of internal forces to take place within a limi- 

 ted arena. These forces, generated by the 

 functional orientation within the Service, 

 could thus be integrated and directed toward 

 the pursuit of the common management goal. 

 The attempt in this study to describe the goal 

 of the agency in the FOREST model may re- 

 sult in discussions that will work toward in- 

 tegration. 



There is reason to believe that the MU-SY 

 Act has had similar importance with respect 

 to external forces affecting the Forest Service. 

 If external pressures are focused on a stated 

 policy, the resulting criticism can be construc- 

 tive. In spite of its failure to spell out a pro- 

 gram for multiple use, the act served an essen- 

 tial purpose. Conflicts among various user 

 groups have become acute during the past two 

 decades. These conflicts are especially sharp 

 between timber interests on the one hand, 

 and the recreationists and preservationists on 

 the other. The multiple use doctrine provided 

 the forest managers with a much-needed 

 weapon to ward off single-interest onslaughts 

 on the public forests. Here, again, time was an 

 essential requirement. It was hoped that the 

 environmental, biological, and ecological sub- 

 systems could be better understood and that 

 management techniques could be established 

 to allow a closer approach to full compliance 

 with the original intent of the legislation. Al- 

 though loud protests were heard from forest 

 users of various persuasions, the multiple use 

 doctrine allowed the foresters to fend off nu- 

 merous attempts to overcut timber stands, 

 overrestrict forest areas as wilderness, or 

 otherwise unwisely use the public resource 

 base. If for no other reason, the Multiple Use- 

 Sustained Yield Act has more than proved it- 

 self an important piece of legislation. 



Although the bill may not have lived up to 

 the expectations of many people as a clarifica- 

 tion of key issues, it did provide the Forest 

 Service with precious time to begin moving in 

 a new direction in the evaluation of forest 

 management procedures. That this new direc- 

 tion is being taken is indicated in the articles 

 presently appearing in the professional jour- 

 nals. Much is still to be done to translate the 

 legislative mandate into a guide for decision- 

 making, but the corner is being turned. 



Weight Setting Implicit in 

 Management Practice 



The weighting of the various resources, as 

 we have seen, is the basic element in decision- 

 making. In the absence of any congressionally 

 established weights or priorities, the Forest 

 Service is left to establish its own. One possi- 

 ble course is to specify that equal weights be 

 attached to each of the resources; then the 

 FOREST model becomes a special case. Al- 

 though the claim is sometimes made that all 

 resources have equal priority, this is not gen- 

 erally true in Forest Service practice. Instead, 

 priorities often enter, as it were, through the 

 back door, so that weights are established by 

 default, without a clear awareness by persons 

 within the agency that such weight-setting is 

 going on. 



Research and Inventory Techniques 



The legislation requires that each of the 

 various resources be given "consideration" in 

 any decision or action. If, however, the Forest 

 Service desires to give equal priorities to the 

 various resources, then special care must be 

 taken to see that each is considered to an 

 equal degree. To give actual equality to the 

 various resources, similar effort must be ex- 

 pended to secure data and organize them to 

 produce the relevant information. 



If one resource is emphasized in inventory 

 work or research at the expense of others, 

 then decisionmaking is already influenced by 

 an unequal weighting^of the resources. That 

 is, in the language of the FOREST model, we 

 have unequal specification of the value(*) of 

 the various resources. Only if the required in- 

 formation is available for each of the re- 

 sources can an unambiguously optimal deci- 

 sion be made. Obviously, the state of knowl- 

 edge within the Forest Service does not cur- 

 rently meet such a standard. Spokesmen for 

 the agency may staunchly maintain that tim- 

 ber is not given a higher priority than the 

 other forest resources, but their claims will re- 

 main unconvincing until equally well- 

 developed information is available and uti- 

 lized for the other resources. This point was 

 made clear in Forest Management in Wyoming 



47 



