16 U.S.C. § 475
Section 475 · Purposes for which national forests may be established and administered
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 73 court decisions — leading case The Lands Council v. McNair (2008)
Most recently applied in Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. Usfws (May 2022)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
All public lands designated and reserved prior to June 4, 1897, by the President of the United States under the provisions of section 471 1 of this title, the orders for which shall be and remain in full force and effect, unsuspended and unrevoked, and all public lands that may hereafter be set aside and reserved as national forests under said section, shall be as far as practicable controlled and administered in accordance with the following provisions. No national forest shall be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the boundaries, or for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States; but it is not the purpose or intent of these provisions, or of said section, to authorize the inclusion therein of lands more valuable for the mineral therein, or for agricultural purposes, than for forest purposes.
1 See References in Text note below.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
References in Text
Section 471 of this title, referred to in text, was repealed by Pub. L. 94–579, title VII, § 704(a), Oct. 21, 1976, 90 Stat. 2792.
Codification
“National forests” and “national forest” substituted in text for “public forest reserves” and “public forest reservation”, respectively, on authority of act Mar. 4, 1907, ch. 2907, 34 Stat. 1269, which provided that forest reserves shall hereafter be known as national forests.