Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 12.1.
Location of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests in Arizona, USA.
stewardship contracting experiment contains important lessons about both the prom-
ise and the challenges of this emerging model of community-based forest restoration.
1
Policy Background
In order to understand the significance of stewardship contracting and the impor-
tance of policy in public lands restoration, it is important to briefly review the history
of national forest management in the United States. The National Forest System, a
patchwork of federally owned land covering more than 190 million acres nationwide
(Nelson 1995) began as a series of “forest reserves” (areas of public land reserved from
disposal to private ownership) established in the late nineteenth century as a means of
protecting against fire, deforestation, and watershed damage (Steen 1991). In the last
decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century these
reserves were expanded through presidential proclamations and acts of Congress.
They became known as national forests in 1907, two years after the U.S. Forest Service
was established (Robbins 1985). The U.S. Forest Service, tasked with managing na-
tional forestlands, was forged from a Progressive Era vision in which the expert ap-
plication of scientific principles to forests was believed to be capable of creating sta-
