List Of U.S. National Forests
The United States has 155 protected areas known as National Forests covering 188,293,938 acres (761,998.53 km2). The National Forests are managed by the U.S. Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The first National Forest was established as the Yellowstone Park Timber and Land Reserve on March 30, 1891, then in the Department of the Interior. In 1897, the Organic Act provided purposes for which forest reserves could be established, including to protect the forest, secure water supplies, and supply timber. With the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, the President of the United States was given the power to set aside forest reserves in the public domain. With the Transfer Act of 1905, forest reserves became part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the newly created U.S. Forest Service.
By 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt more than doubled the forest reserve acreage, and Congress responded by limiting the President’s ability to proclaim new reserves. The National Forest System underwent a major reorganization in 1908, and in 1911 Congress authorized new additions to the system under the authority of the Weeks Act. The management goals provided by the Organic Act were expanded upon by the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act of 1960 to include “outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes” as well as for the establishment of wilderness areas.
As of September 30, 2012, the Forest Service manages a total 192,976,743 acres (780,949.17 km2), 188,293,938 acres (761,998.53 km2) of which are National Forests. The additional land areas include 20 National Grasslands, 59 purchase units, 19 research and experimental areas, five land utilization projects, 37 other areas, and one National Preserve, Valles Caldera. The National Forest System has an extensive and complicated history of reorganization, so while there are currently 155 named National Forests, many of these are managed together as either a single forest or separate forests.
There is at least one National Forest in all but ten states: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Dakota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. In addition, El Yunque National Forest is in Puerto Rico. If looking at national forests on a map, in general those west of the Great Plains show the true extent of their area, while those east of the Great Plains only show purchase districts, within which usually only a minority of the land is owned by the Forest Service.
Read more about List Of U.S. National Forests: National Forests
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, national and/or forests:
“Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Weigh what loss your honor may sustain
If with too credent ear you list his songs,
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmastered importunity.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)