The conservation legacy of Theodore Roosevelt is found in the 230 million acres of public lands he helped establish during his presidency. Much of that land - 150 millions acres - was set aside as national forests. Roosevelt created the present-day USFS in 1905, an organization within the Department of Agriculture. The idea was to conserve forests for continued use. An adamant proponent of utilizing the country's resources, Roosevelt wanted to insure the sustainability of those resources.