The federal push to manage logging and protect forests started in earnest in the late 1880s. Congress responded by passing the Forest Reserve Act in 1891, which allowed the president to create forest reserves, a precursor of the national forest system.
In the colonial period, the British Crown—and early in the history of the United States, the federal government— reserved the right to preserve timber on lands in the public domain (for shipbuilding in particular), although early laws were not enforced, and a laissez-faire tradition built up around logging. Secretary of the Interior Carl ScHURZ was the first to attempt to enforce these early laws. Having been raised in Germany, where economic forest management techniques had been long established, Schurz took seriously the dangers of depleted forest lands. Schurz removed corrupt land agents, punished those who logged federally held lands, and developed a system of selling timber rights while retaining federal title of forest lands. Congress, however, pardoned violators if they paid a paltry $1.25 an acre for land that they had cleared.
Not consistently hostile to the environment, Congress established a permanent Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture in 1886, the forerunner of the United States Forest Service, and subsequent studies confirmed that overharvesting would lead to a dire situation within a matter of years. Forest fires, exacerbated by logging, had already burned millions of acres, provoked intense flooding in watershed areas, and also compelled the federal government to protect forests.
The original Forest Reserve bill was narrow in its scope, but the Division of Forestry and Department of the Interior influenced legislators to attach a rider that allowed the president to set apart and reserve public lands covered in timber as public reservations. President Benjamin Harrison immediately took advantage of this legislation, setting aside forests next to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming as reserves. He added 13 million more acres of protected forest in four additional reserves. President Grover Cleveland added 20 million more acres but also asked Congress to define the goal of the reserves. In response, Congress passed the Forest Management Act in 1897, which designated Forest Reserves as resources for timber, mining, and grazing, leading to the current forest management policy.
Further reading: Dyan Zaslowsky and T. H. Watkins, These American Lands: Parks, Wilderness, and the Public Lands (Washington, D. C.: Island Press, 1994).
—Scott Sendrow
World History
