Black Hills National Forest

US Forest Service
Black Hills National Forest
1019 N. 5th Street
Custer, SD 57730
605-673-9200

Telephone for the
Hearing Impaired
605-673-9227

News Release

USDA Forest Service

Black Hills National Forest

Contact: Ray Summers, (605) 394-6923, or email us at r2 blackhills webinfo@fs.fed.us

"THE GREATEST GOOD" EXPLORES U.S. FOREST SERVICE 100-YEAR HISTORY

RAPID CITY, SD: February 07, 2005

As the U.S. Forest Service enters its Centennial year, a new documentary brings the agency’s history to a broad audience. “The Greatest Good” program and film will be shown free of charge in Rapid City’s Journey Museum on Saturday, February 19.

Scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. in the museum’s Wells Fargo Theater at 222 New York Street, the film uses rarely seen footage and photos, sweeping high-definition landscape aerial shots, and dozens of interviews to tell a complex and compelling story of America’s public lands.

Before “environmentalism,” before the National Park Service, President Theodore Roosevelt and his Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot created the U.S. Forest Service in 1905. They sought not only to conserve disappearing natural resources but also to preserve social benefits from those resources.

Pinchot’s mission statement for his new agency said, “…where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be decided from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.”

The two-hour documentary “The Greatest Good” uses this maxim as its starting point and as an organizing theme. The film traces Forest Service efforts to deliver the most benefits to the most people while remaining good stewards of the land. It is along this axis, the exploitation and protection of natural resources, that the story turns.

About the national forests, historian Char Miller said: “We own them! So of course we are going to disagree about how they should be managed.” Conflict is inherent to public land management in a democracy, he said.

The film examines these conflicts in major natural resource issues: grazing, fire, wilderness, game/wildlife, watershed protection, recreation and, of course, timber. The film also profiles Forest Service employees, including Pinchot, Aldo Leopold, Arthur Carhart, and Bob Marshall, who invented new ways of addressing these disputes.

The film features an original score, and Charles Osgood is the narrator.

The Journey Museum is the region's educational venue and a forum to preserve and explore the cultural heritage of the Black Hills region and the knowledge of its natural environment so residents and visitors can understand past values, enrich the present, and meet future challenges. Hours of operation are Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit the museum's website at www.journeymuseum.org or call 605 394-6923.

For more forest news visit the Black Hills National Forest website at www.fs.fed.us/r2/blackhills.