The Outlook for the National Forests
John R. McGuire
Given at Berkeley, California, February 5, 1981
About 90 years ago, Congress undertook a reform of the public land laws of the United States. The reform did not change the long-standing policy of disposal of lands in the public domain but, in a one-sentence amendment to a rather lengthy bill, Congress allowed a small exception to that policy. It added words which gave the President authority to set apart certain public lands as forest reservations.1
At the time, many citizens, particularly in the West were dissatisfied with the public lands laws and with the way they were enforced.2 The basic policy of encouraging private enterprise by disposing of the public domain for homesteading and other private uses was not changed in 189 1. Rather what the 68 word amendment authorized was an experiment. And I doubt that any member of Congress, in 1891, foresaw how the experiment would evolve into the extensive system of national forests which we have in the United States today.
Beginning with President Harrison, the Authority to create forest reserves was exercised rather cautiously. President Cleveland, however, on Feb. 22, 1897, just a few days before leaving the White House, proclaimed 13 new forest reserves.3
Policy Questions
This last minute action by the departing Cleveland Administration generated widespread controversy, enough to draw attention to two basic policy questions that would be debated thereafter. One was the question of whether the Country should have a system of national forests at all. This question was not answered in 1891. Rather it was sidestepped when Congress handed the issue to the President. So the question was bound to persist. It did.
The other question was: What should the Country do with national forests? It came into focus later as more national forest reservations were set aside by other presidents, as new national forest were made from private lands acquired in the East, and as the Nation has come slowly to realize that the values at stake are huge and the experiment in public enterprise was without much precedent.
How these two questions are answered, it seems to me, will determine the outlook for the national forests. These are the questions I will talk about tonight.
Should the United States Have National Forests?
The public land ownership issue, retention versus disposal, continued as a major topic of civic debate for many years, especially after large additional areas were designated as national forests by Theodore Roosevelt. Yet the experiment in public ownership of natural resources was allowed to continue.
In 1905, administration of the forest reserves was transferred from Interior to Agriculture and placed under the administration of Gifford Pinchot and the newly formed Forest Service, but Congress placed no limitation on new reserves until 1907. From time to time after that, attempts were made to terminate the experiment, or to modify it, but none succeeded, not even proposals to cede the national forests to the States. Congress seemed more or less content to stay with general guidance of the experiment and with exercising its traditional roles of oversight and appropriation of funds.
Even on the fiftieth anniversary of the first national forest, Earle Clapp, who was acting chief of the Forest Service, still referred to the national forest system which, by 1941, had increased to 175 million acres, as "the first large scale trial in the United States of public ownership and administration of a great natural resource ".4
Finally, in the National Forest Management Act of 1976,5 Congress saw fit to end the trial and to make the National Forest System permanent. After 85 years, the once heatedly debated question of whether to have national forests had become moot. Other kinds of public enterprise had become commonplace. In almost an absent minded way, without much discussion and with no opposition, Congress accepted the system designed by the Executive Branch and, by repealing the 1891 law, made the National Forest System permanent.
In answering the question of whether to have national forests, the Congress of 1976 finally gave the National Forest System the statutory status that had been long accorded to national parks. The question may be debated again in the future, most likely as part of general debate about the mix of public and private enterprise in the U.S. economy, but any future ownership policy change will be hindered because a law, not just an executive order, will be needed. Of the 760 million acres owned today by the Federal Government, one-fourth, 190 million acres are managed by the Forest Service as the National Forest System.6 Barring major reorganizations, such as merger of the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, no substantial additions to, or deletions from, this system are in sight.
What to do with National Forests?
The second question, what policies should govern the management of national forests, has been defined and redefined, divided and subdivided, litigated and relitigated many times in this century. Sometimes the answer has been sought through broad legislative policy proposals. Often the debate has concentrated on policies for the individual resources of the national forests, timber or range for example, or individual areas, such as wilderness. Lately the answer has been sought in planning, public involvement, intergovernmental coordination, administrative practices and other processes.
I will briefly discuss each of these approaches because they may provide some clues as to where management of the National Forest System may be heading. First let us look at the broad policy approach.
