The National Forest Management Act (NFMA), passed in 1976, is the law that established the guidelines for the management of national forests. The act replaced the Organic Act of 1897, which had supplied such guidelines for the previous seventy-nine years. The impetus for this new bill was a court case related to clear-cutting on the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. Such clear-cutting had begun on this forest in the 1960s, and many environmental and recreation groups opposed it. When the Forest Service continued this management technique, the Izaak Walton League filed suit against the agency, claiming that clear-cutting violated the Organic Act on three counts: that only mature timber was to be harvested, that all timber cut had to be marked and designated, and that all timber cut had to be removed from the forest. The Court ruled in favor of the Izaak...