition there would be some $7 to $10 mililon of rehabilitation cost which should be estimated as a part of that damage.

Senator BIBLE. What was the rehabilitation cost?

Mr. GREELEY. $7 to $10 million.

Senator BIBLE. You are talking roughly about a $50 million overall loss?

Mr. GREELEY. That is right, sir.

FIRE PREVENTION PROGRAMS

Senator BIBLE. Do you have any figures, Doctor, that would be helpful in indicating how successful your various fire prevention programs have been, your Smoky Bear, and others to prevent manmade forest fires, are you making any progress or losing just as many acres now or losing more acres or less acres than you did 5 or 10 years ago! Mr. MCARDLE. Senator, unless Mr. Swingler has some precise figures I am going to try to answer you off-the-cuff and he can add to it. Senator BIBLE. I realize you can't give a precise answer. I am trying to.

Mr. MCARDLE. This is one of those things that can't be measured exactly. There is no way of saying what would have happened if we hadn't done certain things. But to the best of our ability we have tried to relate the use of the forest by man to the occurrence of mancaused fires.

In essence we feel that if we had not had the Smoky Bear, the "Keep Green" and other fire prevention programs that we do have today, we would be having about 350,000 to 370,000 man-caused fires a year. That is the total for both public and private lands. Actually, we are having only about 100,000.

Therefore, we feel that these campaigns must be having some effect. We also judge by what we see and know, being intimately acquainted with the country. Here again we think the programs are having a considerable effect. But in your part of the country I ought to point out that lightning is also a significant cause of fires.

Senator BIBLE. I realize that. I don't know I said manmade fires purely because I support you don't classify lightning made. Maybe man has some relationship to it.

LIGHTNING CAUSED FIRES

Mr. MCARDLE. Our research people are now working on a project which has as its main objective the elimination or reduction of lightning-caused fires.

Senator BIBLE. I was going to develop that next because I am very familiar with some of those programs and have been very active in working along lines of weather modification which also move into this field of lightning suppression. I still haven't fully developed to my satisfaction the number of manmade fires that you have had year by year. Are they increasing or are they decreasing specifically as best you can estimate?

Mr. SWINGLER. Senator Bible, I have three significant figures for State and privately owned lands. The average number of fires from 1946 to 1950, a 5-year average, was 181,000. These are for the entire United States on State and privately owned lands. The average 1951 to 1955 was 157,000. The average of 1956 to 1959 was 97,500. So it has dropped from 181,000 from 1946 to 1950 to 97,500 from 1956 to 1959.

Senator BIBLE. That is an encouraging index.

PREVENTION OF MANMADE FIRES

Now, as you catalog them these are the manmade fires. Do you have continuing studies as to how to further prevent manmade fires, Dr. McArdle? You have detailed "keep the forest green" and "Smoky Bear" program all of which are very fine. I commend you for them. Do you have other studies looking to further prevention of manmade fires? Is this a continuing study in your Department?

Mr. MCARDLE. This is a continuing project, Senator. Do you want to talk to that, Dr. Harper, on fire prevention?

Dr. HARPER. We are doing some research in this field but I believe your questions

Senator BIBLE. I am still staying on the manmade fires and get in other research next.

Dr. HARPER. We are spending at the present time about $50,000 a year for research on prevention of man-caused fires.

Senator BIBLE. That is specifically devoted to research as to how to prevent manmade fires?

Dr. HARPER. Yes, it is research concerned with causes of manmade fires, including sociological problems. It also is concerned with removal of hazardous fuels and with ways to prevent people from starting fires, accidentally or carelessly, and evaluation of programs of fire prevention in this area as to their effectiveness.

FIRE RESEARCH

Senator BIBLE. Let's go one step further. I understand that your direct answer to my question. You are having continuing research spending approximately 50,000 a year on research. How do you implement or give force to research? Did you have programs that take

certain forest people into high schools or classrooms. Do you give lectures on this subject or how do you implement this?

Mr. MCARDLE. Two ways in general, Senator. One, results of our research are put into use I would say immediately. In fact I think sometimes our research people think that the practitioners move too fast before the researchers are really ready to have them move. Without troubling you with details we have arrangements whereby results of research will get in practice immediately in the forest. That is true of both Federal people and State and private forests.

There is a very close cooperative relationship by conferences and publications and other things of that kind. The second aspect of your question has to do with the general public and there we do exactly what you just said in helping to inform schoolchildren and the general public.

Senator BIBLE. Service clubs possibly.

Mr. MCARDLE. Yes, the problem of general public education as well. The weak spot in this at the present time is in reaching adequately the people who spend most of their time in the forest areas. Not the general public where we really may have made an astounding success. It is with the woods worker and rural residents who should know best the dangers of fire and know best the means to prevent them that we have had the poorest success so far.

ATTITUDE OF PUBLIC

Mr. WELCH. Senator, I would like to comment on that, if I may. The Cooperative Agricultural Extension Service has taken this as one of their major objectives to create an attitude on the part of the public in terms of preservation of our forests. They carry on programs through homemakers clubs and organized groups and 4-H clubs and so on. I think the number of fires on all kinds of forest lands has been distinctly reduced in the last few years largely because of this difference in attitude on the part of the public. I think that is really the most effective approach we can make in terms of control of fires. The people want to control them. They can by and large do so. Senator BIBLE. I commend you for that on the program and certainly it is unthinkable to me that the American public is so careless.

