increments for achieving environmental quality. 

 The analysis has some specific values for the 

 Forest Service, for example, as one segment of 

 the managers (owners) of the forest- range. It 

 can help establish policies that will provide fair 

 competition among users and nonusers of the 

 National Forest System for grazing. There- 

 fore, this report defines the use of the forest- 

 range by various ownerships on the basis of 

 comparative advantage of the forest-range en- 

 vironment. The actual productivity of the land 

 itself and the cost of developing it are the 

 determining factors. It is not necessary to 

 assume a level of use of Forest Service-admin- 

 istered public land since the level of use is a 

 specific outcome of the analysis; this level is 

 also the share of the animal production, largely 

 beef, that will be assigned to the National 

 Forest System. 



ANALYTICAL PROCESS 



All of the land inventory infoiTnation on the 

 forest-range resource base, including estimated 

 outputs under varying levels of management 

 and investment costs for attaining specified 

 outputs, was used in testing the validity of 

 policy alternatives towards meeting specific 

 objectives. Each set of policy alternatives was 

 structured with its own set of constraints; most 

 of these were associated with levels of produc- 

 tion of animal unit months of livestock grazing 

 set through the demand analyses described 

 in Chapter III, Demand for Outputs of the 

 Forest-Range Environment. Some policy alter- 

 natives were simply projections of the future 

 situation, assuming all or part of the potential 

 productivity of the forest-range resources was 

 utilized under a particular set of directions. 



As will be shown in Chapter V, Analysis of 

 Alternative Mixtures of Resource Use, develop- 

 ment of the analysis was, in fact, a learning 

 process. Direction was obtained from the rela- 

 tively simple initial analyses for the develop- 

 ment of further analyses. While these analyses 

 became more complex, they in fact homed in 

 on the desired outputs while meeting the speci- 

 fied social, political, or economic constraints. 



The alternatives tested are designed to eval- 

 uate policies for management of the forest- 

 range resource. 



Ideally, the best policies are those that pro- 

 vide the needed increased grazing while per- 

 mitting increases in wood growth, improving 

 the water quality, and in some areas increasing 

 water yield. In addition, the indexes of quali- 

 tative outputs also tend to increase. At the 

 same time, the analysis must recognize that 

 change itself has a cost. 



The Government's role is especially impor- 

 tant in the management of the forest-range. 

 Thirty-two percent of the grazed forest-range 

 acreage is administered by Federal agencies, 



and 14 percent of the grazing is from these 

 lands. Actions by the Government, therefore, 

 have major impact on the efficient use of re- 

 sources and on the mix of outputs derived from 

 those resources. The study assesses the national 

 demand for outputs from the forest-range and 

 breaks do^^^l these outputs into those that come 

 directly from the forest-range. All of the evalu- 

 ation of the resource is in a context of efficiency 

 by the resource ownerships. 



Two basic types of analyses were under- 

 taken. These are: (1) constant and single strat- 

 egy management, and (2) mixed strategies. 



In the first phases of the analysis, the con- 

 ceptually simple technique of single and con- 

 stant management was used. This made it pos- 

 sible to estimate certain situations within a 

 two-dimensional context, i.e., demand and sup- 

 ply. This two-dimensional analysis indicated the 

 consequences, including the cost of using single 

 strategies across all resource units. This helped 

 set the study boundaries, an invaluable help in 

 later interpretation. 



When investment costs are included as in- 

 puts rather than outputs in the least cost analy- 

 sis, the problem of evaluation becomes more 

 complex. Investment costs can be increased or 

 decreased, depending on the combination or 

 mix of the management strategies. Given the 

 current demand for both commodity and en- 

 vironmental quality outputs from the forest- 

 range, there was an additional need to develop 

 an analytical tool capable of measuring the 

 trade-offs between commodity outputs and 

 environmental outputs while simultaneously 

 considering the impact on investment costs. 



As previously described, this system incor- 

 porated as many product values as possible in 

 the attempt to describe and analyze the broad 

 spectrum of goods and services obtainable from 

 forest-range resources. The specific outputs 

 varied greatly in form, value, measurement 

 technique, and in the relationship to output 

 from the various analytical techniques. This 

 heterogeneity is not conducive to simple speci- 

 fications for achieving the desired output mix, 

 but is helpful in providing comprehensive con- 

 siderations of policy alternatives. 



The nature of the mathematical technique 

 employed (linear programming) is such, how- 

 ever, that specific national demands must be 

 translated into discrete output value or values 

 in order to obtain a solution. 



For this reason, grazing output (whether 

 herbage, animal unit months, or animal output 

 value) becomes the baseline for the operation 

 of the model. Only in this way can investment 

 costs of improved grazing practices be opti- 

 mized against a consistent constraint. Inter- 

 action of the baseline output with other outputs 

 is studied as succeedingly more complex and 

 stringent demands are placed upon the re- 



66 



