Gifford+Pinchot

= Gifford Pinchot = = (1865- 1946) =

 First Chief of the United States Forest Service (1905- 1910) and the 28th Governor of Pennsylvania

 Background : Pinchot’s family owned and opoperated lumber and land spspecialization family. Pinchot’s father, ashamed of the damage he brought to the land, urged Gifford to become a forester. He went on to study at Yale School of Forestry in 1900. The same year, Pinchot established the Society of American Foresters to give credibility to the newer profession of ‘forestry’. He then started exploring the West for possible forest reserves, and in 1898, he was named the first chief of the Division of Forestry. His friend, Theodore Roosevelt, became president after the assination of President McKinley.

 Contributions : With President Roosevelt’s approval, Pinchot worked to restruct and manage the country’s forests. While Pinchot was in office, the amount of forest reserves in the United States grew tremendously. Pinchot was set on the idea of ‘conservation’. ethic He idolized the thought of saving and preserving the national wealth of the country from persistant timber and oil companies wanting to use the land for their own benefit. Pinchot helped Roosevelt designate 16 million acres for national reserves right before Roosevelt was stripped of his Presidency. As President William Taft seceded Roosevelt’s position, he fired Pinchot in order to allow local businesses grow and take what the land had to offer. Much of the land Pinchot worked effortlessly to protect was handed back over to the public for a wide variety of uses such as business and population expansion. With all this natural beauty lost, some still remains in his name such as the many Gifford Pinchot National Forests spread throughout the United States. [|__http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/people/Pinchot/Pinchot.aspx__]  [|__http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifford_Pinchot__]  [|__http://www.fs.fed.us/__]