1. Bernhard Eduard Fernow was the third chief of the US Department of Agriculture's Division of Forestry of the United States from 1886 to 1898, preceding Gifford Pinchot in that position, and laying much of the groundwork for the establishment of the United States Forest Service in 1905.
Bernhard Fernow was born in Hohensalza in the Prussian Province of Posen, in what is Poland.
Bernhard Fernow spent time with his uncle, who managed the estate of his extended family.
Bernhard Fernow then studied at the University of Konigsberg and the Royal Prussian Academy of Forestry at Munden, his studies being interrupted for military service in the Franco-Prussian War.
Bernhard Fernow emigrated to the United States in 1876, leaving an upset family in Germany who had been expecting him to manage the family estate.
Bernhard Fernow found little market in the United States for his skills as a professional forester, and worked various odd jobs until 1878 when he got a job in Pennsylvania managing the 15,000 acres of woods which were used to obtain charcoal for the foundry of Cooper-Hewitt and Co.
Bernhard Fernow became chief of the United States Department of Agriculture's Division of Forestry in 1886.
Bernhard Fernow produced many scientific reports while working toward the creation of national forests to protect watersheds.
Displays that Bernhard Fernow prepared for the forestry exhibit at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair played a prominent role in generating public support for establishing a Prussian-style national forest service and system for educating professional foresters in the United States.
In 1898 Bernhard Fernow left the Division of Forestry to become the first dean of the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell, the first four-year forestry school in the United States.
Bernhard Fernow had organized a plan to demonstrate how the northern hardwood forests of the area, which had previously been logged of their large spruce and white pine timber by former owners, the Santa Clara Lumber Company, could be replanted with higher-value conifers, especially white pine.
Nevertheless, Bernhard Fernow had a 6-mile long railroad spur built from Axton to Tupper Lake in order to deliver logs to the Brooklyn Cooperage Company facility.
Bernhard Fernow gave as a reason for leaving Penn State an argument with Joseph Rothrock, head of the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy, over the future of that school.
In 1907, Bernhard Fernow became the founding Dean of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Forestry, Canada's first university school devoted to forest science.
Bernhard Fernow served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Forestry, which he had started at Cornell in 1902, until his death in 1923.
Bernhard Fernow became a member of the Commission of Conservation of Canada on its organization in 1910.