In the nineteenth century the United States government transferred 1 billion acres of public land into private hands, one-half of the land mass of the continental United States. The Department of the Interior deemed public land either suitable for agriculture or not, with forest areas devoid of special designation. Railroad companies received large grants of land, as well as state-sponsored universities (today known as land grant schools), while speculators and settlers purchased or claimed land for the westward migration. Land could be purchased cheaply, and Congress divested the federal government of land as quickly as the market would absorb it. In spite of this great divestiture, the surprising fact is that by the First World War a large section of forests remained in the public trust, managed by a professional cadre of government foresters. Three central foresters, Franklin B. Hough, Charles Sargent, and Gifford Pinchot, credited empire forestry, particularly as practiced in India, with the political compromise that led to massive forest reservations by Congress, and the beginning of modern environmental practice in the United States.

The British colonial example ranked as an unparalleled antecedent to the environmental problems faced by Americans, and featured a highly articulate philosophy of management with a powerful ratiocination for public ownership. The presence of a revenue-producing paragon advanced conservation efforts precisely at the moment when the federal government precipitated either massive forest reservations or a final disposal of forest area to private companies.