COOPERATION WITH NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

Just one quick other question to round out my problem and that is you started saying the work you were doing in the field of nonmanmade fires the lightning fields and that sort of thing. Do you have a cooperative program with the National Science Foundation and with other agencies of Government on lightning suppression and that sort of thing?

Dr. HARPER. Yes, sir; we do.

Senator BIBLE. Detail very quickly. Highlight it.

Dr. HARPER. That research is centered at Missoula, Mont., at our forest fire lab at that location. The program is in cooperation with the National Science Foundation, the Weather Bureau and some of the nearby universities. The work has been in progress for the last sev

eral years and we have reached the stage now where some of the theories from laboratory research that has been developed is being carried to the field for field testing.

This work, as you realize, is concerned with modification of clouds, as by seeding, but back of it is a great deal of basic research is being done on the ways in which clouds form, how they might be modified through various means. I believe that in general

CURRENT EXPENDITURES ON PROGRAM

Senator BIBLE. How much money would you devote within your own budgetary framework for this type of research?

Dr. HARPER. I will have to supply that.

Senator BIBLE. Would you supply that for the record. I think this is a great and challenging field. Of course, man has again demonstrated further advances in the science just a few hours ago. I think we are going to live to see considerable in the field of weather modification possibly even lightning suppression or arresting or diverting storms and this sort of thing. I compliment you for the work. I think considerable emphasis should continue to be placed on this area and if anything it should be accelerated?

(The information requested follows:)

The Forest Service is currently spending $77,000 of appropriated funds plus $25,000 contributed by cooperators on lightning prevention research annually. Dr. HARPER. Thank you.

Senator BIBLE. I think it has some very, very challenging possibilities.

Thank you, Dr. McArdle. I think that develops the question I have.

STATEMENT OF SENATOR HUMPHREY

Senator HUMPHREY. What I want to do besides presenting the statement which I have, Mr. Chairman, which I made available to you is to underscore the importance of the project or the proposal of adding some $30 million in addition to the Forest Service budget for this forestry program in and around the urban areas where there is substantial unemployment.

I don't think I need to tell my friends of the Forest Service what we are taking in north and northeast Minnesota. I have discussed this matter with the Secretary of Agriculture, with Mr. Bell of the Bureau of the Budget, I have not only discussed it, I have insisted upon it because it seems to me that this is the most sensible use of the dollars that we could make available. We could put under the terms of this amendment, I would say, at least 4,000 people to work in our State.

And we have had 4 years of chronic unemployment in northeastern Minnesota and there are two kinds of possible employment in the mines or in the forest.

Mr. Chairman, the report of the Bureau of Mines and the report of our Government and of Iron Age magazine says we will have the lowest production of iron ore in northeastern Minnesota since 1938. This enters the fifth year of where we have unemployment as high as 25 to 30 percent of the total employable labor force.

This is ridiculous to pour out unemployment compensation when you can give people jobs. We need the reforestation, we need it desperately in these areas. I am very happy to join with my colleagues here that submitted this letter of April 26 in support of the $30 million figure.

There is only one thing I would say. They are very conservative. And very modest. I had personally proposed a $50 million figure sometime earlier to the Secretary and to the Bureau of the Budget. We can use it and won't be a dime of it wasted.

In fact the waste is not doing it. By the way this was discussed at some length with the President the other day, when Senator Clark, myself, and Dr. Heller, Chairman of the President's Council on Economic Advisers and Secretary of Labor, Mr. Goldberg, visited with the President.

As you know the administration is giving consideration to an elevation of the economic situation and a message relating to what needs to be done. The President said when he came in that if employment had not improved substantially by the end of April that they would reexamine the economic situation and make some other recommendations. I am not at liberty to say what all those recommendations will be nor do I know, but I do know that one of the items that is under consideration and being given very friendly consideration is this conservation item of relating to the Forest Service.

YOUTH CONSERVATION CORPS PROGRAM

I hope that your Youth Conservation Corps program will come into effect. We had a good chance to visit with the President about that. While that is being contemplated, and it takes some planning, we are ready to move, are we not, immediately if we get the funds for additional forestry programs!

Mr. WELCH. As has been stated earlier, Senator Humphrey, we are ready in terms of plans and specifications and program projection. We could move in terms of accelerating the overall forestry program that we have.

Senator HUMPHREY. And if the Congress appropriated these funds you would find yourself in a happy mood to move ahead.

Mr. WELCH. Within the range of the limitations that we operate here when we meet with you with reference to the budget, I think we can say that they can be used effectively and fruitfully.

Senator HUMPHREY. My understanding of the limitations under which you operate, may I say that is about as enthusiastic approval of a proposal as I have heard for some time.

Senator MCGEE. May I say to the Senator he would have been delighted at some of the earlier comments. We think $30 million was too cautious a figure. Wait until you see in the record some of the other figures we were throwing around.

Senator HUMPHREY. This is, may I say, one of the most limited estimates that I have read and I want to say that you have been most frugal and prudent, Senator, and if we get the $30 million we will frugally use it.