Isn't the alphabet soup great? We have National Parks and have the National Park Service. We have National Forests, but we DON"T have a National Forest Service, we have the U.S. Forest Service. This is because the Forest Service has three programs, the National Forest System, Research and State & Private Forestry. There are many research stations around the country and at Northern Arizona University the USFS research facility is in the same building as the School of Forestry. I mention that one because I graduated from there.
The State and Private Forestry program provides assistance and grant funding to forestry /department of natural resource agencies of the 50 states and some of the trust territories (Guam, Marianas Islands, etc.). They also work to improve the management of privately owned forest lands, mostly small property owners and not large corporations such as Georgia-Pacific.
The State and Private Forestry program is more active in the east where private ownership of forest lands is more common. In the west most of the forests are publicly owned or are on the lands of major corporations. In California, Oregon and Washington are lot of forest is located on small properties and the state forestry agencies are large and active organizations. However, this USFS program has provided a lot of fire equipment to these agencies, most especially by obtaining and transferring military surplus aircraft for state firefighting use.
OPTIONAL READING - SOME EXAMPLES OF WHAT THE STATE & PRIVATE FORESTRY; AND RESEARCH PROGRAMS DO AND HAVE PRODUCED.
There are two primary fire research facilities in the Forest Service, one at Missoula, MT and the other at Riverside, CA. The list of projects these labs are working on is long. One project is on developing methods to predict fire behavior, some of it using handheld device computer software. This product can be carried in the field and both weather and fuel parameters are used on wildland and prescribed fires. Another is developing various landscape modification (thinning and planting) methods for use in specific areas of the country that provide structure protection while reducing or eliminating the need for artificial irrigation, are aesthetically pleasing and low cost.
There are a few facilities formerly called "Engineering and Equipment Development Centers." I don't recall the new name of these facilities. One of these is located at Missoula, MT and the other within the Angeles National Forest adjacent to San Dimas, CA. One of their more well known products are the solar, convention powered self ventilating vault toilets you see nearly everywhere on all public lands in the U.S., including state and local parks and some in private campgrounds. This design is being used all over the world as the research to develop it is the best and most thorough ever done. They have large diameter black plastic vent pipes on top of them, one for each seat. They have also done a great deal of research into the tools, methods and chemicals used to clean outdoor recreation sites and have shown that some products sold by "snake oil salesmen" were not at all effective even though they smelled nice. They also developed all the versions of the fire shelter carried by firefighters of all wildland fire agencies in e U.S., federal state and local.
Many people know of truss framed building construction, but don't know that the USFS Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin developed it. It uses less and smaller wood from second growth trees, eliminating the need to cut large, old growth forest.
Just when you thought this was all clear, I should mention that the National Park Service has a significant research organization and provides assistance to state park agencies and oversees grants to some private, non profit organizations involved in historical and cultural preservation. The old Bureau of Outdoor Recreation was consolidated into the NPS and they provide some national level planning and coordination for recreation.
