United States National Forest
National Forest is a classification of protected and managed federal lands in the United States. National Forests are forest and woodland areas owned collectively by the American people through the federal government, managed by the United States Forest Service, a division of the United States Department of Agriculture; the National Forest System was created by the Land Revision Act of 1891, signed under the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. It was the result of concerted action by Los Angeles-area businessmen and property owners who were concerned by the harm being done to the watershed of the San Gabriel Mountains by ranchers and miners. Abbot Kinney and forester Theodore Lukens were key spokesmen for the effort. In the United States there are 155 National Forests containing 190 million acres of land; these lands comprise 8.5 percent of the total land area of the United States, an area about the size of Texas. Some 87 percent of National Forest land lies west of the Mississippi River in the mountain ranges of the Western United States.
Alaska has 12 percent of all National Forest lands. The U. S. Forest Service manages all of the United States National Grasslands, around half of the United States National Recreation Areas. There are two distinctly different types of forests within the National Forest system; those east of the Great Plains in the Midwestern and Eastern United States were acquired by the federal government since 1891, may be second growth forests. The land had long been in the private domain and sometimes logged since colonial times, but was purchased by the United States government in order to create new National Forests; those west of the Great Plains in the Western United States, though established since 1891, are on lands with ownership maintained by the federal government since the U. S. acquisition and settling of the American West. These are lands that were kept in the public domain, with the exception of inholdings and donated or exchanged private forest lands. Land management of these areas focuses on conservation, timber harvesting, livestock grazing, watershed protection and recreation.
Unlike national parks and other federal lands managed by the National Park Service, extraction of natural resources from national forests is permitted, in many cases encouraged. However, the first-designated wilderness areas, some of the largest, are on National Forest lands. There are management decision conflicts between conservationists and environmentalists, natural resource extraction companies and lobbies, over the protection and/or use of National Forest lands; these conflicts center on endangered species protection, logging of old-growth forests, intensive clear cut logging, undervalued stumpage fees, mining operations and mining claim laws, logging/mining access road-building within National Forests. Additional conflicts arise from concerns that the grasslands and forest understory are grazed by sheep, and, more rising numbers of elk and mule deer due to loss of predators. Many ski resorts and summer resorts operate on leased land in National Forests. List of U. S. National Forests United States National Grassland National Forests of the United States topics State forest National Forest Management Act of 1976 Protected areas of the United States USDA Forest Service USDA Forest Service - The First Century 100 Years of Federal Forestry
Eagle, Alaska
Eagle is a city on the south bank of the Yukon River near the Canada–US border in the Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, United States. It includes the Eagle Historic District, a U. S. National Historic Landmark; the population was 86 at the 2010 census. Every February, Eagle hosts a checkpoint for the long-distance Yukon Quest sled dog race. Eagle is located at 64°47′10″N 141°12′0″W. Eagle is on the southern bank of the Yukon River, 8 miles west of the border between Alaska and the Yukon Territory of Canada at the end of the Taylor Highway, near Yukon–Charley Rivers National Preserve. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.0-square-mile, all land. Like most of Alaska, Eagle has a subarctic climate with long, cold winters moderated by chinook winds, short, warm summers. In the absence of chinook moderation, winter temperatures can be dangerously cold: in the notoriously cold month of December 1917, the temperature did not rise above −25 °F or −31.7 °C and it averaged −46 °F or −43.3 °C.
When chinooks occur, winter temperatures can get above 32 °F or 0 °C, doing so on an average of five days per winter. For thousands of years, the Eagle area was the home to indigenous peoples, including the historic Han people since long before the arrival of Europeans in Alaska; the first permanent American-built structure in present-day Eagle was a log trading post called "Belle Isle", built around 1874. In the late 1800s, Eagle became a supply and trading center for miners working the upper Yukon River and its tributaries. By 1898, its population had exceeded 1,700, as people were coming into the area because of the Klondike Gold Rush. In 1901 Eagle became the first incorporated city in the Alaska Interior, it was named for the many eagles. A United States Army camp, Fort Egbert, was built at Eagle in 1900. A telegraph line between Eagle and Valdez was completed in 1903. In 1905, Roald Amundsen arrived in Eagle and telegraphed the news of the Northwest Passage to the rest of the world; the gold rushes in Fairbanks lured people away from Eagle.
