History of the New York State College of Forestry

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The New York State College of Forestry, the first professional school of forestry in North America, opened its doors at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, in the autumn of 1898.,^[1][2][3] It was advocated for by Governor Frank S. Black, but after just a few years of operation, it was defunded in 1903, by Governor Benjamin B. Odell in response to public outcry over the College's controversial forestry practices in the Adirondacks.

Less than a decade later, in 1911, the New York State College of Forestry was reestablished at Syracuse University by the New York State Legislature, with a mandate for forest conservation.^[4] The institution has continued to evolve and is now part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, while still closely related and immediately adjacent to Syracuse University. Today, the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, or SUNY-ESF, is a doctoral degree-granting institution based in Syracuse, New York, with facilities and forest properties in several additional locations in upstate New York and Costa Rica; it commemorated its centennial anniversary in 2011.