The National Forests are a tangible reminder of the natural beauty our homeland has provided for countless generations of inhabitants. The trees serve as natural clocks counting the years within through accumulated rings of new added growth; the forests are the calibration by which they mark the passage of time. A process both unseen and seen.
What more is unseen. Into the depths of the Earth. Tree root systems that hold our lands in place, preventing erosion, landslides, the degradation of the land by man and the elements. Underground reservoirs, caverns, cave systems. The strata that lie beneath, and is the foundation of our national forests. The ground upon which our footfalls pass across trails in the wilderness, seeking connection and renewal as we pass through the forests.
We see and encounter Boundaries marked by tree lines, delineating the edges of the forest: the difference often measured by the absence of trees on lands abutting National Forests. Nature’s boundaries too – the rivers, the valleys, the mountain ranges, the glaciers, the shorelines – shape the forests in size and scope and variety of tree species, whether coniferous, or deciduous, or evergreens, or even fruit trees.
The diversity of the forests astounds the senses. Ponderosa pines in the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota. Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico, with the only tropical rainforest among the 154 named National Forests. Stands of chaparral in Angelas National Forest in California. Conecuh National Forest, Alabama, with its longleaf pine forests. Davy Crockett National Forest, Texas, and its hardwoods; Delta National Forest, Mississippi, which offers the only bottomland hardwood forest in the National Forests group.
"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…".
Other boundaries stretch across the land. Digging up the earth, in order to create fire breaks in forests. The fire lines intersect the land as new boundaries created by the intersection of natural forces pitted against manmade intervention on the forest’s behalf.
Specificity, then and now: how did lands first designated as National Forest come to be?
The Congress of the United States created the first special agent to study and manage forest health, in 1876 as part of the US Department of Agriculture. It was quickly learned that more was needed.
The Division of Forestry soon followed. Founded in 1881, it was the precursor to the modern US Forest Service, charged with monitoring forests on public lands from unrestricted logging. These efforts led to government action to create new forest reserves, an effort which gained momentum with passage of the Forest Reserve Act of 1891. However, It was not until the dawn of a new millennium that the Organic Administration Act of 1897 was made the law of the land and provided the protection of lands as new “national forests” for the common good. The mandate was clear, direct, and purposeful: “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…”.
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In the decades that followed, the names of agencies have changed and new laws were passed, to expand and increase protections, always with the lands as the focus. The Bureau of Forestry took charge in 1905. The Weeks Law of 1911 created more national forests, from privately-owned lands that had been clearcut of trees, now prime for replanting and conservation as new forests.
The transformation of the land across America, with housing booms that followed the post-World War II era, led to increased demands for timber products from national forests. Supplies of building materials vied with environmental concerns and voices that called out for conservation, rather than depletion. The culmination was 12 million board feet in timber harvest volume attained from the forests in 1975, and again around 1990, before a massive drop off in volume that has continued to this day.
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We believe that the lands of our national forests will remain constant in our lives, but this is not guaranteed. It is through the realization that the lands and the trees they hold are as one, inseparable, co-dependent, an ecosystem that dates back farther than any law, agency, community, or people of memory. We may own and inhabit the lands, but the forests are unique, independent, the true bearers of memory and time.