In 1903 Judge James Wickersham moved the Third Division court from Eagle to Fairbanks. By 1910, Eagle's population had declined to its present-day level. Fort Egbert was abandoned in 1911. Present-day Eagle is home to people of European descent. Nearby Eagle Village has a small population, about 50 percent Han; the town enjoyed some notoriety as the setting of John McPhee's book Coming into the Country, first published in 1977 and became quite popular. Many of the buildings from the Gold Rush years are preserved as part of the Eagle Historic District, a National Historic Landmark district. Eagle first appeared on the 1900 U. S. Census as Eagle City, although it was not incorporated until the following year, it was shortened to Eagle in the following census. As of the census of 2000, there were 129 people, 58 households, 37 families residing in the city; the population density was 127.9/sq mi. There were 137 housing units at an average density of 135.8 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 93.02% White, 6.20% Native American, 0.78% from two or more races.
0.78% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. There were 58 households out of which 20.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 55.2% were married couples living together, 6.9% had a female householder with no husband present, 36.2% were non-families. 34.5% of all households were made up of individuals and 5.2% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.22 and the average family size was 2.86. In the city the population was spread out with 24.8% under the age of 18, 3.1% from 18 to 24, 24.0% from 25 to 44, 44.2% from 45 to 64, 3.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 44 years. For every 100 females there were 95.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 98.0 males. The median income for a household in the city was $36,042, the median income for a family was $44,375. Males had a median income of $30,000 versus $20,000 for females; the per capita income for the city was $20,221. There were 2.6% of families and 16.5% of the population living below the poverty line, including 40.0% of under eighteens and none of those over 64.
In the 1970s high school-aged children took correspondence courses from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with a local resident supervising their work. Eagle is now part of the Alaska Gateway School District. Eagle School, a K–12 campus, serves city students; the Eagle Historic District is a well-preserved example of the historic development in Northern Alaska. Fort Egbert was built in 1889 to serve a central governmental role for the area. Over 100 buildings from this era survive including the Federal courthouse, funded by fines enacted against the rowdy inhabitants; the district was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 27, 1970 and was designated as a National Historic Landmark on June 2, 1978. List of National Historic Landmarks in Alaska National Register of Historic Places listings in Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Alaska "Fort Egbert and the Eagle Historic District summer-1977: Results of Archeological and Historic Research" by Anne Shinkwin, Elizabeth Andrews, Russell Sackett, Mary Kroul
Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve
Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve is a U. S. National Monument and National Preserve, consisting of the region around the Aniakchak volcano on the Aleutian Range of south-western Alaska; the 601,294-acre monument is one of the least-visited places in the National Park System due to its remote location and difficult weather. The area was proclaimed a National Monument on December 1, 1978, established as a National Monument and Preserve on December 2, 1980; the National Monument encompasses the preserve 464,118 acres. Visitation to Aniakchak is the lowest of all areas of the U. S. National Park System, according to the NPS, with only 100 documented recreational visits in 2017. Most visitors fly into Surprise Lake inside Aniakchak Crater, but the frequent fog and other adverse weather conditions make landing in the lake difficult, it is possible to fly into the nearby village of Port Heiden and proceed overland to the Aniakchak Crater. The core of the national monument lands encompasses the 6-mile wide Aniakchak Crater.
The high point on the caldera rim is Aniakchak Peak. The lake within the caldera, Surprise Lake, is the source of the Aniakchak River. Multiple rivers within the caldera flow into Surprise Lake to form it. In addition to Surprise Lake, the other prominent feature inside the caldera is Vent Mountain, the site of the most recent eruption within the caldera; the preserve lands flank the monument on either side. Subsistence hunting is allowed in both the monument and preserve, sport hunting is allowed in the preserve; the region was unexplored until the 1920s, when exploration for oil brought reports of an un-described volcano. A moderate eruption in 1931 forming Vent Mountain resulted in significant publicity, spurring studies to declare the region a national monument, it was not until 1978 that a monument was proclaimed by President Jimmy Carter under the Antiquities Act. The monument and preserve were established within their final boundaries in 1980 with the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve is located about 450 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, on the Alaska Peninsula. It is not accessible by road, except from Port Heiden, a nearby village, only to the outer flanks of the caldera; the only ways to reach the monument are by floatplane to lakes Surprise Lake, or sheltered coastal waters, or by boat or airplane to coastal towns near preserve lands followed by overland or overwater traverse. There are no permanent facilities in the monument and the NPS does not require visitor registration. Visitor services are provided by the interagency King Salmon Visitor Center in King Salmon, shared with Lake Clark National Park, Katmai National Park and Preserve, other National Park Service and U. S. Fish and Alaska local and state agencies; the monument adjoins the Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuge on its northeast and southwest sides. Monument lands amount to 137,000 acres, preserve lands 465,000 acres; the national monument is centered on the 6-mile diameter crater of ancient Mount Aniakchak, destroyed and the resulting crater formed during a caldera collapse event about 3,700 years ago.
