THE LEGISLATIVE 

 MANDATE 



We have seen that as yet no clear goal for 

 the Forest Service has been defined. We have 

 also reviewed the decisionmaking processes in 

 which such a goal plays an essential part. The 

 discussion that follows is an attempt to find 

 in the legislation the direction needed to for- 

 mulate a goal of the required quality — one 

 broad enough to apply to all levels of adminis- 

 tration and yet flexible enough to guide deci- 

 sions on local problems. 



The analysis in this section will show that a 

 multiple use concept of management, though 

 not always evident in the forefront of agency 

 actions, nor consistently defined by the 

 courts, has slowly been evolving in the legisla- 

 tion and has become a policy that now, at 

 least in part, guides the day-to-day operations 

 of the Forest Service. More specifically, one 

 consistent thread, made up of three strands, 

 will be seen to run throughout the fabric of 

 the agency's policy orientation as expressed in 

 the legislation. The first of the three strands is 

 a conservation orientation, best expressed in 

 the rule that no activity should take place if it 

 will result in deterioration of the site. The sec- 

 ond strand is an orientation toward perpetual 

 production and use of the various forest prod- 

 ucts through sustained yield management. As 

 will be seen, this strand has been conceived 

 in both narrow and broad terms. The^ third 

 strand, both a strength and a weakness, is a 

 commitment to decentralized decisionmaking, 

 with emphasis on the expertise of local au- 

 thorities and officers. The thread itself is the 

 notion that the National Forests must be 

 managed so as "to best meet the needs of the 

 American people." This notion must be given 

 specific meaning if it is to serve as a goal. 



The legislative review in these pages does 



not follow a straight path. There are many 

 twists and turns. As R. H. Tawney (p. 34, 

 1967 reprint) said over 50 years ago, 



. . . not only in the investigation of the past but 

 in the analysis of the present, the trail followed 

 by the economist leads across a country whose 

 boundaries and contours and lines of least 

 resistance have been fashioned by the labor of 

 lawyers. It is his wisdom to recognize that eco- 

 nomic forces operate in a framework created by 

 legal institutions, that to neglect those institu- 

 tions in examining the causes of economic de- 

 velopment or the distribution of wealth is as 

 though a geographer should discuss the river 

 system of a country without reference to its 

 mountain ranges, and that, if lawyers have 

 wrought in ignorance of economics, he must 

 nevertheless consult their own art in order to 

 unravel the effect of their operations. 



It is well known that the lawyers' art is not 

 usually characterized by brevity and clarity. 

 Also, if lawyers write "in ignorance of eco- 

 nomics," statutes cannot be easily translated 

 into expressions of implementable goals in a 

 decisionmaking framework. Nevertheless, we 

 must "unravel the effect of their operations" 

 if we are to get a handle on the management 

 goals of the Forest Service. 



Considered throughout this review of the 

 statutory and legislative background of cur- 

 rent management objectives will be the ques- 

 tion of what, if any, priorities have been es- 

 tablished. It will be shown that the current 

 doctrinal debate as to equal priorities versus 

 dominant use or single use is empty of mean- 

 ing if past legislation is turned to for support. 

 In reality the doctrine that has evolved 

 through legislation assigns no priorities. The 

 "protection of the productivity of the land" 

 so frequently called for in the legislation en- 

 compasses all of the resources and their use. 



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