This report and its recommendation should focus your attention on how the nation can best extend this legacy into the future. As an early conservationist and the first administrator of national forests, Pinchot helped guarantee the availability of natural resources to meet human needs. John Muir, a Pinchot contemporary, focused his attention on amenity protection and laid the early foundation for current environmental activism. The intense debates on the appropriate balance between resource utilization and amenity protection prevalent during the Pinchot-Muir era persist today, but with a new and growing issue as well concern that the world environment is deteriorating, and what this may portend for this and future generations. Forests are seen to have a major life-support role is sustaining planetary health and quality of human life.
Current debate continues to focus primarily on the management of publicly-owned lands.
Now, with current and evolving legislative and regulatory controls on public lands as a backdrop, more attention is turning to the nation's privately-owned lands and resources. The nation is facing highly-complex forestland management issues on public as well as private lands. Views are diverse and the debate often contentious. The Society of American Foresters is sensitive to national concerns about the future management of forest resources, and has been reflecting upon the role of the forestry profession in that future. In 1991, SAF's president appointed a Task Force from the Society's diverse membership to evaluate the ways to assure the long-term health and productivity of the nation's forest resources.