The original mountain, about 7,000 feet tall, collapsed into its magma chamber, leaving an approximate 3,300-foot deep summit crater. The monument and surrounding preserve include the volcanic feature, the wild Aniakchak River, the Bristol Bay coastal habitat, portions of the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Prominent features within Aniakchak crater include the Gates and Vent Mountain; the monument and preserve include four major physiographic regions. The monument is centered on the mountains of the Aleutian Aniakchak Crater; the volcano's caldera presents an active volcanic and geothermal landscape and Surprise Lake, the source of the Aniakchak River. Extending outward from the mountains are the glacially altered river valleys; the coastline region extends for 52 miles along the southeastern side of the peninsula where it faces the Pacific Ocean. The mountain spine of the Aleutian Range consists of uplifted mountains of moderate height, reaching 2,500 metres; the mountain environment is predominantly alpine tundra.
Superimposed on the mountain chain are a series of volcanoes, the largest of, the remnant of Mount Aniakchak, now collapsed into its caldera, the floor of which lies about 1,100 feet above sea level. The caldera was once filled by a crater lake that covered about 50% of the crater; the caldera wall was breached, leading to a catastrophic flood as the lake drained. Its remnant is the source of the Aniakchak River; the river valley zones are subdivided into northwestern areas. On the southeast side, the rivers fall steeply through volcanic ash deposits where vegetation has recolonized the areas devastated by the volcano's eruption. On the northwest side, the rivers are more sloped and the land is boggy with lush vegetation; the southeast coastal region is indented, with coastal cliffs and islands. Three large bays are the remnants of earlier volcanic craters; the two larger bays are Aniakchak and Amber Bays, the smaller is Kejulik Bay. All have
Law of the United States
The law of the United States comprises many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the most important is the United States Constitution, the foundation of the federal government of the United States. The Constitution sets out the boundaries of federal law, which consists of Acts of Congress, treaties ratified by the Senate, regulations promulgated by the executive branch, case law originating from the federal judiciary; the United States Code is the official compilation and codification of general and permanent federal statutory law. Federal law and treaties, so long as they are in accordance with the Constitution, preempt conflicting state and territorial laws in the 50 U. S. in the territories. However, the scope of federal preemption is limited because the scope of federal power is not universal. In the dual-sovereign system of American federalism, states are the plenary sovereigns, each with their own constitution, while the federal sovereign possesses only the limited supreme authority enumerated in the Constitution.
Indeed, states may grant their citizens broader rights than the federal Constitution as long as they do not infringe on any federal constitutional rights. Thus, most U. S. law consists of state law, which can and does vary from one state to the next. At both the federal and state levels, with the exception of the state of Louisiana, the law of the United States is derived from the common law system of English law, in force at the time of the American Revolutionary War. However, American law has diverged from its English ancestor both in terms of substance and procedure, has incorporated a number of civil law innovations. In the United States, the law is derived from five sources: constitutional law, statutory law, administrative regulations, the common law. Where Congress enacts a statute that conflicts with the Constitution, state or federal courts may rule that law to be unconstitutional and declare it invalid. Notably, a statute does not automatically disappear because it has been found unconstitutional.
Many federal and state statutes have remained on the books for decades after they were ruled to be unconstitutional. However, under the principle of stare decisis, no sensible lower court will enforce an unconstitutional statute, any court that does so will be reversed by the Supreme Court. Conversely, any court that refuses to enforce a constitutional statute will risk reversal by the Supreme Court. Commonwealth countries are heirs to the common law legal tradition of English law. Certain practices traditionally allowed under English common law were expressly outlawed by the Constitution, such as bills of attainder.</ref> and general search rrts. As common law courts, U. S. courts have inherited the principle of stare decisis. American judges, like common law judges elsewhere, not only apply the law, they make the law, to the extent that their decisions in the cases before them become precedent for decisions in future cases; the actual substance of English law was formally "received" into the United States in several ways.
