About Forests & People -- Private Forests and Forestry Education

Privately Owned Forests 

As Americans left eastern worn-out farms and cutover timber lands, they headed west looking for new land.  The government was busy trying to keep these westward movers in America, so America expand west by acquiring more land, Public Domain.  It was the Army’s job to hold on to that land.   Congress continued passing laws governing ways to transfer Public Domain land to citizens and businesses to expand the nation further west.  Land was given to Revolutionary War veterans as payment for their service; large tracts were sold to developers and timber companies; the homestead acts transferred land to farmers and ranchers if they would put up buildings, fences and grow crops; the railroads were given huge amounts of land as an incentive to lay tracks headed west.  

East of the Mississippi where most of the land was forested, cutting the trees was the first thing most new landowner did, they absolutely needed crop land to survive and build communities; farmers, loggers, developers, they all needed the trees cut.  Not always a good idea, but it was done, after all, the thinking was, “There is always more land,”  the “more land” was the expanding Public Domain further west.  

  

During the push west, timber companies were busy acquiring forest land from the Public Domain, the railroad companies and any other way they could.  They had cut-out the forests of the lake states and the eastern states and there hadn’t been time for these forests to regrow, partly because they had not been replanted.  Duh!  But that was the way people thought about forests and land, “Use it up and move on.” 

Individual timber companies are as different from one another as are individual people.  Some do a good job of caring for forest land they own.  They use timber harvesting methods that keep the top soil in tact and water runoff clean.  They replant or leave quality seed trees or other techniques that reestablish a new forest where mature trees have been cut.  They take the long view of owning forest land for profit.  

Other companies, not so much.  They take the short term view to profitability, log the cheapest way possible, usually destructive to trees, soil and workers, and do little to invest in the next crop of trees.  

It’s probably reasonable to think most private forest lands were, and are, managed between these extremes.  

Forestry Education

Professional people hired to manage the public and private forests in America receive their formal training at colleges and universities across the country.  These professions include: forestry, silviculture, hydrology, soil science, range science, wildlife biology, fisheries biology, entomology, landscape architecture, engineering, fire science, economics, business management, archeology and others.  Educating this corps of scientists is a big deal, our universities do a good job of it offering BS, MS and PhD programs in these sciences.

The first college to educate foresters in America was New York State College of Forestry at Cornell University, it started in 1898.  Two years later Yale University established a School of Forestry where men (yes, just men in those days) with a bachelors degree were admitted in a two-year program that led to a master of forestry degree.   By 1910, seventeen colleges and universities, mostly in the East and Mid-west, were offering forestry education curricula.   These universities and colleges carried on research in natural resources and developed graduate programs that trained students to become researchers for the Forest Service and forest industries. (Dana and Fairfax, Forest and Range Policy, pg 84 - 85)

The careers of professionally trained natural resource people may take them to the higher level decision-making or research positions in corporations, government agencies or universities.  

Not all forest workers are university graduates.  People who learn forestry skills on the job and technical training as timber cruisers, fire fighters, surveyors, range technicians, recreation technicians, wildlife and fisheries technicians and others are the backbone of forestry companies and government agencies.  It is a blurred line between the kinds of work college educated people do early in their career and technicians work.  Technicians normally spend their career doing projects on-the-ground involving forests, fire, wildlife, streams and other natural resources.

All education is not in a university classroom
Learning to pack mules is still relevant.