The question of what to do with the national forests, became urgent soon after the first ones were proclaimed. So, in 1897, the U.S. House of Representatives, after a major debate over the first question of whether to have national forests, added a few words on non germane amendment to an Appropriation Act. The amendment said "No national forest shall be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the boundaries, or for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States".7 The amendment also delegated to the Secretary authority to sell timber and to regulate "occupancy and use". Administrators, lawyers and interested parties, for many decades thereafter, searched this amendment for a possible answer to the question of what to do with the national forests.
For example, some of the "use and occupancy" legislation was so brief and vague, with so little legislative history behind it, that it took years and years for the Government to determine whether mineral location and entry, allowed under the mining laws, could be regulated by the Secretary of Agriculture under national forest law. It was Section 103 of the National Environmental Policy Act of 19698 that finally forced the decision in favor of national forest mining regulations.
Another broad policy statute was the Weeks Act of 1911 which authorized purchase of land "necessary to the flow of navigable streams or for the production of timber".9 Again the legislator's primary interest was in the question of whether to have a national forest system, this time in the East, where there was little public domain land left to reserve. The second question, as before was given only incidental attention. Such answer as there was came as a statement of restriction on the land acquisition authority being delegated to the Executive.
The third legislative try at broad policy direction did not come until 1960. Congress then became somewhat more specific about how the national forests are to be used and managed. There was no great national debate, however, because the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960 endorsed policies that had long been formulated and applied by the Executive Branch and supported by annual appropriation acts for many prior years. The Act declared that "it is the policy of the Congress that the national forests are established and shall be administered for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes".10
The Act also directed continuation of two existing policies of the Forest Service, multiple use and sustained yield. Multiple use is defined in the law as "management of all the various renewable surface resources of the national forests so that they are utilized in the combination that will best meet the needs of the American people; making the most judicious use of the land for some or all of these resources or related services over areas large enough to provide for periodic adjustments in use to conform to changing needs and conditions; that some land will be used for less than all of the resources; and harmonious and coordinated management of the various resources, each with the other, without impairment of the productivity of the land, with consideration being given to the relative values of the various resources, and not necessarily the combination of uses that will give the greatest dollar return or the greatest unit output."
Sustained yield of the several products and services of the national forests legally means "the achievement and maintenance in perpetuity of a high-level annual or regular periodic output of the various renewable resources...without impairment of the productivity of the land."
These policy mandates, of 1897, 1911 and 1960, were, of course, far too broad and too general to satisfy everyone. But from the legislature's viewpoint, they undoubtedly well reflected the Country's uncertainty about what to do with a public enterprise of such diversity and magnitude. Furthermore, the wide authorities granted to the Executive Branch seemed to be encouraging innovation, even though they did permit quite a bit of administrative discretion, which could be abused.
Timber Policy
Now let us turn to the search for answers in policies dealing with specific resources found in national forests and policies for specific areas within national forests.
The timber resources of the National Forest System are substantial. Although lands classified as commercial forest occupy less than half of the System's area, they carry an inventory of about 1000 billion board feet of sawtimber, mostly in softwood species, in fact around half of all the standing softwood sawtimber in the Country. Since the end of World War II the volume of national forest timber sold annually has increased from less than 6 billion in the early 1950's to about 12 billion board feet in recent years. The national forest timber harvest represents about one-fourth of the volume harvested nationwide.
Over the past two decades or so, the question of what to do with national forests has frequently narrowed to the more specific question of what to do with the national forest timber resource. Although the debate over the answer often sounds as though timber flows on all 154 national forests are at issue, actually the question almost always comes down to what to do with only 25 or 30 forests, all on the Pacific Coast or in the Northern Rocky Mountains. These are the forests with large softwood inventories and annual harvests large enough to contribute importantly to regional supplies.
Those on the side of an increase in the pace of timber harvesting argue that the current rate produces too low a return on the timber investment and delays the replacement of slow growing, over mature trees by a faster growing, more juvenile inventory. They also point to benefits from stabilizing employment and dampening the rising trend of stumpage prices with larger Federal timber sale offerings. They typically urge substitution of an economic model for the biological model on which the concept of sustained yield policy is based.
Others favor a reduction in the level of national forest timber harvesting either for environmental reasons or because they feel that the costs will exceed returns and thus subsidize timber industry purchasers or because larger offerings of Federal timber might discourage investment in private timber production.
