Information AboutGifford Pinchot |
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Pinchot claimed that his father was responsible for bringing forestry to the United States; that was an exaggeration. His father James Pinchot had made a great fortune from lumbering but regretted the damage his work had done to the land. He made conservation a family affair and decided that Gifford would become a forester, he endowed the Yale School of Forestry, and he turned the family estate at Milford, Pennsylvania, into a nursery for the American forestry movement. It was managed by Gifford's brother Amos Pinchot . The Pinchots thus were set apart from the other leading experts, Bernhard E. Fernow and Carl A. Schenck, both Cornell professors. They advocated a regional approach and a private enterprise effort, respectively, in contrast to the Pinchot national vision. 1999 Gifford graduated from Yale College in 1889 , where he was a member of Skull And Bones and then studied as a postgraduate at the French National Forestry School for a year. In 1896, Grover Cleveland appointed Pinchot to the National Forest Commission and charged him with developing a plan for the nation’s Western forest reserves. In 1898, he became head of the Division of Forestry, later renamed the United States Forest Service. He founded the Yale University School of Forestry and was a professor there from 1903 until 1936. Pinchot sought to turn public land policy from one that dispersed resources to private holdings to one that maintained federal ownership and management of public land. He was a Progressive who strongly believed in the , who were deeply opposed to commercializing nature. 2002 Pinchot rose to national prominence under the patronage of President Theodore Roosevelt . In 1905, his department also gained control of the national forest reserves, thereby dramatically increasing the authority of the Forest Service. Pinchot developed a plan by which the forests could be developed by private interests, under set terms, in exchange for a fee. Pinchot used massive publicity campaigns to direct national discussions of natural resource management issues. Central to his publicity work was his creation of news for magazines and newspapers, as well as debates with opponents such as John Muir . Pinchot issued massive amounts of information and news to the press and public. His effectiveness in manipulating information hostile to his boss President Taft led to his firing in January 1910. But his successes became a model for other bureaucrats in how to influence public opinion. 1987 Pinchot’s policies encountered some opposition. Preservationists opposed commercialization of the land; Congress was increasingly hostile to conservation of the forests, owing to local commercial pressures for quicker exploitation. In 1907, Congress forbade the creation of more forest reserves in the Western states. Roosevelt designated 16 million acres (65,000 km²) of new National Forests just minutes before his power to do so was stripped by a congressionally mandated amendment to the Agriculture Bill. Pinchot’s authority was substantially undermined by the election of President William Howard Taft in 1908. Taft later fired Pinchot for speaking out against his policies and those of Richard Ballinger , Secretary of the Interior. Pinchot launched a series of public attacks to discredit Ballinger and force him from office which became known as the Ballinger-Pinchot Controversy . That episode hastened the split in the Republican Party that led to the formation of the Progressive Party , of which Pinchot and his brother were top leaders. Pinchot ran for Senate in 1914 on the Progressive Party ticket and expressed interest in the Presidency. After his campaign, Pinchot promoted American involvement in World War I , opposing President Woodrow Wilson 's neutrality. The Progressives returned to their old parties and Pinchot rejoined the Republicans. He founded the National Conservation Association , of which he was president from 1910 to 1925. With Wilson's re-election in 1916, Pinchot turned to Pennsylvania state politics. Governor and regulation of public utilities. He won a close election. Pinchot retired at the end of his term in 1927. Following another unsuccessful attempt at the US Senate, the Pinchots took a seven-month cruise of the South Seas. In 1930, Pinchot won a second term as governor, battling for regulation of public utilities, relief for the unemployed and construction of paved roads to ''"get the farmers out of the mud."'' This was the achievement he was most proud of. In 1935, Pinchot ran unsuccessfully for the Senate a third time. In his remaining years, the ex-governor gave advice to President Roosevelt, wrote a book about his life as a forester and devised a fishing kit to be used in lifeboats during World War II. He even instructed the navy on how to extract fresh water from fish. On October 4, 1946, he died, age eighty-one, of Leukemia . He was survived by his wife, Cornelia Bryce, and his son, Gifford Bryce Pinchot (Gifford Pinchot II). Perhaps because of pride in the first Gifford Pinchot's legacy, the Pinchot family has continued to name their sons Gifford, down to Gifford Pinchot IV. Gifford Pinchot National Forest , which is located in Washington, is named in his honor. FURTHER READING Primary sources
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