Gifford Pinchot appointed as the chief of the Division of Forestry 1898

1

• Gifford Pinchot appointed as the chief of the
  Division of Forestry (1898)
• Advancement of the Division of Forestry to bureau
  status (1905)
• Renamed as the U.S. Forest Service
• Pinchot.an energetic, intelligent man
• Circular No. 21

2

• What were the states doing about forestry?
• At that point states had not yet started to get
  involved in forestry issues
• Private forest management as we know it today was
  virtually non-existent

3

• Weve talked a lot about the Northeast, but what
  about the South?
• Timber removals shifted to the South
• Heavy cutting was prevalent all over the South
• Arkansas was, at that time, one of the leading
  timber producers in the nation and ranked fifth
  around 1909

4

• Toward the end of the first decade of the 20th
  century, the nationwide expansion of the national
  forest system came to Arkansas
• The Arkansas National Forest, later renamed as
  the Ouachita National Forest, was established in
  1907
• Ozark National Forest was established in 1908

5
Weeks Law of 1911

• By the end of the first decade of the 20th
  century, damage from huge wildfires became a
  major concern
• The Forest Service was engaged in a variety of
  cooperative fire agreements with various private
  parties, for example, in the South there were
  agreements with the railroad companies to reduce
  fire hazard
• The Forest Service engaged in these cooperative
  agreements on their own, no legislation gave them
  the authority
• Many, including Gifford Pinchot, understood the
  importance of fire management and pressed for
  legislation

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• Finally, after a catastrophic fire in the summer
  of 1910 in the Pacific Northwest, Congress saw
  the urgency of the situation and passed the
  Weeks Law of 1911
• Weeks law permitted federal cooperation with
  states to protect private forestland on the
  watersheds of navigable streams
• One interesting point is that, even though losses
  from fire were the main driving force behind the
  passage of Weeks law, cooperative fire
  protection was not the only objective

7

• Weeks law authorized Congress to appropriate an
  annual sum of 200,000
• These funds were used for federal assistance to
  protect private and state lands on the watersheds
  of navigable streams
• To be eligible for cooperative funds, the act
  required states to have a forest protection
  agency and to provide matching expenditures
• Weeks Law was in fact the first major incentive
  for federal and state cooperation

8

• The Forest Service applied a fairly broad
  interpretation of the term navigable streams
• The maximum amount of assistance to any state was
  limited to 10,000
• The criteria for determining eligibility were
• (1) the likelihood of assistance from private
  landowners
• (2) the amount of matching funds from the state
• (3) the importance of the watershed to be
  protected
• (4) the value of the forests and the relative
  fire risk

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• However, soon lack of funding became a problem
• In 1922 the funding was increased to 400,000
• within 3 to 4 years of the enactment of Weeks
  Law, Faced with increasing number of states
  applying for the grants, Forest Service was
  forced to cut the maximum allowable amount to
  each state
• Gradually, the individual grants became so small
  that they were quite ineffective

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• Regardless of the funding problems, the Weeks
  Law has its place in history as the first effort
  for cooperation between the federal government,
  the states, and private landowners
• It emphasized the need fire protection, and
  encouraged the establishment of forestry agencies
  in some states

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• However, even a decade after enacting Weeks Law
  private landowners were still largely not
  interested in reforesting cutover lands
• The industry was only interested in supplying as
  much timber as possible
• Spokesmen for the industry argued that their only
  obligation to the public was to produce lumber
  and if the public wanted future supplies of
  timber, it should share the burden also
• Some leaders in the forestry community also
  agreed and both parties pressured Congress for
  more legislation authorizing cooperation and
  assistance
• This paved the way for numerous cooperative
  projects in the future