The national forest timber debate is far more complex than this, of course. But one of the principal characteristics of the controversy thus far has been the major attention given to the way in which existing sustained yield policy has been carried out. Much less attention has been given to alternative policies and to analyses of the assumptions and consequences of such policies. As a result Congress and the public have little awareness of the many choices in national forest timber policy that might exist.
Two latter day attempts to deal with timber policy may indicate possible directions in the future.
One was the 1970 recommendation of the Public Land Law Review Commission for adoption of a "dominant use" classification of those national forest lands that are highly productive for timber growing.11 The Commission noted the Congress had established national parks, wildlife refuges and ranges, and other public land systems and had defined their primary purposes. The national forests, on the other hand, because of "statutory deficiencies" were established by the executive branch and provided with only very general legislative guidelines such as the multiple use authority. To correct this deficiency the Commission would require zoning, so as to specify areas of dominant use. For lands zoned for timber as the dominant use, management would be transferred to a Federal timber corporation financed by timber sale receipts. The aim would be to maximize net returns to the Treasury but somehow not "extract monopoly profits."
The dominant use policy alternative may appeal to those who see in it a way of resolving once and for all the continuing conflicts between timber harvesting and other national forest uses. However the appeal may have diminished a little for those who draw a parallel with attempts during the 1970s to classify national forest roadless areas for wilderness recommendation and who are aware of the controversy and litigation that accompanied that process. Nevertheless, the dominant use concept will persist and very likely in the not too distant future will again be debated. As new management plans for each national I forest become more site specific, the dimensions of the dominant use policy alternative may be clarified.
The other recent attempt to modify timber policy came in 1976. As a result of litigation involving timber sales on the Monongohela National Forest in West Virginia, authority delegated by earlier laws was found by the courts to be much narrower than the Executive Branch had assumed it was. A number of bills were introduced in Congress not only to remedy the Monongohela situation but to deal with other national forest policy areas as well. One of these areas was sustained yield policy.
The Forest Service had been controlling the timber harvest separately for each national forest.12 The aim was to insure a non-declining, even flow of harvests, decade by decade, forest by forest, in perpetuity. This policy was not specifically in the law; rather it was an agency interpretation that had evolved over the years. The most recent change, for instance, had been prompted by a "Douglas fir supply study" in the 1960s. The interpretation was controversial. Some industry critics thought the Forest Service interpretation was too inflexible. Some environmentalists found it too liberal. Congress finally adopted as law the even flow interpretation of sustained yield policy, largely removing the policy from the area of administrative discretion.
The debate over national forest timber policy was not settled in 1976. Imbedding more specific sustained yield policy direction in the statute will make change more difficult. There may be room for some future debate over policy interpretation but the forum for debate over policy alternatives will be Congress.
Livestock Grazing
Having started on the path of experimentation with national forests, the Federal Government in the 1890S was faced with a host of questions about what to allow and what to prohibit within them. By 1897, some of the Federal proprietor's rights were granted to others, or previous rights were confirmed, such as the right of location and entry under the mining law and the right of access to inholdings. The jurisdiction clause of the Constitution was not invoked, as it was in many of the national parks. Rather, State jurisdiction, civil and criminal, over persons using or occupying the national forests, was allowed to continue.13 And the Executive was authorized to grant privileges to certain categories of citizens for specified national forest uses. Free use of timber and stone by settlers, for example, could be permitted.
Although most of the early reservations had long been grazed by cattle, sheep or horses before they were set apart from other lands in the public domain, no concessions were granted for livestock grazing in the early reserves and some livestock owners were even prosecuted for trespassing.14 Grazing use of the national forests became a subject of sporadic debate at least as far back as 1906 when the Forest Service first required permits to graze a specific number of animals for a specific season of the year on a designated tract of land. The permittee had to pay a fee and meet certain eligibility requirements, such as ownership of a private ranch large enough to carry his herd in the seasons when it was not allowed to graze on the national forest.
The terms of livestock occupancy have been long in dispute. For instance, the Forest Service regarded the permission to graze as a privilege, the livestock industry wanted its use recognized as a right.15 But the most persistent controversies have revolved around reductions in numbers of permitted animals and the size of the fee.
At least half of today's national forest area is land suitable for livestock grazing. This vast area, of course, has many values other than forage, such as wildlife habitat, watershed, and recreation, as the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960 recognized.
