Gifford Pinchot

1. GiffordPinchot By: Trista Dillon

2. About Gifford Pinchot August 11, 1865 – October 4, 1946. Gifford Pinchot died on October 4, 1946, aged 81, from leukemia. Lived in Simsbury, Connecticut. He was the son of James W. Pinchot, a successful New York City wallpaper merchant and Mary Eno, daughter of one of New York City's wealthiest real estate developers, Amos Eno. Education: He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and in 1889 he graduated from Yale University. He wanted to study forestry so he had to go to a school in France. Occupation: Pinchot was an American forester and politician. Pinchot served as the first Chief of the United States Forest Service from 1905 until his firing in 1910, and was the 28th Governor of Pennsylvania, serving from 1923 to 1927, and again from 1931 to 1935. He was good friends with Theodore Roosevelt. The Pinchot’s made a great fortune from lumbering and land speculation, but the father ended up regretting what he had done to the land, so he made environmental conservation his mission to make up for what he did.

3. Contributions He worked as a resident forester for Vanderbilt's Biltmore Forest Estate for three years. He was the primary founder of the Society of American Foresters. He continued as forester until 1910, when he was fired by President Taft in a controversy over coal claims in Alaska. He was replaced by Henry "Harry" S. Graves. Pinchot sought to turn public land policy from one that dispersed resources among private holdings, to one that maintained federal ownership and management of public land Pinchot developed a plan by which the forests could be developed by private interests in exchange for a fee. In 1905 the forest reserves numbered 60 units covering 56 million acres; in 1910 there were 150 national forests covering 172 million acres. Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington and Gifford Pinchot State Park in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania, are named in his honor, as is Pinchot Hall at Penn State University. The largest Coast Redwood in Muir Woods, California, is also named in his honor, as is Pinchot Pass on the John Muir Trail in the Kings Canyon National Park in California.

4. Relevance to APES His quote from his book, Breaking New Ground, he states, “Without natural resources life itself is impossible. From birth to death, natural resources, transformed for human use, feed, clothe, shelter, and transport us. Upon them we depend for every material necessity, comfort, convenience, and protection in our lives. Without abundant resources prosperity is out of reach." His statement still holds true today. Sooner or later our resources are going to start to diminish and we are going to be struggling to find a replacement for most of our non-renewable resources. Our society is not worried about the future and it’s going to come back and bite us eventually. We are going to regret every irresponsible action that we ever made but it will be too late.

5. Sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifford_Pinchot http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/people/Pinchot/Pinchot.aspx