g of commercial timber, cheap grazing land for cattle, multimillion dollar mining operations, recreational uses, and maintenance of a 360,000 mile network of roads that is eight times longer than all the U.S. interstate highways combined. Until World War II, the national forests could accommodate all users comfortably. Of course, at that time these forests were providing less than five percent of the nation's wood. A building boom developed after the war so that the annual cut from the national forests increased from 3.5 billion board feet in 1950 to 9.4 billion board feet in 1960, an increase that concerned Congress so much that it passed laws requiring the Forest Service to balance the goals of conservation and resource development. The national forests today still supply some 14 percent of the nation's timber output, and this timber is cheap for logging companies because the Forest Service builds all the roads and also sells off the trees at prices that are far below market value (Lemonick 70-71).
The Wilderness Act of 1964 demonstrated the federal commitment to preserving the national forests. Signed by President Johnson, the Act was designed to preserve in perpetuity nine million acres of Wilderness Areas accessible only on foot or on horseback. However, from the beginning powerful business interests worked to undermine the Act and to block new acquisitions. The reason was because they had commercial interests that would be harmed by such preservation (Grossman 13).
The National Park Service has from the beginning had a number of organizations observing its actions and acting as watchdogs, notably the National Parks Association (NPA, later called the National Parks and Conservation Association). These groups battled to protect the parks from a variety of incursions by business, by Congress, and by different administrations in Washington. For instance, in the mid 1930s, Colorado lawmakers passed legislation to all...