Existing comment:
Gifford Pinchot (Aug. 11, 1865 - Oct. 4, 1946) graduated from Yale University in 1889 and studied at the National Forestry School in Nancy, France, and in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. He returned home in 1892 and began the first systematic forestry work in the United States at the Biltmore estate in North Carolina. He became a member of the National Forest Commission during the summer of 1896, as it traveled through the West to investigate forested areas for possible forest reserves. In 1897, he became confidential forest agent to the Secretary of the Interior, and then in 1898, was appointed Chief of the Department of Agriculture's Division of Forestry.
In 1905, the management of the forest reserves was transferred from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture and Pinchot's new Forest Service. Two years later, the forest reserves were renamed national forests. During Pinchot's era, the Forest Service and the national forests grew spectacularly. In 1905, there were 60 forest reserves covering 56 million acres; in 1910, when Pinchot left the Forest Service, there were 150 national forests covering 172 million acres. Today, there are 154 national forests, 20 national grasslands, and 1 tallgrass prairie covering over 193 million acres. |