52 CHAPTER 3 Bettman/Corbis Images
only after designating 21 new national forests
that totaled 6.5 million hectares (16 million
acres).
Roosevelt appointed Gifford Pinchot
(1865–1946) the first head of the U.S. Forest
Service. Both Roosevelt and Pinchot were
utilitarian conservationists who viewed forests
in terms of their usefulness to people—such
as in providing jobs and renewable resources. Pinchot
supported expanding the nation’s forest reserves and
managing them scientifically (for instance, harvesting
trees only at the rate at which they regrow). Today, national
forests are managed for multiple uses, from biological
habitats to recreation to timber harvest to cattle grazing.Establishing National Parks
and Monuments
Congress established the world’s first national park in
1872, after a party of Montana explorers reported on the
natural beauty of the canyon and falls of the Yellowstone
River. Yellowstone National Park now includes parts of
Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. In 1890 the Yosemite
National Park Bill established the Yosemite and Sequoia
national parks in California, largely in response to
the efforts of a single man, naturalist and writer John
Muir (1838–1914) (Figure 3.3). Muir, who as a childa prominent U.S. writer, lived for 2 years on
the shore of Walden Pond near Concord,
Massachusetts. There he observed nature and
contemplated how people could simplify their
lives to live in harmony with the natural world.
George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882) was a
farmer, linguist, and diplomat at various times
during his life. Today he is most remembered
for his book Man and Nature, published in 1864, which
provided one of the first discussions of humans as agents
of global environmental change.
In 1875 a group of public-minded citizens formed
the American Forestry Association with the intent of
influencing public opinion against the wholesale destruc-
tion of America’s forests. Sixteen years later, in 1891,
the F orest Reserve Act (which was part of the General
Land Law Revision Act) gave the U.S. president the au-
thority to establish forest reserves on public (federally
owned) land. Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901), Grover
Cleveland (1837–1908), William McKinley (1843–1901),
and Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) used this law to
put a total of 17.4 million hectares (43 million acres) of
forest, primarily in the West, out of the reach of loggers.
In 1907 angry Northwest congressmen pushed
through a bill stating that national forests could no
longer be created by the president but would require
an act of Congress. Roosevelt signed the bill into law but
utilitarian
conservationist
A person who values
natural resources
because of their
usefulness to humans
but uses them
sensibly and carefully.President Theodore Roosevelt (left)
`Ê Ê ÕÀÊUÊ}ÕÀiÊΰÎÊ
This photo was taken on Glacier Point
above Yosemite Valley, California.