Austin Cary

Born in Maine and educated at Bowdoin, Austin Cary taught in the forestry programs at Princeton and Harvard, surveyed, mapped and cruised private woodlands, and wrote the seminal guide The Woodsman’s Manual (1909). In 1910, the U.S. Forest Service hired him as a logging engineer, and in 1917 sent him to advise Southern lumber operators on a way forward, just as the last of the virgin trees were cut out. Over two decades in Texas and other states, he became known as the Father of Southern Forestry. He helped persuade landowners to shift from the “liquidate and migrate” model to a more sustainable approach using selective logging, seed trees, regeneration, and prescribed burns as tools for enhancing the forest’s long-term value, beyond its immediate harvest. His faith in the private woodlot owner is reflected in his 1934 open letter to FDR, posted below, pushing back against the federal acquisition of private forestlands underway at the time.