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The profession of forestry started to take hold in the United States in late 1800s. In 1889, George Vanderbilt hired Gifford Pinchot (pictured at right), a young forester educated in Europe, to manage the forest at the Biltmore Estate. It was the nation’s first professionally managed forest.
In 1891 Congress passed the Forest Reserves Act, which created a reserve of 40 million acres of forestland in the United States. Six years later in 1897, Congress passed the Organic Act, which served as the basis for management of the newly created forest reserves.
At the time, there were fewer than 10 individuals in the nation with any formal forest-management training, and all of them studied in Europe. That changed in 1898, when the Biltmore Forest School and the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell started forestry education programs. Two years later, the Yale School of Forestry began training professionals to manage this vital resource.
Pinchot believed that high standards were essential to bring a level of dignity to this new profession that equaled that of other professions. On November 30, 1900, Pinchot asked seven professional foresters to join him in his office at the Department of Agriculture. The result of that gathering was the formation of SAF.
SAF’s objective was “to further the cause of forestry in America by fostering a spirit of comradeship among foresters; by creating opportunities for a free interchange of views upon forestry and allied subjects; and by disseminating a knowledge of the purpose and achievements of forestry.” Pinchot served as the Society’s first President from 1900 to 1908 and then again from 1910 to 1911.
As the Society grew, so did its programs. A national meeting, held outside Washington, DC, took place on 1914 in Ithaca, New York. The Journal of Forestry was published in January 1917 to bring the latest scientific information about forest management to its members. In 1935, SAF began the accreditation of forestry programs, which has expanded to four standards. In 1994, SAF created the Certified Forester program—the national certification program for foresters and other natural resources professionals. In 1995, SAF launched The Forestry Source newspaper to bring the latest news about forestry and the Society’s activities directly to members.
Today, SAF is a 12,000-member community that has held true to its original objective to bring forestry and natural resources professionals together and keep them informed about the latest advances in forest science and management.
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Resources
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4Factors Affecting the Attitudes of Nonindustrial Private Forest Landowners Regarding Carbon Sequestration and Trading
Leading climate change experts within the international scientific community support the use of forest carbon sinks as a climate change mitigation tool. Functioning regulatory and voluntary carbon offset frameworks within the United States recognize forest offsets with varying levels of stringency. Emerging carbon emission reduction legislation outlines a regulatory cap-and-trade system with provisions for significant domestic forest-related offsets.
Land Cover Analysis for Urban Foresters and Municipal Planners: Examples from Iowa
Contemporary land-use change and impacts on natural systems are of concern throughout the Cornbelt region, where agricultural activities have extensively altered the landscape. Land-use changes driven by urbanization throughout this region could have a disproportionate impact on remaining natural areas, particularly forests. We used readily available data sets and software to assess land cover change for four municipalities in Iowa and to examine the usefulness of this approach for urban foresters and planners interested in understanding/predicting impacts of land cover change.
Does New Large Private Landownership and Their Management Priorities Influence Public Access in the Northern Forest
The Northern Forest spans New York and three New England states and contains over 26 million ac, making it the largest contiguous forest east of the Mississippi. Most of the forestland is privately owned and public access to private land is a time-honored tradition in the region. Residents fear this tradition of open access may be threatened by recent acceleration in land tenure change across the region. We surveyed those who own 1,000 ac or more in the four-state region and found that newer owners were not more likely to post their land.
Potential Overestimation of Carbon Sequestration in the Forested Wildland-Urban Interface in Northern New England
Forest area determined from remote sensing-derived land cover maps alone at moderate resolution may not appropriately reflect dynamics of housing development in the forested wildland-urban interface (WUI). We conducted a study to quantify how housing development could affect estimates of forest carbon sequestration (FCS) in northern New England, where the percentage of WUI in relation to total land area is nearly double the national average.