The last and loudest wail was that these "great areas of segregated lands," as the protestants love to call the national forests, were a barrier to the settler and homesteader; that the Forest Service was making vast areas of forest solitudes in the heart of the Western States.
To this the Forest Service replied by throwing open to agricultural settlement every acre of land, lying within the limits of the national forests, which was more suitable for agriculture than forest culture. Six thousand new homes were selected in the different forests in the year 1907, and with vastly less red tape and delay than under the regular homestead laws now in force upon other public lands.
If the Forest Service had done no more than keep down the fire losses, their work would not have been in vain. In 1901 the total area burned over in the government forests equalled 2¾ acres in every thousand, while in 1907 the burned area was only 9/10 of an acre in every thousand. No record of the money value of the earlier fire losses was kept, but that the loss ran into the millions, no one who has seen the miles of burned over tracts can doubt.
The following table shows the fire losses in the national forests for the past three years:
| Year | Area of Forests | Acres Burned Over | Value of Timber Burned |
| 1905 | 85,627,000 | 279,592 | $101,282 |
| 1906 | 106,999,000 | 115,416 | 76,183 |
| 1907 | 164,154,000 | 212,850 | 31,589 |
That is, in 1905 the loss from fire was more than three times as great as in the year 1907, with an area of forests almost twice as great to protect and control.
$1,000,000 Saved by the Forest Hunters
Another important feature of Mr. Pinchot's work is the employment of experienced hunters for killing wild animals which destroy stock. In the year 1907, according to records kept of all predatory animals killed upon the various national forests, or on lands adjoining them, no fewer than 1600 wolves, 19,469 coyotes, 265 mountain lions, 368 bears, and 2285 wild cats and lynxes were killed by the various hunters and settlers. Of these, it is probably fair to credit the rangers and the hunters employed by the Forest Service with at least one-fourth.
Now, any well-posted stockman will tell you that, on an average, a full-grown wolf will destroy one thousand dollars' worth of stock every year of its life. Mountain lions prefer horses to any other food, but still they will put up with calves and sheep. They, too, are easily chargeable with a thousand dollars' worth of damage each year. The coyotes, bob-cats, and lynxes do less harm, and that mostly to sheep. Yet I think it is a very conservative estimate to say that each coyote or lynx annually destroys stock to the value of fully one hundred dollars.
Taking these figures as a basis for comparison, it is very easily seen that the value of the animals killed by the Forest Service men is more than $1,000,000. Hence, so far as return for their $836,920 in grazing fees is concerned, the stockmen get it back in full and with some to spare.