> **Oct. 25, 1998**
>
> **To the reader: Here is the fifth draft of the report of the
> Committee of Scientists. As with the previous drafts, it is subject to
> major revisions as the Committee works through its deliberations.**

Sustaining the People's Lands

Recommendations for Stewardship of the

National Forests and Grasslands

into the Next Century

> DRAFT

Committee of Scientists

National Forests are made for and owned by the people. They should also
be managed by the people. They are made not to give the officers in
charge of them a chance to work out theories, but to give the people who
use them and those who are affected by their use a chance to work out
their own best profit. This means that if national forests are going to
accomplish anything worthwhile, the people must know all about them,
must take an active part in their management. . . .

> Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the Forest Service (1907)

Right up front, I clearly state, without equivocation, that these are
our lands today --- the lands of all the people. These are our lands ---
they belong to us lock, stock and barrel. And they will be our lands and
our children's and our children's children's lands far into the future
unless we, as a people, through carelessness or apathy or conscious
choice, allow that precious heritage to be sold or traded away for
pottage.

> Jack Ward Thomas, Chief of the Forest Service (1996)

# PREFACE

The Committee of Scientists was named by the Secretary of Agriculture on
December 11, 1997, to provide technical and scientific advice on land
and resource planning on the national forests and grasslands.

The COS was formed through a nomination process that began on August 15,
1997, with a notice in the Federal Register calling for the nominations
of 12 scientists and a Committee Chair. The notice stated that "members
should represent scientific specialties and academic disciplines
including, but not limited to, the following fields: forest and range
ecology, fish and wildlife biology, silviculture, hydrology, natural
resource economics, sociology, public participation and conflict
management, ecosystem management, land management planning, and natural
resource law. Collectively, the members should represent a diversity of
disciplines and perspectives and have a knowledge of the national
forests. Officers and employees of the Forest Service may not serve as
members of the Committee."

In announcing the appointment of the COS, Secretary Glickman said, "I am
looking forward to the Committee's recommendations as a significant step
toward developing a new and improved planning process, on that will be
more consistent with the public's expectations of how our national
forests should be managed in the 21st century." In commenting on the
Committee's selection, Chief Domback stated that, "The breadth of
expertise and experience represented by this Committee will ensure that
our new planning regulations are scientifically based. We cannot make
management decisions that maintain healthy ecosystems without a
fundamentally sound planning structure in place."

Charter for the Committee of Scientists

The Charter for the Committee of Scientists states that the Committee's
purpose is to: "\....provide scientific and technical advice to the
Secretary of Agriculture and the Chief of the Forest Service on
improvements that can be made in the National Forest System Land and
Resource Management Planning Process. The Charter calls for the
Committee to "\...address such topics as how to consider the following
in land and resource management plans: biological diversity, use of
ecosystem assessments in land and resource management planning, spatial
and temporal scales for planning, public participation processes,
sustainable forestry, interdisciplinary analysis, and any other issues
that the Committee identifies that should be addressed in revised
planning regulations."

The Charter further states that, in its report, the Committee should:

"\...make recommendations on how to best accomplish sound resource
planning within the established framework of environmental laws and
within the statutory mission of the Forest Service,"

"\...provide technical advice on the land and resource management
planning process, and provide material for the Forest Service to
consider for incorporation into the revised planning regulations.,"

"\...recommend improvements in Forest Service coordination with other
federal land management or resource protection agencies, state and local
government agencies, and tribal governments while recognizing the unique
roles and responsibilities of each agency in the planning process."

See Appendix A for the complete charter.

This Committee falls under the Federal Advisory Committee Act that
requires notice of meetings in the Federal Register, meetings open and
accessible to the public, decisions made in a public forum, and a
written summary of each meeting.

Tasks for the Committee to Fulfill its Charter

To meet the mandate in its charter, the Committee has undertaken four
major tasks:

1\) To learn about the problems and issues in land and resource planning
of the National Forests, along with innovative solutions to addressing
these issues and problems. To complete this task, the Committee:

a\) Held meetings around the United States in which the Forest Service
and public in each Forest Service Region were invited speak to the
Committee and discuss these problems, issues, and solutions with the
Committee. The time and location of each meeting were as follows:

Meeting 1 - December 19, 1997; Location: Chicago, IL

Meeting 2 - January 22-23, 1998; Location: Denver, CO (Region 2)

Meeting 3 - February 12-13, 1998; Location: Seattle, WA (Regions 6/10)

Meeting 4 - February 24-25, 1998; Location: Atlanta, GR (Region 8)

Meeting 5 - March 3-5, 1998; Location: Sacramento, CA (Region 5)

Meeting 6 - March 31 - April 1, 1998; Location: Boston, MA (Region 9)

Meeting 7 - April 14-15, 1998; Location: Albuquerque, NM (Region 3)

Meeting 8 - April 22-23, 1998; Location: Missoula, MT (Regions 1/4)

At some meetings, panels were set up to address particular issues
important to the Committee.