As in the case of timber, the Executive Branch was given only general direction and experimentation with range policy was tolerated for a long time. But today the executive policies have largely been adopted by Congress and put in the statutes. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976,16 although it is often called the "BLM Organic Act" was the vehicle. It now provides much of range management policy direction for the national forests, as does the Public Rangelands Improvement Act of 1978.17
For the future, it would seem that most of the older policy questions about livestock grazing in national forests have been settled. One can expect continued controversy over numbers of permitted animals and size of grazing fees. But it seems to me more likely that the future questions will relate to the efficiency of developing further the opportunities to improve the grazing capacity of the national forests.
Wilderness Policy
I have been talking about how we, as a country, have gone about deciding what to do with national forests. I will not take time to discuss the development of outdoor recreation, wildlife habitat, water and minerals policies, but I would like to spend a few minutes on wilderness because it illustrates a policy direction which may be followed increasingly in the future.
The first wilderness designation was made administratively in one of the national forests in 1924. Other wilderness areas were designated later so that by 1964 there were 9 million acres under administrative classification as wilderness18 and 4 million additional acres of "primitive" areas under study for possible designation as wilderness.
As we have seen before, when policy has been developed and tested to some degree by the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch is likely to make it statutory, in effect telling future administrations not to tamper with it anymore.
Passage of the Wilderness Act19 in 1964 did not result in any more designated wilderness than existed before. But the Act did revoke administrative discretion to establish new wilderness areas or abolish old ones. That authority was retained by Congress. The Act also directed the Forest Service to study the wilderness candidate areas the agency had earlier classified as "primitive" and to report its recommendations to Congress within 10 years. In 1964, there were no administrative wilderness designations in the national parks and wildlife refuges, so the Interior agencies were directed to study and to report on all park and refuge areas which had characteristics appropriate for wilderness candidacy.
After 1964, it became apparent that many roadless areas in the national forests, even in the eastern national forests, exhibited at least some of the characteristics of wilderness as defined in the Wilderness Act. Unlike the direction for study of roadless areas in parks and refuges, the Act was silent about study of similar areas in the national forests. Nevertheless, the Forest Service decided that suitable roadless areas would be identified. The Public Land Law Review Commission, in its 1970 Report,20 endorsed such a review and the action was further prompted by requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.
The first roadless area review of the national forests, called RARE I, and its sequel, RARE II, are of considerable interest to those who would explore the vagaries of public land policy making. Despite efforts to entice the interested parties into looking at the potential Wilderness System as a whole, most participants found it more comfortable to deal with the individual candidate areas. Congress too has been reluctant to accept any grand design for the overall system of wilderness preservation and is likely, in my opinion, to continue piecemeal consideration of wilderness candidates for several more decades.
But I am getting away from my major point about wilderness designation. The policy innovation confirmed by the Wilderness Act, and later, expanded by the National Trails System Act,21 and other acts, was the overlay of a new designation, often first administrative, later statutory, on an old public land system. This handy device avoids the cumbersome task of devising bills suitable for application to the entire National Forest System, bills that would stir up national interest groups and arouse a majority of the legislators. The overlay idea suggests a way of working out the details of public land management prescriptions within a single Congressional delegation, usually within that part of the delegation immediately affected. If the delegation agrees, committee and floor approvals readily follow, a process smoothed by senatorial courtesy and the decline in the powers of the House Chairmen. Any national interest counter arguments falter on the narrowness of the proposal. And the advantage of the overlay approach for the Senator or Congressman is the visibility it gives the member seeking credit for "saving" a specific area.
Whereas the statutory overlay approach began with areas almost wholly in Federal ownership, it was but a short step to extend the idea to intermingled and adjacent non-federal lands. The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act is an example. This approach offers a way of installing Federal zoning, utilizing the Federal power of eminent domain, or the threat of it, to enforce land use rules and thus bypassing States reluctant to use the police power to control the use of private land in some rural areas.
One other related legislative development should be noted. When the overlay idea first arose, i.e. the idea of writing legal prescriptions for the management of designated portions of existing public land systems, the approach seemed to require a sort of organic act. Thus we have the Wilderness Act, the National Trails Act and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, all passed in the 1960's. New Wilderness, Trail and Wild and Scenic River laws always cite the underlying statute and thus avoid repetitive directions for management of each new area. However, the other way of legislating, writing a fresh prescription each time, avoids much of the controversy which so often delays broad legislation. National Recreation Areas, National Rivers, National Sea Shores and various hybrid designations are examples of free standing legislative directions. I think we are going to see more of the latter kind of legislation in the future.
