The Administration of National Forests 



375 



necessary to make the national forests 

 of greatest value in the social and eco- 

 nomic life of the region. The only re- 

 striction is that everything done must 

 contribute to the national objective, 

 must come within national policy, and 

 must be up to national standards. 



The field, then, stands on its own 

 feet. There are some exceptions, al- 

 though it will be seen that even those 

 are, in reality, applications of the gen- 

 eral principle that the Washington staff 

 should confine itself to national mat- 

 ters. Sometimes an operation, even 

 though it is located entirely within a 

 region, is of national importance. It 

 then must be considered on a national 

 basis and by the Washington office. For 

 example, a small timber sale is of only 

 local significance, but a large one af- 

 fects national markets and has national 

 economic importance. It is difficult to 

 say exactly where the dividing line 

 may be, but now it is estimated to be 

 around 30 million feet in some regions, 

 50 million feet in others. If a sale in- 

 volves more than that amount, it must 

 be approved by the Washington office ; 

 if it is less than that amount, it may be 

 approved within the region without 

 reference to the Washington office. 

 The same general rule applies in all 

 other functional activities. 



The regional office, which is organ- 

 ized for national forest work on the 

 same general pattern as the Chiefs 

 office, is likewise manned on a skele- 

 tonized basis, with certain differences. 

 Although each main function is rep- 

 resented in the Chief's office by a 

 separate division, frequently several 

 functions are grouped within one divi- 

 sion at the regional level, depending 

 on the work load. In addition, the 

 regional office provides project and 

 other service to individual national for- 

 ests as needed, where the national for- 

 est concerned does not have enough 

 work of that type to require the full 

 time of specialists attached directly to 

 the staff of the forest supervisor. 



For example, the logging engineer 

 and his assistants who are attached to 

 the regional office will provide their 



specialized type of service for short 

 periods each year as needed on the na- 

 tional forests that do not have a full- 

 time logging engineer. Range- and 

 timber-survey crews, bridge-construc- 

 tion experts, and central equipment 

 and machine shops headquartered at 

 the regional office are other examples 

 of special services available for limited 

 periods to all the national forests in the 

 region. In other words, there are two 

 general classes of personnel attached to 

 each regional office. One is of the su- 

 pervisory, or overhead, class. The 

 other is made up of project workers 

 engaged in direct operations in the 

 woods and on the range. They nor- 

 mally have headquarters at the re- 

 gional office merely as a convenient 

 turning and base point for a succession 

 of work assignments to different points 

 in the field. 



The constant effort to decentralize 

 and delegate authority closer to the 

 tree and grass roots results in rather 

 limited authority at the regional office 

 level. Most of the responsibility for na- 

 tional forest work is delegated down 

 to the forest supervisors and the forest 

 rangers. As has been stated, only rarely 

 does the regional forester refer a tim- 

 ber sale to the Chief's office for ap- 

 proval. Likewise at the field level, only 

 the larger sales are referred by the for- 

 est supervisor to the regional forester 

 for consideration and approval. In the 

 field of range management, too, prac- 

 tically none of the operating activities 

 is administered directly from the re- 

 gional office. Even a catastrophic for- 

 est fire is handled directly by the local 

 forest supervisor, with participation 

 from the regional office usually limited 

 to advice and facilitating services. Such 

 decentralization reserves for the re- 

 gional office the responsibility and time 

 needed for providing effective regional 

 leadership and over-all services. 



THE NATIONAL FOREST SUPERVISOR 



has great responsibility. The average 

 national forest contains more than 

 1,500,000 acres within its boundaries 

 an area larger than the State of Dela- 



