About Forests & People -- Forest Reserves become National Forests

Then Came TR and Pinchot

Teddy Roosevelt, Vice-president, Governor of New York, the Rough Rider, the lover of the West, conservationist before we knew what conservation meant, was suddenly, President Roosevelt.

Gifford Pinchot, the son of a wealthy and politically connected family in Pennsylvania was America’s first formally trained forester.  He studied forestry in Europe, he read Men and Nature by Marsh, and his first forestry job was managing the privately owned, seven thousand acre Biltmore Estate Forest in North Carolina.  Pinchot’s forest management plan was to earn the owner a profit while improving the forest. It was the first forest management plan implemented in America.  During that time Pinchot was appointed to a Presidential Commission to create a plan for federal forest management.   Pinchot’s activities on the commission got him noticed by Secretary of Agriculture, James Wilson who asked Pinchot to take the job as Chief of the Bureau (formally Division) of Forestry.  The Bureau of Forestry, in the Department of Agriculture, did two things, forest research and provide information and help to states and private companies concerning forestry.  The Bureau of Forestry had no forests to manage, that job was being done within the Department of Interior, sort of, Congress never budgeted the Department of Interior money or staff to do forest management things.  Secretary Wilson promised Pinchot a free hand to do what he wanted with the Bureau of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture.  It was 1898, Pinchot would either bring the Forest Reserves to him or he would find a way to go where they were, he took the job.   

When Teddy Roosevelt became President, Pinchot got close to him.  They shared a love of the outdoors and the West, they boxed each other, - literally - yes, boxed = bloody noses - a President - they played tennis.  Pinchot was informing TR’s interest in the outdoors and the West with forest science and awareness of forests, watersheds and the economics of forestry.  

Pinchot had a couple big goals in mind.  First was to greatly increase the Forest Reserves.  He knew that healthy forests were necessary for healthy watersheds that could provide clean water for agriculture and cities in the semiarid west.  Government control and management of high elevation forests was the only way to keep healthy watersheds in tact.  Logging, driven by the goal of making money for investors had a very long history, through many civilizations, of damaging forests, soils and water.  Pinchot convinced the President that the American west needed many more Forest Reserves. 

Forest Reserves Become National Forests

The second big thing Pinchot wanted was transfer of the Forest Reserves from the Department of Interior to the Department of Agriculture, where he was. The Reserves were created by withdrawing lands form the Public Domain and placing them within the Department of Interior’s General Land Office (GLO) for management.   But the GLO’s historic job was to transfer land from the Government to private ownership: homesteads, timber tracts, railroads, and other entrepreneurs that would put land to use, growing the national economy, and paying taxes.  The GLO was not set-up to manage land, forests or otherwise. 

The Department of Agriculture housed the Bureau of Forestry, but there were no actual forests within the agency it did research on trees and forests and provided education to states and private industry concerning forest issues.

As chief of the Bureau of Forestry, Gifford Pinchot began planning the  transfer of Forest Reserves to his agency.  He was a good planner.  Pinchot’s formal forestry training taught him to think of trees as a renewable crop that keeps producing through decades and centuries.  Some of that production is on trees the size of a fishing pole, some on trees large enough to be sawn into boards.   Either size, growth is annual production of a needed product, wood, and that’s a crop.  The Department of Interior didn’t deal with any kind of crops, Interior dealt with minerals, transferring federal lands to the private ownership and Indian Affairs.  For Pinchot, it was a no brainer, he wanted the Forest Reserves transferred to his agency in the Department of Agriculture.  He made all that boxing, playing tennis and camping with the President pay off.  In 1905 Congress passed a bill transferring the Forest Reserves to the Department of Agriculture, renaming them National Forests and creating the Forest Service to manage them.  TR signed the bill and appointed Gifford Pinchot as the first Chief of the Forest Service.  A hundred and ten years later The Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service is still managing the National Forests and it’s been a good deal for America.

The new Forest Service needed a guiding principal for managing the National Forests.  This is where words come in, words are important and Pinchot supplied those words in a letter to himself that was signed by his boss, Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson.   The “Wilson letter” begins, “In the administration of the forest reserves it must be clearly borne in mind that all land is to be devoted to its most productive use for the permanent good of the whole people, and not for the temporary benefit of individuals or companies”.  (Dana and Fairfax, Forest and Range Policy, pg 82)  Within the new agency, Pinchot shortened that to, “The National Forests will be managed for the greatest good to the greatest number in the long run.”   Those words became the motto and the guide for the Forest Service. There’s a good chance Gifford had read English philosopher Jermy Bentham’s writings from 1776,  where he said something very similar, not about forests, but things in general.  However, in this country, people involved with forests give Pinchot the credit.  It is a good philosophy for forest management, “Manage forests for the greatest good to the greatest number in the long run.”

Gifford was good at the political game, later in life he became governor of Pennsylvania.  

President Teddy Roosevelt continued designating more Forest Reserves, creating more opposition from Westerners.  A new Reserve here, a new Reserve there, (they were re-designated National Forests after the 1905 Transfer Act) began to come together until there was overwhelming demand to stop the President from creating new National Forests.  Western Senators introduced a bill in 1907 to take away the President’s authority to set aside Forest Reserves from the Public Domain.  Only Congress would be allowed to do that.  

The President knew, politically, he had to sign the bill that was on his desk.  He gathered Pinchot and a raft of people who knew about various parts of the West.  They spread maps all over the White House floor, marking them with lines designating new Forest Reserves.  That night TR designated 16 million acres of new Forest Reserves.  The next day, March 4, 1907 he signed the bill that prevented any President from ever again creating Forest Reserves.  There was considerable private land within the outside boundaries of most Reserves that became National Forests, but that was ok, those problems would be taken care of later.