In any event, the precedents have been set. The broad dele-gations of authority will not likely be withdrawn but, rather, parts of the National Forest System will be treated under sepa-rate statutes whenever and wherever limitations on the man-ager's discretion are found desirable.
Process and Policy
Possible answers to the question of what to do with them, once the country decided to have national forests, have been sought in three kinds of places. I have talked about our national experience with, first, broad policy formulations accompanied by large delegations of authority to managers and second, our experience with narrower policy guidance, even prescriptions, for specific resources or resource areas. Now, I will turn to a third sort of trial in which a process is authorized in the hope that it will lead to a satisfactory answer.
There are several processes which traditionally have fluctuated in popularity. None is unique to the national forest situation.
Two processes have been around for a long time. One is reorganization of the Executive Branch. The idea persists that part or all of the authority to manage national forests might be exercised more efficiently or more effectively if delegated elsewhere, say to a different cabinet officer. The other is the study of public lands or public land related problems by a commission. This process, too, enjoys persistent popularity. More than 100 years ago, the first public land commission was appointed.23 More recent examples are the Public Land Law Review Commission and the President's Panel on Timber and the Environment.
I will not take time to discuss commissions or reorganization. Obviously, the National Forest System and its workings make an ideal topic for commission analysis. Much data are available and the commission would have no difficulty in obtaining the views of numerous constituencies on the question of what to do with national forests. There seems little doubt that new reorganization proposals and new commission recommendations will appear from time to time in any outlook for the national forests.
Two other processes have come to the fore in recent years and both have been now incorporated in national forest statutes. One is public participation in management decision making. The other is planning, both program planning at the national level and land management planning at the local forest level.
Public Participation
Public participation or public involvement can take many forms: press conferences, television and radio appearances by officials, public meetings or hearings, distribution of documents, public opinion polling, appointment of advisory committees, and so on. The purpose, presumably, is to make the Federal manager accessible to all citizens with the hope that management decisions will thus take into account all pertinent Views and information.
Most of these kinds of public participation activity could be found throughout the Forest Service over most of its history. For example, public advisory committees at the forest, regional and national levels have been widely used for many years. However, the new impetus for public involvement seems to have come with implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. Today the environmental impact statement is commonplace and the number of opportunities to comment on proposed Federal actions seems to be still on the increase.
Most National Forest System activities come under the provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act but Con-gress, in 1976, decided to add specific direction. It found, to paraphrase the National Forest Management Act, that the na-tional interest requires public participation in development of a national renewable resource program, including a program for the National Forest System. It directed provision "for public participation in the development, review, and revision of (na-tional forest) land management plans,"24 it specified appoint-ment of a committee of outside scientists to advise about plan-ning regulations and it called for establishment of continuing advisory boards. To some, this policy guidance is most welcome evidence of a move toward "government in the sunshine." Others challenge the assumption that a "public" exists separate from the varied interest groups.
In any event, public participation is an activity that is here to stay and whose impact on national forest management is still to be evaluated.
Planning Processes
Neither Congress nor the Courts can manage the national forests. Congress can and does write policy, develop general guidelines and, through appropriation of funds by line items in annual budgets, influence the allocation of management efforts and the distribution of national forest benefits, mainly among beneficiary groups but sometimes among geographic areas of the county. But the national forests are so diverse physically and biologically, and the demands for their goods and services are so dynamic, that specific statutory management prescriptions are almost impossible to devise without substantial risk of challenge in the Courts or nonsensical application on the ground.
This situation was thoroughly debated in the committees that produced the National Forest Management Act of 1976.25 Congress considered and rejected prescriptions for management. Instead it directed a quite specific process for land management planning.
This 1976 Act was handled as an amendment to the Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974.26 Although the Forest Service had engaged in program planning at intervals since World War II, the 1974 Act (the RPA) originated in Congress, not in the Executive Branch. It came about because of senatorial dissatisfaction with the annual budget presentations for the Forest Service. The requests for money did not tell the legislators much about the long run outlook for renewable natural resources supplies and demands. Absent such information it was difficult to rationalize any particular level of funding. On the other hand, the Office of Management and Budget generally frowned upon multi-year program proposals because they appeared to end-run the annual budget process. The RPA was supposed to resolve this impasse between the legislature and the executive.
