In the United States these steps in the movement for the wise use of the forest have been taken mainly in the last dozen or fifteen years, during which the Federal forest organization has grown from an insignificant division of less than a dozen men to the present United States Forest Service, of more than three thousand members. During this period, also, forestry, both as a profession and as a public necessity, has won enduring public recognition, and at the same time more public timberland has been set aside for the public use and to remain in the public hands than during all the rest of our history put together. To-day the National Forests are reasonably safe in the protection of public opinion, not against all attack, it is true, but against any successful attempt to dismember and turn them over to the special interests who already control the bulk and the best of our forests. The public has accepted forestry as necessary to the public welfare, both in the present and in the future; State forest organizations are springing up; forestry has won the right to be heard in the business offices as well as in the conventions of the private owners of forest land; and the time for the practice of the profession has fully come.
What does a Forester do? I will try to answer this question, first, with reference to the United States Forest Service, and later as to the numerous other fields of activity which are opening or have already opened to the trained Forester in the United States.
The United States Forest Service is responsible both for the general progress of forestry, so far as the United States Government is concerned, and for the protection and use of the National Forests. These National Forests now cover an area of one hundred and eighty-seven million acres, or as much land as is included in all the New England States, with New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. The head of the Service, whose official title is "Forester," is charged with the great task of protecting this vast area against fire, theft, and other depredations, and of making all its resources, the wood, water, and grass, the minerals, and the soil, available and useful to the people of the United States under regulations which will secure development and prevent destruction or waste.