Forest Service History: The Highlights

CRANBERRY WILDERNESS. The river is the Williams’ middle fork, in West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest. PHOTO BY STEPHEN SCHOOF

1864 George Marsh publishes “Man and Nature,” warning that if logging isn’t curtailed, U.S. forest will vanish as completely as that of Asia and Europe.

19th century Unregulated logging unravels private forest land throughout the east, moves east with the frontier.

1891 A timber culture act contains an amendment allowing presidents to create forest reserves from public domain.

1897 Grover Cleveland adds 21 million acres to the 17.5-million-acre forest reserve.

1897 The Organic Act establishes the new forest reserves for watershed and forest protection and a sustainable timber supply.

1905 Urged by Theodore Roosevelt, Congress authorizes transfer of forest reserves from General Land Office to U.S.D.A. The new Forest Service is created, headed by Gifford Pinchot.

1911 The Weeks Act led the U.S. to buy millions of degraded acres to restore and protect headwaters and watershed lands, restoring numerous eastern mountain lands.

1924 The Clarke-McNary Act encouraged cooperative tree-planting, fire-fighting and conservation projects with state and private landowners for the general good of people and land.

1934-1942 The Dustbowl inspired the Great Plains Shelterbelt Project: 18,000 miles of 100-foot-wide tree belts that helped stabilize soil and climate.

1950s-60s Surge in public land logging to supply cheap housing materials compels Congress to set logging limits per forest.

1961 Growing demands for recreational use of National Forest inspires new land management considerations and Visitor Information Service.

1964 Wilderness Act in Congress recognizes intrinsic value of undisturbed wild lands, allowing tracts of National Forest to be protected from logging, timbering and road-building.

1969, 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, according to Forest Service spokesmen, “strengthens historic conservation efforts” of the agency and leads it to “study the ecological consequences of its activities more thoroughly.”

1973 Endangered Species Act passes, allowing for legal arguments against habitat destruction.

1976 National Forest Management Act (NFMA) requires management plans that include environmental review and public input.

2001 George W. Bush appoints Mark Rey, former timber lobbyist, as USDA undersecretary, overseer of National Forests.

2002-2005 Bush Administration’s Healthy Forest Initiative, a reversal of Roadless Area protections and the dismantling of NFMA combine to reduce or eliminate environmental review and public input for fuel reduction projects in all federal lands, including national parks and monuments.

—LF