Percent forest-cover loss in the Eastern United States, pre-1800s to

On 5 April 1933, one month after assuming office, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6101, entitled Relief of Unemployment through the Performance of Useful Public Works, appropriated 10 million to establish ECW, and appointed Robert Eechner as director. The executive order mandated the appointment of two representatives by each of the secretaries of Agriculture, Interior, Labor, and War to an ECW advisory council (the Veterans Administration, Office of Indian Affairs, and Department of Education were later participants). The advisory council discussed matters of policy and presented recommendations to the director, who was free to accept or reject them. However, on all matters pertaining to CCC policy, the ultimate authority resided with the president. 

1 Cooperative Role with the National Park Service 

During the existence of the CCC program (from April 1933 to June 1942) work was undertaken by the NPS on a total of 655 parks and related types of recreation areas 71 national parks, 23 recreational demonstration areas, 8 TVA areas, 29 federal defense areas, 405 state parks, 42 county parks, 75 metropolitan parks, and 2 unclassified areas (Wirth, 1980). At the peak of its program in 1935, there were 590 camps in national and state parks. By 1942, there were only 89 camps, 70 of which were operated by the NPS on military reservations doing defense work (Paige, 1985 Wirth, 1980). 

2 Soil Bank Program and Conservation Reserve Program 

Of that amount, 2.2 million acres (890,000 ha) were planted in trees primarily by an ownership group comprised of farmers and other private citizens, although the forest industry, the USES, and other public entities contributed (Moulton Hernandez, 2000). The majority of planting (87%) occurred in the southern states. A national study was conducted in 1992 of acreage that was planted in trees under the Soil Bank Program and found that only 7.5% had been converted back for agriculture or pasture purposes (Dangerfield, Newman, Moorhead, Thompson, 1995). 

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Fig. 76.1 Percent forest-cover loss in the Eastern United States, pre-1800s to 1909. (Source Evans et al., 2009 Data Source U.S. Department of Agriculture)...

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