Centennial Mini-Histories of the Forest Service

Historians looking at the sweep of Forest Service history from its genesis in 1876 to the present are beginning to trace patterns of events that mark unique periods in the agency. In order to capture the essence of different stages in the evolution of the Forest Service, the qualitative features of each stage are depicted by the label given that era. How this works is seen in the current discussion over the consequences of the shift in the Forest Service from its custodial phase (pre-World War II) to its development stage (1945-1959). A more sophisticated classification of Forest Service stages has been developed by Jerry Williams (1991). The dual model of land stewardship versus commodity production is the basis of current debate within and outside the agency regarding the future direction of resource management in the Forest Service.

While the debate over use or preservation of natural resources is an old one in human history, in the United States it first became a national issue with the beginnings of the conservation movement from 1890 to 1920, the period of origin of the national forests and the Forest Service. The second wave of action on natural resource protection took place during the Great Depression years, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt put people to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps. The third resurgence of public environmental concern emerged in the 1960's and continues to spread across the Nation. The public's revived environmental concerns arose in reaction to the effects of postwar development on the environment. The book Silent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson (1907-1964) raised people's awareness of the unintended consequences of human activities (in this case of unwise pesticide use) on the natural world. Later, the rise of the counterculture with the anti-consumerism, back-to-nature philosophy of the hippies, added momentum to the growing shift in social values from "more is better" to "take care of Mother Earth." A result was a growth in membership in traditional environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society and the formation of newer, more radical ones, such as Earth First!

The Forest Service became a target of these organizations because the agency had changed its practices in the preceding decades, shifting to large timber sales. "As late as the beginning of World War II (1941), less than 2 percent of the Nation's wood was derived from Forest Service timber sales" (Steen 1983:247). By deciding to allow large-volume timber sales on national forests, especially in the Pacific Northwest, the agency set in motion a series of related events: forestry schools started training thousands of new foresters as the primary job market for foresters—the Forest Service—expanded its workforce; and an extensive network of roads was constructed to open the national forests to development, many of them replacing old trails. "During the 1950's (annual) timber harvests almost tripled, going from about 3 billion board feet in 1950 to almost 9 billion at the end of the decade" (Roth and Harmon 1989).

The move into large-volume timber sales on national forests did not happen in a vacuum. It is important to focus on the wider national context in which the agency operated. With the return of the veterans after World War II, a baby boom took place (60 million births from 1946 to 1964) during a period of economic growth. This was fueled by low interest rates and massive housing starts as the GI bill and its low-cost loans led to the suburbanization of the Nation. Other Federal agencies answered this call for goods as well. The Bureau of Land Management was formed in 1946 from the merger of the General Land Office and the Grazing Service. The rapid depletion of old-growth timber on private lands further reinforced the incentives for increased harvests on Federal lands in the 1950's and onward.

Examined in retrospect, the turmoil facing the Forest Service today emerged in the decades immediately after World War II when the forces of population pressure (the national census was 132 million in 1940, growing to 203 million in 1970), commodity demand in an expanding economy, and increased recreational use of public lands all coincided and lead to conflicts among users of the national forests. Tension increased between hunters and ranchers over deer and other game competing for forage with cattle on public grazing lands. The issue of mining claims on public lands was addressed in a multiple-use mining law of 1955. But the real fight began over wilderness, with former allies of the Forest Service fearful of the agency's "backsliding" by declassifying already designated areas (Wolf 1990).

The postwar period saw not only an increase in commodity production (grazing, mining, and logging) but also increased affluence, which fostered greatly increased recreational usage of the National Forest System. Concerned that the Forest Service was tilting away from its balancing of users and leaning toward serving timber industry needs first, hikers and others began to lobby for safeguards to existing "wilderness areas." Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (1907-1964) introduced a "study bill" in 1956 regarding a Wilderness Society proposal for wilderness allocations on the national forests. The Forest Service countered with the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960 to prevent any single-use lock up of the resource base.

Mobilized wilderness advocates reacted to this strategy by seeking passage of what became in 1964 the Wilderness Act. The natural resource base was shrinking in the face of conflicting demands by an increasing number of users, and the agency was less able to appease warring factions by granting them all exclusive pieces of the pie. Wilderness was not compatible with timber harvesting, and the remaining old growth (timber) was increasingly found in roadless areas and environmentally sensitive zones such as higher elevation watersheds.

The leap to a new stage of Forest Service history began quietly at the end of decade of the 1960's, when President Richard M. Nixon (1913- ) signed the National Environmental Policy Act on the first day of January 1970. The shift in the direction of the agency away from development and back toward stewardship was beginning.

References

Roth, Dennis; Harmon, Frank. 1989. "The Forest Service in the environmental era." Washington, DC: USDA Forest Service History Unit. [Unpublished manuscript.]

Steen, Harold K. 1983. "Forest Service." In: Encyclopedia of American forest and conservation history, vol. 1. Edited by Davis, Richard C. New York: MacMillan: 243-252.

Williams, Jerry. 1991. "Significant USDA—Forest Service events by time period." Roseburg, OR: USDA Forest Service, Umpqua National Forest.

Wolf, Robert B. 1990. "The concept of multiple use: the evolution of the idea within the Forest Service and the enactment of the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960." Washington, DC: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. [Unpublished manuscript.]