First, all U. S. states except Louisiana have enacted "reception statutes" which state that the common law of England is the law of the state to the extent that it is not repugnant to domestic law or indigenous conditions. Some reception statutes impose a specific cutoff date for reception, such as the date of a colony's founding, while others are deliberately vague. Thus, contemporary U. S. courts cite pre-Revolution cases when discussing the evolution of an ancient judge-made common law principle into its modern form, such as the heightened duty of care traditionally imposed upon common carriers. Second, a small number of important British statutes in effect at the time of the Revolution have been independently reenacted by U. S. states. Two examples are the Statute of 13 Elizabeth; such English statutes are still cited in contemporary American cases interpreting their modern American descendants. Despite the presence of reception statutes, much of contemporary American common law has diverged from English common law.
Although the courts of the various Commonwealth nations are influenced by each other's rulings, American courts follow post-Revolution Commonwealth rulings unless there is no American ruling on point, the facts and law at issue are nearly identical, the reasoning is persuasive. Early on, American courts after the Revolution did cite contemporary English cases, because appellate decisions from many American courts were not reported until the mid-19th century. Lawyers and judges used English legal materials to fill the gap. Citations to English decisions disappeared during the 19th century as American courts developed their own principles to resolve the legal problems of the American people; the number of published volumes of American reports soared from eighteen in 1810 to over 8,000 by 1910. By 1879 one of the delegates to the California constitutional convention was complaining: "Now, when we require them to state the reasons for a decision, we do not mean they shall write a hundred pages of detail.
We not mean that they shall include the small cases, impose on the country all this fine judici
Protected areas of the United States
The protected areas of the United States are managed by an array of different federal, state and local level authorities and receive varying levels of protection. Some areas are managed as wilderness, while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation; as of 2015, the 25,800 protected areas covered 1,294,476 km2, or 14 percent of the land area of the United States. This is one-tenth of the protected land area of the world; the U. S. had a total of 787 National Marine Protected Areas, covering an additional 1,271,408 km2, or 12 percent of the total marine area of the United States. Some areas are managed in concert between levels of government; the Father Marquette National Memorial is an example of a federal park operated by a state park system, while Kal-Haven Trail is an example of a state park operated by county-level government. As of 2007, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, the U. S. had a total of 6,770 terrestrial nationally designated protected areas. Federal level protected areas are managed by a variety of agencies, most of which are a part of the National Park Service, a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior.
They are considered the crown jewels of the protected areas. Other areas are managed by the United States Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service; the United States Army Corps of Engineers is claimed to provide 30 percent of the recreational opportunities on federal lands through lakes and waterways that they manage. The highest levels of protection, as described by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, are Level I and Level II; the United States maintains 12 percent of the Level II lands in the world. These lands had a total area of 210,000 sq mi. A confusing system for naming protected areas results in some types being used by more than one agency. For instance, both the National Park Service and the U. S. Forest Service operate areas designated National National Recreation Areas; the National Park Service, the U. S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management operate areas called National Monuments. National Wilderness Areas are designated within other protected areas, managed by various agencies and sometimes wilderness areas span areas managed by multiple agencies.
There are existing federal designations of historic or landmark status that may support preservation via tax incentives, but that do not convey any protection, including a listing on the National Register of Historic Places or a designation as a National Historic Landmark. States and local zoning bodies may not choose to protect these; the state of Colorado, for example, is clear that it does not set any limits on owners of NRHP properties. Federal protected area designations National Park System National Parks National Preserves National Seashores National Lakeshores National Forest National Forests National Grasslands National Conservation Lands National Monuments National Conservation Areas Wilderness Areas Wilderness Study Areas National Wild and Scenic Rivers National Scenic Trails National Historic Trails Cooperative Management and Protection Areas Forest Reserves Outstanding Natural Areas National Marine Sanctuaries National Recreation Areas National Estuarine Research Reserves National Trails System National Wild and Scenic Rivers System National Wilderness Preservation System National Wildlife Refuge System International protected area designations UNESCO Biosphere Reserves in the USA Every state has a system of state parks.
State parks vary from urban parks to large parks that are on a par with national parks. Some state parks, like Adirondack Park, are similar to the national parks of England and Wales, with numerous towns inside the borders of the park. About half the area of the park, some 3,000,000 acres, is state-owned and preserved as "forever wild" by the Forest Preserve of New York. Wood-Tikchik State Park in Alaska is the largest state park by the amount of contiguous protected land. S. National Parks, with some 1,600,000 acres, making it larger than the state of Delaware. Many states operate game and recreation areas. Lists of state parks in the United States: Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming List of U.
