Fifty years ago last week, Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot organized a Government agency to preserve what was left of the American forest. They were none too soon: in less than three centuries, the pioneers had ripped deeply into the continent's skin of trees, and another century might have left the U.S. as bare and barren as a desert. From the time of the first settlers, Americans had operated on a theory of chop and run; they had none of the Western European's respect for the wealth of forests. The mythological hero,...
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