MU-SY Act. They are fish and wildlife, out- 

 door recreation, range and forage, environ- 

 mental amenities and esthetics, soil and water- 

 shed, and timber. 



To guide policy, two overriding considera- 

 tions are apparent in virtually all of the legis- 

 lation reviewed: first, no activity may be en- 

 gaged in if it will result in the destruction, 

 depredation, or diminishing of the land's 

 productivity; and second, all resources are to 

 be managed on a sustained yield basis. As we 

 have seen, these have been treated as separate 

 considerations in some of the legislation, but 

 as one integral policy in others. In the frame- 

 work of the decisionmaking process set out in 

 the earlier discussion, these environmental 

 and production considerations form a part of 

 the total goal. Because no specific direction is 

 given in the NEPA as to how attempts to "im- 

 prove" the environment should be made, 

 these two objectives will be viewed as "con- 

 straining" elements in the agency goal, rather 

 than separate goals. 



The problems of maintaining the produc- 

 tivity of the land are complex, and their solu- 

 tion requires research into ecological relation- 

 ships and the development of specific con- 

 cepts of productivity with respect to individ- 

 ual resources. Some aspects of these problems 

 will be mentioned in later sections of this 

 paper. The legislation is clear, however, that 

 "as far as possible" the obstacles must be met 

 and research efforts must even more than in 

 the past be aimed in that direction. 



No Assigned Priorities 



Beyond the goal of maximizing the total 

 value of the forest, including the goal con- 

 straints of environmental protection and sus- 

 tained yield management, the second conclu- 

 sion reached here is that there is little indica- 

 tion that Congress has specifically indicated 

 priorities among forest uses. The MU-SY Act 

 speaks of "relative values" of resources but 

 does not clearly distinguish these from pri- 

 orities. 



Any attempt to derive from the MU-SY Act 

 an implication of either equal priorities or a 

 dominant-use, single-purpose priority seems 

 unjustifiable. It is apparent that in the strug- 

 gle to get the legislation through the Congress 



by enlisting the support of diverse interest 

 groups, it was necessary to guarantee that no 

 priorities would be specified in the act. No 

 priorities does not mean equal priorities; it 

 means the absence of any specified priorities. 

 Although, in the decisionmaking process, all 

 of the various resources are to be given equal 

 consideration, nothing in the legislation that 

 has been reviewed suggests that once values 

 for the various resources are established in 

 connection with any proposed action, those 

 values are to have "equal weights" attached to 

 them. Rather, the opposite is implied. The 

 weights to be assigned to each of the resource 

 values appear to have been left for determina- 

 tion on a local or regional basis. 



The question remains, then, has the Forest 

 Service used its legislative mandate to develop 

 a clear statement of goals to guide its manage- 

 ment decisions? A policy statement by 

 Edward Cliff may clarify the problem. 



In February 1970, Chief Cliff issued to all 

 Forest Service personnel a pamphlet titled 

 "Framework for the Future," dealing with 

 the objectives and policy guides of the agen- 

 cy. The statement attempted to provide "a 

 new framework to help guide our thinking 

 and decisionmaking throughout the 

 Service . . . [and] identify the general scope 

 and character of the role the Forest Service 

 should play in the society of today and 

 tomorrow." 55 



The objectives are statedly not listed by 

 priority. Chief Cliff recognizes that "there is a 

 hierarchy of objectives, policies, and goals at 

 each major level of the Forest Service organi- 

 zation structure." The statement further rec- 

 ognizes that "the interrelationships among 

 various objectives and policies must be an in- 

 tegral part of decisionmaking at all organiza- 

 tional levels, ranging from the most all- 

 encompassing, long-range planning, to identi- 

 fication of specific targets of immediate con- 

 cern." The objectives listed in "Framework 

 for the Future" are 



a. To promote and achieve a pattern of natural 

 resource uses that will best meet the needs 

 of people now and in the future. 



b. To protect and improve the quality of air, 

 water, soil, and natural beauty. 



"Embodied in the Forest Service Manual as Sec- 

 tion 1033. 



34 