S. state and tribal wilderness areas Various counties, metropolitan authorities, regional parks, soil conservation districts and other units manage a variety of local level parks. Some of these are little more than picnic playgrounds. South Mountain Park in Phoenix, for example, is called the largest city park in the United States. Protected areas of American Samoa Protected areas of California Protected areas of Colorado Protected areas of Georgia Protected areas of Illinois Protected areas of Kentucky Protected areas of Michigan Protected areas of Ohio National Landscape Conservation System National Park Service National Wild and S
National monument (United States)
In the United States, a national monument is a protected area, similar to a national park, but can be created from any land owned or controlled by the federal government by proclamation of the President of the United States. National monuments can be managed by one of several federal agencies: the National Park Service, United States Forest Service, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; some national monuments were managed by the War Department. National monuments can be so designated through the power of the Antiquities Act of 1906. President Theodore Roosevelt used the act to declare Devils Tower in Wyoming as the first U. S. national monument. The Antiquities Act of 1906 resulted from concerns about protecting prehistoric Native American ruins and artifacts on federal lands in the American West; the Act authorized permits for legitimate archaeological investigations and penalties for taking or destroying antiquities without permission.
Additionally, it authorized the president to proclaim "historic landmarks and prehistoric structures, other objects of historic or scientific interest" on federal lands as national monuments, "the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected."The reference in the act to "objects of...scientific interest" enabled President Theodore Roosevelt to make a natural geological feature, Devils Tower in Wyoming, the first national monument three months later. Among the next three monuments he proclaimed in 1906 was Petrified Forest in Arizona, another natural feature. In 1908, Roosevelt used the act to proclaim more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon as a national monument. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Katmai National Monument in Alaska, comprising more than 1,000,000 acres. Katmai was enlarged to nearly 2,800,000 acres by subsequent Antiquities Act proclamations and for many years was the largest national park system unit.
Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, Great Sand Dunes were originally proclaimed as national monuments and designated as national parks by Congress. In response to Roosevelt's declaration of the Grand Canyon monument, a putative mining claimant sued in federal court, claiming that Roosevelt had overstepped the Antiquities Act authority by protecting an entire canyon. In 1920, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Grand Canyon was indeed "an object of historic or scientific interest" and could be protected by proclamation, setting a precedent for the use of the Antiquities Act to preserve large areas. Federal courts have since rejected every challenge to the president's use of Antiquities Act preservation authority, ruling that the law gives the president exclusive discretion over the determination of the size and nature of the objects protected. Substantial opposition did not materialize until 1943, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Jackson Hole National Monument in Wyoming.
He did this to accept a donation of lands acquired by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. for addition to Grand Teton National Park after Congress had declined to authorize this park expansion. Roosevelt's proclamation unleashed a storm of criticism about use of the Antiquities Act to circumvent Congress. A bill abolishing Jackson Hole National Monument passed Congress but was vetoed by Roosevelt, Congressional and court challenges to the proclamation authority were mounted. In 1950, Congress incorporated most of the monument into Grand Teton National Park, but the act doing so barred further use of the proclamation authority in Wyoming except for areas of 5,000 acres or less; the most substantial use of the proclamation authority came in 1978, when President Jimmy Carter proclaimed 15 new national monuments in Alaska after Congress had adjourned without passing a major Alaska lands bill opposed in that state. Congress passed a revised version of the bill in 1980 incorporating most of these national monuments into national parks and preserves, but the act curtailed further use of the proclamation authority in Alaska.
The proclamation authority was not used again anywhere until 1996, when President Bill Clinton proclaimed the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. This action was unpopular in Utah, bills were introduced to further restrict the president's authority. None of which have been enacted. Most of the 16 national monuments created by President Clinton are managed not by the National Park Service, but by the Bureau of Land Management as part of the National Landscape Conservation System. Presidents have used the Antiquities Act's proclamation authority not only to create new national monuments but to enlarge existing ones. For example, Franklin D. Roosevelt enlarged Dinosaur National Monument in 1938. Lyndon B. Johnson added Ellis Island to Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965, Jimmy Carter made major additions to Glacier Bay and Katmai National Monuments in 1978. On June 24, 2016, President Barack Obama designated the Stonewall Inn and surrounding areas in Greenwich Village, New York as the Stonewall National Monument, the first national monument commemorating the struggle for LGBT rights in the United States.
List of U. S. National Forests List of areas in the United States National Park System List of U. S. wilderness areas Protected areas of the United States List of proposed national monuments of the United States National monument proclamations under the Antiquities Act Congressional Research Service reports regar
