The Maturing of California State Forestry, 1943–47

Historians have paid less attention to forestry at the state level than at the federal level. Yet state government actions directly affect the use of the area of forestland in private ownership, much greater than that under federal jurisdiction. This detailed account of California state forestry in the mid-1940s teveals how one state govern­ ment was convinced that it should formulate an active forest policy of its own. California was slow in developing a full-fledged state forestry agency, as T. F. Arvola suggests. From the turn of the century until World War II, the government of Cali­ fornia assigned widely varying priorities to forest policy. California created its forestry board in 1885; dissolved the board in 1893; then revived it again in 1903, and appointed California's first state forester in 1905. For the next four decades, the state government saw its own responsibilities in the forests as limited mainly to fighting fires and rarely appropriated any significant sums for forest management or research. As Arvola recounts, the state of California greatly expanded the scope of its forestry program during the mid-1940s, largely in re­ sponse to the persuasive lobbying of forestry professor Emanuel Fritz. These events had origins and implications beyond Cali­ fornia as well. A number of state governments became more active in forestry in the 1920s and 1930s, often by acquiring tax-delinquent cutover lands for state forests. In California, however, the tax exemption granted to immature trees on cutover lands by a state constitutional amendment in 1926 diminished this possibility. The Lumber Code of the federal National Recovery Admini­ stration also provided some states with models for their own laws. Oregon, for example, passed its forest practice act in 1941. California's forest practice act was passed in 1945. The following account reveals the complex politics involved in preparing, passing, and enforcing such state legislation.