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Show CHAPTER TWENTY Organization, Administration, and Budgeting Policy THE HISTORY of public land programs, policies, and organizational structure has been a series of responses to changing social and political needs.1 The Ordinance of 1785 authorized the public land survey system which was to be the key to an orderly disposal program, but it was not until 1796 that Congress took positive action to implement the program by establishing the Office of Surveyor General in the Department of the Treasury.2 The first land offices were set up at Marietta, Chillicothe, Steubenville, and Cincinnati in 1800. Rising activity in land sales led to the creation of the General Land Office in the Treasury Department to assume the increasing volume of administrative action handled by the Secretary up to that time. This established the basic organizational machinery that was to be responsible for the survey and disposal of a billion and a half acres of land through land offices and survey teams spread through 30 states. When the Department of the Interior was created in 1849 to administer the home affairs of the Nation, the General Land Office was transferred to the new Department and became its most important operating bureau.3 With the establishment of the national forest reserves at the end of the 19th century, their management was made the responsibility of the General Land Office. However, largely as the result of the 1 Paul Wallace Gates and Robert W. Swenson, History of Public Land Law Development, PLLRC Study Report, 1968. 2 Act of May 18, 1796, 1 Stat. 464. ! Act of March 3, 1849, 9 Stat. 395. efforts of Gifford Pinchot in the first great political conservation battle, the Bureau of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture, whose initial function was to encourage good forestry practices by private landowners and states, was re-designated as the Forest Service and assigned responsibility for management of the national forests in 1905.4 Until 1916, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, Mesa Verde, and the other national parks were administered as independent units without a working organization at the national level to direct their operations and management. The 1916 Act created the National Park Service in the Department of the Interior to perform this function.5 The first wildlife refuge, on Pelican Island in Florida, was established in 1903, and its management was assigned to the Bureau of Biological Survey in the Department of Agriculture. After transfer of this function to the Department of the Interior in 1939,6 the Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956 7 established the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, which is responsible for refuge management within the Fish and Wildlife Service. The passage of the Taylor Grazing Act in 1934 8 initiated a new conservation era with respect to the remaining unappropriated, unreserved public domain lands. The Grazing Service, was created to manage the grazing districts authorized under that act. The 4 16 U.S.C. §472 (1964). 5 16 U.S.C. § 1 (1964). « Reorg. Plan No. II, July 1, 1939, 5 U.S.C.A. app., p. 142 (1967). 7 16 U.S.C. §742b (1964). s 43 U.S.C. §§ 315 et seq. (1964). 281 |