Bill Greeley was among the chosen. Pinchot was outraged. From the beginning, Greeley was uncomfortable with Pinchot's fervent belief in the mercenary character of the average lumberman. It was a discomfort that would later boil over in a series of very public debates that were destined to shape the entire National Forest System, and the Forest Service itself. But this was 1905, and for now the show was Pinchot's.
Newspaper reports about timber fraud involving public figures added fuel to the fire.
In the end, over the objections of cattle, mining and lumber interests who had come to view western public lands as their own, congress created a series of forest reserves that became the National Forest System. Not all beer and skittles Bill Greeley loved his work, and he seemed to thrive on the chaos created by the emergence of the new Forest Service. He, however, had spent enough time laying out timber sales in northern California to know that all lumbermen were not the mercenaries Pinchot said they were. Perhaps lumbermen could be persuaded to cut less and replant where they cut if something could be done to reduce the risk their investments would burn up in a forest fire. At first, lumbermen scoffed at Greeley's gentle prodding.