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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (161199)	3/20/2006 11:56:22 AM
From: ManyMoose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793933

National forests have mostly been federal land since the country started. Theodore Roosevelt saw that they were being abused by unscrupulous profiteers and started the National Forest System to manage them. Gifford Pinchot was the first professional forester in America, and is the founder of American Forestry and the US Forest Service. Forestry was developed in Germany and that's where Pinchot got his education. Those within the Louisiana Purchase were bought from Napoleon. Those in Oregon and Washington became US by virtue of discovery by Louis and Clark, and by treaty with England. California federal lands probably derived from the California Republic. In Ohio, the national forest land I've seen derives from lands that were settled by Revolutionary War veterans, farmed unsuccessfully and returned to federal ownership. Here is the Forest Service website. fs.fed.us I couldn't find anything about how federal lands were originally acquired. I do know they were acquired by legal means. Most national forest lands are older than the Forest Service and have been in continuous federal ownership since the USA was founded. They were the lands left over after homesteaders and railroads acquired ownership by virtue of settling the land. Railroads were granted land in order to encourage development of the rail lines. Homesteaders were granted land to encourage settlement. For the most part, the remaining federal lands were unsuitable for those purposes and came under management by one of the land management agencies that I've mentioned. Frankly, I don't know the ownership history of most national forest land. If you look at it one way, the whole western hemisphere was taken by force, but that's a subject that is settled and I'm not going to debate it. Anyway, name owners previous to the sovereign United States, and I'll show you an owner previous to that, from whom the land was taken by force. Native Americans didn't have the concept of ownership, so force was the mode of occupation after first discovery. Water is a basic component of human life, and selling it to the highest bidder will not fly. Street drug policy is a social issue.