[5] The college has been identified as a "Center of Excellence" in forestry by the Philippine Commission on Higher Education since January 2000.

Two of its professors, including one of its deans, are members of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, the 2007 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

[6] CFNR traces its roots to the Forest School founded on April 14, 1910,[8] through an Act 1989 by the Insular Government of the Philippines and efforts by Secretary of the Interior, Dean Conant Worcester.

[11] Largely as a result of the liberation of the campus during the Raid on Los Baños, all the School of Forestry buildings, including student and faculty houses, were destroyed.

Only four faculty including Tamesis and silviculture professor Teodoro C. Delizo,[12][13] along with five students returned upon the resumption of classes.

[15] In 1954 the College of Forestry signed an agreement with Cornell University for providing academic and financial assistance.

Lantican implemented a 5-year campus development program which included construction of new buildings and designating areas for dormitories and staff housing.

[20] The campus contains academic buildings, dormitories, hosted institutions (such as the ASEAN Center for Biodiversity),[21] and the 4,347-hectare[22] Makiling Forest Reserve (MFR), which serves as an outdoor laboratory for forestry students[23] and is believed to contain more tree species than the continental United States.

NAPOCOR acquired complete jurisdiction of the MFR, however, in 1987 as part of the Philippines' energy development program under President Corazon Aquino.

[30][31] In 2008 representative Del De Guzman of the 2nd district of Makati filed HB 1143 which, if passed into law, would have transferred jurisdiction of the MFR to the Boy Scouts of the Philippines.

The college produces about 100 graduates every year[1] and has been identified as a "Center of Excellence" in forestry by the Philippine Commission on Higher Education since January 2000.

[4] The graduates of the college has maintained substantially good performance in the forestry license exams conducted by the Professional Regulation Commission.

[55] The Museum of Natural History of the University of the Philippines Los Baños, established in 1976, is located in the campus.

It holds over 200,000 biological specimens; including half of the samplings from the Philippine Water Bug Inventory Project.

[63] Its facilities, believed to be the "largest and best equipped in the eastern hemisphere" by the time of its construction, were patterned after the University of Wisconsin's Forest Products Laboratory.