In the 1974 Act, Congress ordered the Secretary to submit, every 10 years, an assessment of the forest and range renewable natural resource situation in the United States and, every 5 years, a long range program for the Forest Service based on the assessment.
In 1976, to this earlier mandate for program planning, Congress added detailed directions for preparing land management plans for each national forest and for coordinating them with the national program ordered in 1974. The process directions are quite specific. For example, each plan is to be prepared by an interdisciplinary team. Also the agency must in make formal rules for the guidance of planners and such rules must require identification of land suitable for various kinds of management, must "provide for the diversity of plant and animal communities," must insure appropriate research and monitoring, and must prescribe conditions for timber harvesting.
As with program plans, the Forest Service had been making land management plans for many years, though there was considerable variation in their content and structure from forest to forest. So the new statutory direction was not as revolutionary as it might seem. Nevertheless, the statute now requires processes that, in past years, were never attempted or processes that had never passed beyond concept into practice. For example, the direction to relate program planning and land use planning, so that both are consistent, may turn out to be extraordinarily difficult and complex.
I do not want to take the time to get into the details of this planning process except to observe that its workability, or the lack thereof, will be a major factor in determining future uses of the national forests.
In a way, it was surprising to witness our law makers' faith in Executive Branch planning. Yet in 1976, planning direction seemed to be the only reasonable compromise between those who wanted more national forest prescriptions in the statute and those who wanted less. The compromise may have committed the Forest Service to a more herculean task than anyone has envisioned. On the other hand, if the planning process can be made to work, it will offer a far more flexible way of deciding how to manage national forests in the changing future than the alternative of a static body of prescriptive law.
Conclusion
To summarize, I have tried to examine the outlook for the national forests by exploring two policy questions: Should a country like the United States have national forests? If so, how should they be managed?
It took about 90 years to answer the first question. Today, the United States has accepted the idea of a mixed economy in which many public enterprises, other than national forests, are represented. In the future there will be changes in the mix, but the national forests, undoubtedly, are here to stay.
As to the second question the final answer is nowhere in sight. Probably there is no final answer.
In its search for workable national forest policies, Congress has taken three different approaches. First, there was the delegation of broad authority to the Forest Service. Second was specific classification and management prescription, applied to a single or as a statutory overlay on a selected tract of national forest land. Third was reliance on processes.
In the broad policy area I do not see much change. For example, multiple use is likely to become even more attractive as a policy concept with increasing scarcity of land in the future.
The second approach, particularly the special classifications overlaid
piecemeal on portions of the national forests, is likely to be followed
for a long time to come because it can be profitable politically
and because it can achieve local ends without conspicuous national
cost.
The outcome of the third approach, legal direction to conduct a
process, is difficult to see. Much of my uncertainty relates to
planning. Planning, as now required by law, undoubtedly will force
greater centralization of decision making within the Forest Service.
Perhaps this would occur over time anyway, but the planning mandate
will speed it up. Less certain is the prospect of centralization
of natural resource program planning activity in the Federal Government
somewhere outside the Forest Service, as other Federal agencies
receive similar planning direction. And then there is uncertainty
about the future relationship between Federal resource planning
and State planning.
The National Forest System began as an experiment in public land ownership. The experiment ran for nearly a century before the Country decided to make the system permanent. Perhaps it is not unreasonable to anticipate at least one more century for I the debate over what to do with national forests.
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FOOTNOTES
1 Creative Act of March 3, 1891 (26 Star. 1103; 16 U.S. C. 471)
2 Richard Andrews lists the reasons for this amendment as: "the perception of scarcity, the objectives of the landless to lack of access, the desire to preserve the aesthetic beauty and ecological function of the open lands, and the belief that public administration was preferable to private economic control. Andrews, Richard N.L. 1979. Land in America: a brief history- Commodity or Natural Resource? ed. by Richard N.L. Andrews. Lexington, Mass. Lexington Books, 1979.
3 U.S. Forest Service. 1959. Establishment and modification of national forest boundaries, a chronological record, 1891-1959. Washington, and Roth, Dennis M. 1980. Public lands, state's rights, and the National Forests. In Forest Service History Line, Fall, 1980. Minute.
