Established in 1908 at the height of the conservation movement by Forest Service Chief Gifford Pinchot, the State and Private Forestry branch was created to help sustain the nation’s forests as well as to protect communities and the environment from such things as wildland fires, insects, and disease. One of five branches within the U.S. Forest Service, State and Private Forestry does not manage a land base; rather, it provides expertise, programs, and funds to help other owners conserve and manage their forestlands. It reaches across the national forest boundaries to work cooperatively with other federal agencies, states, tribes, communities, nonprofit organizations,, and private landowners. In other words, State and Private Forestry helps support forest management for all.
Forest Service national historian Lincoln Bramwell engagingly captures the State and Private Forestry branch’s history, demonstrating why, time and again, it was able to overcome numerous challenges to its purpose—and at times its existence—to become the federal leader in providing and coordinating technical and financial assistance to landowners and resource managers. In doing so, says Bramwell, State and Private Forestry became indispensable to “the Forest Service’s mission to focus the nation on the value of forest conservation.”