Gifford Pinchot - Forestry Policy and Institutions

Forestry Policy and Institutions

In 1896, the National Academy of Sciences formed the National Forest Commission and they appointed him to the Commission, the only nonmember appointed. President Grover Cleveland later charged him with developing a plan for managing the nation’s Western forest reserves.

In 1898, Gifford Pinchot succeeded Bernhard Fernow as chief of the Division of Forestry, later renamed the United States Forest Service in 1905. While working for the transfer of the federal forests from the United States Department of the Interior to his agency in the Department of Agriculture, Pinchot introduced better forestry methods into the operations of the private owners, large and small, by helping them make working plans and by demonstrating good practices on the ground. Doing so gave new forestry school graduates practical experience. Until 1900, students came from only two schools, the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell and the Biltmore Forest School. In order to provide a professional level of forestry training suited to "American conditions," as Pinchot defined them, the Pinchot family endowed a 2-year graduate-level School of Forestry at Yale University (now the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies). At Pinchot's urging, fellow Yale alumnus Henry S. Graves, along with James W. Toumey, left the Division in 1900 to start the school. In the fall of 1900, the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell had 24 students, Biltmore 9, and Yale 7.

In 1900, Pinchot established the Society of American Foresters. Its establishment helped bring instant credibility to the new profession of forestry and was part of the broader professionalization movement underway in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.

Pinchot sought to turn public land policy from one that dispersed resources to private holdings to one that maintained federal ownership and management of public land. He was a progressive who strongly believed in the efficiency movement. The most economically efficient use of natural resources was his goal; waste was his great enemy. His successes, in part, were grounded in the personal networks that he started developing as a student at Yale and continued developing throughout his career. His personal involvement in the recruitment process led to high esprit de corps in the Forest Service and allowed him to avoid partisan political patronage. Pinchot capitalized on his professional expertise to gain adherents in an age when professionalism and science were greatly valued. He made it a high priority to professionalize the Forest Service; to that end he initiated the Yale School of Forestry as a source of highly trained men.