sensus should then be acceptable to all con- 

 cerned. 



Such bargaining on the rules in advance of 

 project analysis can result in several different 

 management prescriptions. For example, we 

 might expect any one of three possible rules 

 (goals) to result from discussions centering on 

 the relative importance of timber and water- 

 shed resources. The three possibilities might 

 be these: 



1. Maximize timber production, subject to 

 the constraint that some minimal amount of 

 watershed protection be maintained. 5 



2. Maximize watershed protection, subject 

 to the constraint that some minimum amount 

 of timber production be maintained. 



3. Increase and maintain (maximize) high 

 levels of both timber cutting and watershed 

 development, subject to the constraint that in 

 the process nothing be done that will diminish 

 the productivity of the land. 



It should be obvious that the choice among 

 these goals will depend on just how strongly 

 members of the rule-formulating body hold 

 their estimates of weights and priorities. The 

 acceptable trade-offs will necessarily have 

 been established in advance. 



The later discussion in this paper will make 

 clear that the actual establishment of weights 

 during the ongoing National Forest manage- 

 ment process is haphazard. Weights are estab- 

 lished in varying degrees by public inputs such 

 as logrolling, lobbying, and public hearings; 

 by the budget process as it affects the achieve- 

 ment levels possible; and by administrative 

 and management influences, both direct and 

 indirect. To be effective, priority determina- 

 tion must become an explicit as well as an 

 integral part of the planning activity. 



Flexibility in goal ranking, as indicated, is 

 desirable up to a point, and might alter a giv- 

 en situation in the following manner. If goals 

 were ranked according to policy 2 in the 



5 This is the possibility used as a base for the plan- 

 ning model developed at the Pacific Southwest Forest 

 and Range Experiment Station. See Navon, Timber 

 RAM . . . a long range planning method for com- 

 mercial timber lands under multiple use manage- 

 ment, 1971. The maximization approach taken in 

 that study, although it does not integrate the re- 

 sources as this paper will recommend, is a step in the 

 right direction. 



timber- watershed example, certain actions 

 would be dictated to achieve optimal solu- 

 tions within that ranking of the goals. If, how- 

 ever, politico-socio-economic considerations 

 should change the conditions under which the 

 Forest Service operations are carried out, such 

 as an acute shortage of timber during a hous- 

 ing boom, then the administrators might have 

 to realign their goals (or have the goals rea- 

 ligned for them by congressional or adminis- 

 trative mandate). Watershed maintenance 

 would then become the constraining goal, 

 with the pursuit of maximum timber produc- 

 tion as the dominant goal (i.e., ranking policy 

 1). Such a change would of course create se- 

 vere problems in the long-range planning ef- 

 fort that is required in the management of 

 forest resources, and if the alteration of pri- 

 orities occurred too often, the planning capa- 

 bility of the Forest Service would be drastical- 

 ly reduced. 



Commodity and Noncommodity Goals 



Very often the allocative decisions on pub- 

 lic forest lands require consideration of criter- 

 ia such as the complex ecological and hydro- 

 logical subsystems that influence land man- 

 agement. Artificial definitions are employed 

 in an attempt to distinguish between so-called 

 "economic" and "noneconomic" variables. It 

 seems more useful to call any problem of al- 

 locating scarce resources an economic one. If 

 difference exists, it must be in the fact that 

 certain resources (variables) simply do not 

 pass through the market to have a value 

 placed on them. Thus, for example, a distinc- 

 tion might be made as between "commodity" 

 and "noncommodity" outputs. To suggest 

 that just because a resource does not have a 

 market value attached to it, it is therefore 

 noneconomic, is to ignore the tremendous in- 

 fluence of environmental resources in modern 

 economic analysis. Clean air and quiet sur- 

 roundings are certainly just as "economic" as 

 a sheet of plywood. 



In the decisionmaking process, the achieve- 

 ment of nonmonetary goals will usually be at 

 the expense or cost of other forgone oppor- 

 tunities, and these may appear in either mone- 

 tary or nonmonetary form. Once the goal to 

 be pursued in the management of the public 



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