374 



Yearboo\ of Agriculture 1949 



of those established policies, a func- 

 tional chief in Washington may issue 

 instructions to the regional forester. 

 The same practice holds as between the 

 regional office and the forest super- 

 visor's office. 



THE REGIONAL FORESTER is in a key 

 position. 



While ordinarily there is thus an 

 open channel of communication down 

 the functional lines, it is to be under- 

 stood that all functional officials in the 

 region are responsible to the regional 

 forester, and not to the Washington 

 functional chiefs. They are employees 

 of the region (not of the corresponding 

 functional divisions in Washington), 

 and the regional forester, who is re- 

 sponsible only to the Chief, is their im- 

 mediate supervisor. Upon the regional 

 forester rests ultimate responsibility for 

 the needed correlation between func- 

 tions and for the success or failure of 

 all national forest operations in his 

 region. 



With this picture in mind a group 

 of functional lines paralleling a con- 

 trolling coordinating line we are now 

 ready to consider field relationships in 

 greater detail. While the assistant chief 

 has full responsibility for national for- 

 est operations, he and his division heads 

 in Washington exercise control only at 

 the over-all, Nation-wide level. That 

 is, within the mandates of Congress 

 and the Secretary of Agriculture, the 

 assistant chief and his Washington 

 staff formulate objectives, determine 

 policies, develop plans, establish stand- 

 ards, and check the accomplishments. 

 These objectives, plans, policies, and 

 standards must apply to the Nation as 

 a whole and must be general enough 

 and broad enough to cover all possible 

 conditions. 



A significant feature of the organiza- 

 tion is the small size of the functional 

 divisions in the central office that are 

 responsible for national forest activi- 

 ties. An example is the Division of Fire 

 Control. The extent of its responsibili- 

 ties is indicated by the fact that each 

 year there are some 11,000 fires in 



the national forests, and as many as 

 20,000 fire-control workers are em- 

 ployed at times. Fire-control expendi- 

 tures amounted to more than 12 

 million dollars during each of the past 

 several years. But there are only three 

 staff-level employees in this Division 

 and two clerical assistants. 



The United States is divided into 10 

 national forest regions. The average 

 region includes about 20 million acres 

 of national forest land and an average 

 of 15 national forests. Those are 

 rounded-off averages that do not apply 

 to any one region. They do, however, 

 indicate the general framework of the 

 organization at this level. The person 

 versed in administrative matters will 

 be interested in knowing that the aver- 

 age "span-of -control" in the territorial 

 organization for a regional forester 

 and his staff of functional division 

 chiefs is 15 forest supervisors, in con- 

 trast to the generally considered max- 

 imum "span" of 3 to 7 supervisory or 

 other important subordinate positions 

 that an administrator can handle effec- 

 tively. That the regional forester can 

 handle such a broad span of control is 

 due partly to the parallel functional or- 

 ganization line I have described. 



The assistant chief in charge of na- 

 tional forest administration delegates 

 to each regional forester control over 

 all operations within his own region, 

 subject to the requirement that he must 

 operate within the framework of the 

 policies, plans, and standards estab- 

 lished for the country as a whole. The 

 regional forester, with his staff of func- 

 tional division chiefs, then sets the ob- 

 jectives for his region. He establishes 

 regional policies, makes regional plans, 

 establishes regional standards, and, of 

 course, makes certain of compliance by 

 field inspection and otherwise. That is 

 necessary because each region is dif- 

 ferent. Conditions in the Southeast, 

 say, differ materially from conditions 

 in the Pacific Northwest the timber, 

 the types of recreation, and the wildlife 

 are different, and so on. Each region 

 makes its own plans and carries on its 

 own activities. It does whatever is 



