By Staff
Whenever I go to a lumberyard I'm reminded of the awesome amount of wood this country consumes. Every town big enough to call itself one has a lumberyard chock full of every size and types of boards imaginable. Thousands of stores and billions of boards, all carved from home grown trees. Then, there are the huge amounts of lumber consumed in manufacturing, not to mention that sent overseas. It seems impossible that we can sustain that from year to decade to century, yet we do, and quite handily.
Our remarkable ability to continuously feed the world's insatiable appetite for wood can be attributed to one man, Gifford Pinchot. By the mid 1800s the hardwood forests of our East had been transformed into houses, barns and firewood. Within several more decades Michigan's green gold, the vast pine forests, were stripped bare and the relentless onslaught had moved on across the prairies to pillage the great forests of the Pacific Northwest.
Fortunately, before all of our forest resources were destroyed, along came Gifford Pinchot. Born into wealth in 1865, Gifford became a political activist early on. He was a visionary reformist, championing all manner of then radical social ideas. Among them was a keen interest in a new concept, conservation. He attended a forestry school in France where he studied French and German forestry practices which were the most advanced at the time. Returning home as America's first professionally trained forester, he brought the concept of selective harvesting rather than unrestrained exploitation.
In 1898 Gifford Pinchot was appointed Chief of the newly formed Division of Forestry but his hands were largely tied by old school politicians and a powerful timber industry. Theodore Roosevelt was also a player in the political scene and with his conservation interests it was only natural he and Pinchot would hit it off. They both realized that our method of reckless abandon timber harvesting would eventually leave this country treeless. When Roosevelt took over the Presidency in 1901 Pinchot was given free reign to develop and implement forest use, timber harvest and reforestation programs. In 1905 the Division of Forestry was renamed the U.S. Forest Service and given control of all National forest reserves.
Pinchot described his approach to forestry as, "the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man." He regarded the forests more like a farm rather than the hands off wilderness which many proposed. Under Gifford Pinchot's guidance timber was wisely harvested with a critical eye toward conservation and sustainability. The harvesting was done via contracts with private firms which provided self sustaining income for forest management while maintaining the viability of the timber industry. For the first time extensive reforestation programs were implemented to ensure a never ending, continuous yield.
As in current times, though, Pinchot's ideas were not embraced by all. In 1909 Taft took over the Presidential reins. Taft was opposed to Federal land control as well as many of Pinchot's philosophies and Pinchot was fired. Only later would Gifford Pinchot's genius in timber management be realized and his programs fully reinstated.
Despite his ousting, Pinchot remained active in conservation. He had founded the Yale School of Forestry in 1903 where he actively taught from its inception to 1936. In 1910 he founded the National Conservation Association and served as president from 1910 to 1925. In 1920 he was appointed Pennsylvania's Commissioner of Forestry, leaving that post two years later when he was elected the Governor of Pennsylvania.
Shortly after Gifford Pinchot's death in 1946 one of our oldest, largest and most scenic National Forests was renamed for him. The 1.3 million acre Gifford Pinchot National Forest sits astraddle the magnificent Cascade Mountains in Southwest Washington State. Within its borders lie Mt. St. Helens and a portion of her twin, Mt. Adams.