represents the legislative mandate. If it does 

 not, or you can see other mandated goals that 

 are not identified here, work to build a more 

 accurately descriptive decision model. Sec- 

 ond, if this is the goal that is being actively 

 pursued by the agency, ask yourself whether 

 the public clamor represents an attack on the 

 goal itself or on efforts to achieve it. 



It may be that even though the model is an 

 accurate description of the mandate, it is so 

 broag! and vague or so demanding as to be im- 

 possible to implement. Constraints placed on 

 the actions of the agency may tie its hands. 

 The required information may be impossible 

 to generate. The model may have more than 

 one optimal solution or prove to be otherwise 

 open ended. Society, with its constantly 

 changing attitudes and priorities, may so dras- 

 tically alter future decisions as to make the 

 implied long-range planning difficult if not 

 impossible. These are possibilities, not neces- 

 sarily facts. But if the goal is untenable, the 

 agency would do well to stop deluding itself 

 that it is carrying out its mandate, and active- 

 ly work for the adoption of a goal that can be 

 achieved. 



Even those who deny that the model ade- 

 quately embodies the legislative mandate can- 

 not ignore the necessity of building such a 

 model. To those who feel that the decision 

 model expressed here is too "ivory tower," 

 too academic, the question must be asked, If 

 this is not the goal you seek and if your ac- 

 tions are not taken in relation to this goal, 

 then what goal do you pursue? Whatever the 

 legislative mandate is, total commitment to 

 goal-oriented decisionmaking is essential in 

 National Forest management. 



The FOREST Model 



The legislative mandate is here interpreted 

 to require the Forest Service to maximize the 

 total weighted value of the National Forests, 

 always keeping in mind the requirement that 

 all of the renewable resources are to be man- 

 aged on a sustained yield basis without im- 

 pairment of the productivity of the land. A 

 further constraint, not specifically identified 

 so far in our discussion, is the budget require- 

 ment. 



The name of the model, FOREST, is an 



acronym made up of the first letter of each of 

 six terms for the separate renewable surface 

 resources named in the legislation as subject 

 to direct management control by the Forest 

 Service. The resources, all but one of which 

 are referred to in the MU-SY Act, are fish and 

 wildlife (F), outdoor recreation (O), range 

 (forage) (R), environmental amenities (E), soil 

 and watershed (S), and timber (T). 56 Al- 

 though the resources are separately identified, 

 it is clear that the intent of the mandate, as 

 expressed in the NEPA, the MU-SY Act, and 

 most of the earlier legislation, was to manage 

 them in harmony with one another, so that 

 the end result would be to maximize the sum 

 of all their values. There is no indication that 

 it was the intention of Congress to call for the 

 maximization of any one of the resources — 

 timber, or outdoor recreation, for example — 

 without consideration of how such produc- 

 tion would affect the total benefit to be de- 

 rived from the forests — that is, maximization 

 of T or O without reference to F, R, E and S. 

 Thus the MU-SY Act calls for "harmonious 

 and coordinated management . . . with con- 

 sideration being given to the relative [i.e., 

 weighted] values of the various resources. ..." 

 Thus the model integrates the concept of 

 multiple use with the preceding legislation 

 and the more comprehensive mandate of the 

 NEPA. Reidel (1971) calls for just such a 

 model. 



In the model, the basic symbols are quali- 

 fied by subscript and superscript symbols. 

 The subscripts are coefficients representing 

 weights or priorities on the separate resources 

 and on the values derived from them. The val- 

 ue of the output is indicated by an asterisk. 

 Thus F* stands for the value of fish and wild- 

 life. The stipulated goal thus appears in the 

 model as follows: 



MAXIMIZE [„F*+ 0*+ R* + E*+ S*+ /T*i 

 t o r e s t I 



56 The acronym is "pure," that is, it reflects the 

 language of the legislation in identifying the re- 

 sources, with one exception. The MU-SY Act speaks 

 only of watershed, but it is common practice within 

 the agency to combine soil and water in most man- 

 agement considerations. Although five of the six re- 

 sources are thus specifically named in the MU-SY 

 Act, and the sixth in the NEPA, the model is meant 

 to represent much more than just those acts. 



37 



