The legislation's formal title is the Sundry Civil Appropriations Act of 1897, which was signed into law on June 4, 1897, by President William McKinley.
Its features include: This last item gave two separate branches of the Department of Interior responsibility-The GLO for the sale, claims and administration of the reserves and the USGS for the drawing of boundaries and land maps.
Henry Gannet was the new division's chief and produced surveys of the reserves that were of high quality and provided basic information necessary for effective management.
[6] The Izaak Walton League, a conservation group formed in 1922, that sought the complete abolishment of livestock grazing on national forest lands in the 1930s.
[7] In May 1973, the League successfully sued the Department of Agriculture over the clear-cut logging practices in the Monongahela National Forest as being contrary to the Organic Act of 1897 which stated that only "dead, physically mature and large growth trees "individually marked for cutting" could be sold.
[8] On December 23, 1975, Alaska Federal District Court Judge Van Der Heydt held that four plaintiffs in Alaska's Tongass National Forest should prevail on their Organic Act claims agreeing with the Fourth Circuit's decision in West Virginia Division of the Isaak Walton League of America, Inc. v. Butz, ,522 F.2d 945.