If you ever flew over Maryland, you’ve seen how green it is. In fact, it is the fourth greenest state in the Union (U.S. News & World Reports). When driving through the Maryland countryside you might also have noted the absence of annoying billboards. These are two reasons we should be grateful to Fred Wilson Besley, Maryland’s first State Forester.
Besley was born in 1872 in Northern VA, and graduated from Maryland Agricultural College (Univ MD). He hoped to become an engineer but was forced into the job market by the economic panic of 1893. He became a Fairfax County public school teacher and eventually became principal.
A dissatisfied Besley went to the Department of Agriculture to research new careers where he heard a talk by Gifford Pinchot discussing the nascent profession of forestry. Pinchot was a Yale graduate who trained in Forestry in France and was the forester at Biltmore the estate of George Vanderbilt, known as the ‘Birthplace of American Forestry’.
Pinchot left Biltmore in 1895, and in 1900 helped to found the Forest School at his Yale alma mater with Pinchot family donations.
Fred Besley served as a student assistant to Gifford Pinchot from 1900 –1903 then enrolled at the Yale Forest School in January 1903. He earned a Master’s Degree in Forestry “Cum Laude” from Yale in June 1904.
In 1906 he was appointed by Governor Edwin Warfield to be the first State Forester of Maryland. Under his guidance, the State Board of Forestry in Maryland was third in the nation to establish a system of forests, parks, and selected natural resource open spaces. Mr. Besley brought thousands of acres of forestland under the control of Maryland.
Besley created a model for natural resources conservation and forest management that was emulated nationwide. In 1914, with the help of the state’s legislature, he established the Roadside Tree Law. To this day, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service administers the program to ensure the proper care of trees adjacent to public utility lines, and protect public trees along public road right-of-ways by requiring permits before tree care work or plantings are performed. As a result, roadside and street trees continue to provide shade, help bolster water quality, and minimize the urban heat island effect.
Mr. Besley began keeping records of “notable trees” in Maryland in 1925 thereby creating the Maryland Big Tree Program. Besley was the first in the nation to establish eligibility rules for crowning champion big trees. His formula, designed to calculate the usable wood in a tree, went like so: tree circumference in inches + the tree’s height in feet + 1/4 of the average crown spread.
Each year since 1940, American Forests (now the sanctioning organization) has crowned the national champion. Today, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have a Champion Big Tree Program. Each year’s winners are entered into their own “Grove of Fame.”
According to Maryland’s Big Tree Program (MBTP) officials: “the MBTP continues to be the second-largest database of big trees in the world.” (As Champion Tree Programs go, Fred W. Besley is the GOAT – Greatest Of All Time- big tree guy.)
Besley served for 36 years as Maryland’s State Forester. Marylanders are still learning his lessons of forest conservation and listening to the music of the trees.
Join Joli McCathran, Co-Chair of the Maryland Big Tree Program, on July 13th at 7:00 p.m. for her virtual Poolesville Seniors program Measuring Maryland Champion Trees to hear about the importance of documenting and preserving these trees.