4 Clapp, Earl H. 194 1. Address at Fiftieth Anniversary of the First National Forest, Cody, Wyoming, August 24, 1974. Mimeo.
5 Act of October 22, 1976 (90 Star. 2949, 16 U.S.C. 472 a, 476, 500, 513-516, 521 b, 528 (note), 576 b, 594-2 (note), 1600 (note), 1600-1602, 1604, 1606, 1068-1614)
6 The National Forest System includes national forests, national grasslands and certain "land utilization" areas acquired under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act (50 Seat. 525, as amended; 7 U.S.C. 1010-1012).
7 0rganic Act of June 4, 1897 (3O Stat. 35, as supplemented; 16 U.S.C. 475)
8 83 Star. 852; 42 U.S.C. 4321, 4331-4335, 4341-4347
9 Weeks Act of 1911 (36 State. 962, as amended; 16 U.S.C. 515, 521)
10 Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of June 12, 1960 (74 Stat. 215; 16 U.S.C. 528-531)
11 U.S. Public Land Law Review Commission. 1970. One Third of the Nation's Land. Washington, D.C.
12 In a few instances, sparsely timbered forests were combined for timber planning purposes.
13 For a discussion of this situation see U.S. Public Land Law Commission. 1970. op. cit. Chap. 19
14 Robbins, Roy M. 1976. Our Landed Heritage, the Public Domain, 1776-1970. University of Nebraska Press, 2nd ed., rev. Lincoln, Neb.
15 Robbins. op. cit. p. 431-5
16 Act of October 21, 1976 (9O Stat, 2743; 43 U.S.C. 1701-1781; 7 U.S.C. 1012a; 16 U.S.C. 478a, 1338a)
17 92 Star. 1803.
18 Including "wild" and "canoe" areas.
19 78 Star. 890; 16 U.S.C. 1131-36
20 op. cit. P. 199
21 82 Star. 906; 16 U.S.C. 1271-1287
22 82 Star. 906; 16 U.S.C. 1271-1287
23 U.S. Public Lands Commission. 1880. Report. 46 Congress, 2nd Session. House Exec. Doc, No. 46
24 Op. cit. Sec. 6
25 See U.S. Senate, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. Compilation of the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources act of 1974. Committee print, 96 congress, 1st Session, 1508 p.
26 Act of August 17, 1974 (88 Stat. 476, as amended; 16U.S.C. 1600-1614)
Introducing: John R. McGuire
John R. McGuire, a distinguished forester, is a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He received his undergraduate training in forestry at the University of Minnesota (1935-39), and later obtained the Master of Forestry degree at Yale University (1941) and an M.A. degree in economics at the University of Pennsylvania (1954).
Mr. McGuire's career with the U.S. Forest from 1939-1979 spanned a forty-year period of profound change, during which the agency evolved from a custodian of 187 million acres of National Forest lands to intensive management of them for multiple uses, including timber, range, wildlife, water, recreation, and wilderness. Mr. McGuire was a direct participant in many of the major events of this period. During his Washington years, no less than eleven major pieces of legislation affecting national forest management was enacted by Congress. He served as Chief of the Forest Service from 1972-79, a period when Congress enacted the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act (1974) and the National Forest Management Act (1976). In the December, 1976, issue of the Journal of Forestry, he described the latter as "...a landmark in the history of the nation's natural resource legislation...the strongest policy direction Congress has ever provided on national forest management."
Mr. McGuire's perspectives on the national forests reflects his experience as a researcher, program administrator, and the nation's highest ranking federal forest officer. His first job with the Forest Service was in 1939-40 as an assistant field assistant at the Central States Forest Experiment Station.
Following military service in the U.S. Army, he returned to the
Forest Service in 1946 as Research Center Leader at the Northeastern
Forest Experiment Station. He worked there until 1957, then moved
to California where he became Chief of the Division of Forest Economics
Research in the Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station
in Berkeley. Six years later, in 1963, he moved to Washington, D.
C., for a one-year assignment as Staff Assistant to the Deputy Chief
for Research. He then returned to Berkeley as Director of the Pacific
Southwest Station, a position he held from 1963-1967. In 1968 he
returned to Washington, becoming successively Deputy Chief for Program
Planning and Legislation, Associate Chief, and finally Chief in
1972. Mr. McGuire retired in 1979, and is active as a consultant
and lecturer.