In addition, a meeting was held May 27-May 29 in Boulder, CO to work on
this report and the Committee held a number of conference calls in July
and August.

b\) Reviewed relevant papers and articles that have been written on
national forest planning. A complete record of Committee Papers is on
file at the Siuslaw National Forest.

c\) Encouraged people to contact us at a post office box and Web site.

2\) To understand the expectations of other agencies and governments for
land and resource planning on the national forests and how theses
agencies and governments would like to be involved. To accomplish this
task, the Committee met with state, country, and regional governments,
other federal agencies, and tribal governments and tribal
representatives including:

In Denver, the COS met with a representative of the Western Governor's
Association.

In Seattle, the COS met with representatives of the State of Oregon,
three county commissioners, and representatives of four Indian tribes.
Also, it met there with representatives of the Bureau of Land
Management, US Park Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, National
Marine Fisheries, and Environmental Protection Agency.

In Sacramento, the COS met with the Director of the Lake Tahoe
Conservancy.

In Albuquerque, the COS met with local Soil and Water Conservation
Districts and tribal representatives.

In Missoula, it met with the US Park Service, representatives of the
Governor of Montana, and a state legislator.

3\) To develop a framework for land and resource planning on the
national forests that supports the mission of the Forest Service. To
accomplish this task, the Committee is writing a report that will:

a\) Articulate an overall purpose, goals, and principles for land and
resource planning

b\) Develop a set of concepts for land and resource planning along with
an explanation of these concepts and examples of their application

4\) To suggest improvements in land and resource planning using the
purposes/concepts/principles that it develops as a guide. To accomplish
this task, the Committee plans to:

a\) Outline a planning process that utilizes these
purposes/concepts/principles.

b\) Identify problems that it sees in land and resource planning, and
barriers to effective planning, and suggesting mechanisms for overcoming
these problems and barriers.

c\) Propose language in some cases for inclusion in new regulations,
such as language on the purpose, goals, and principles for land and
resource planning.

# 

# SUMMARY

# 

In December 1997, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman convened a
Committee of Scientists to review and evaluate the Forest Service's land
management planning process and identify changes that might be needed to
the planning regulations. Key phrases from that Charter include:
"\...make recommendations on how to best accomplish sound resource
planning within the established framework of environmental laws and
within the statutory mission of the Forest Service," "\...provide
technical advice on the land and resource management planning process,
and provide material for the Forest Service to consider for
incorporation into the revised planning regulations.," and "..recommend
improvements in Forest Service coordination with other federal land
management or resource protection agencies, state and local government
agencies, and tribal governments while recognizing the unique roles and
responsibilities of each agency in the planning process."

The Committee traveled around the country, visiting each Forest Service
region and hearing from Forest Service employees and many interested
members of the public who offered their ideas and shared their concerns
about planning and management of national forest system lands. The
Committee then held a number of work sessions and circulated drafts of
its report. The following statement of overall purpose, major
recommendations, and supporting principles for planning and management
on the national forests and grasslands summarizes the Committees'
conclusions.

Overall Purpose

The national forests and grasslands constitute an extraordinary national
legacy created by people of vision and preserved for future generations
by diligent and farsighted public servants and citizens. They are the
people's lands, emblems of our democratic traditions.

These lands can provide many and diverse benefits to the American
people. These include clean air and water, productive soils, biological
diversity, goods and services, employment opportunities, community
benefits, recreation, and naturalness. They also give us intangible
qualities such as beauty, inspiration, and wonder.

Yet, these benefits depend upon the long-term sustainability of the
watersheds, forests, and rangelands. Accordingly, the first priority for
stewardship in the national forests and grasslands must be to maintain
and restore the sustainability of watersheds, forests, and rangelands
for present and future generations. Building on this foundation of
sustainability, the national forests and grasslands should provide a
wide variety of uses, values, products, and services that are important
to so many Americans, including outdoor recreation, forage, timber,
wildlife and fish, water use, and minerals.

We believe that the two guiding stars of stewardship in the national
forests and grasslands are sustainability and the recognition that these
are the people's lands. The objective of planning for the National
Forest System is to guide stewardship so as to fulfill the purposes of
the national forests and grasslands and to honor their unique place in
American life. Five major recommendations for planning and the
principles to achieve them are outlined below.

Recommendation #1.

Strive to assure the ecological sustainability of our watersheds,
forests, and rangelands

The guiding star for planning is sustainability. Like other overarching
national objectives, sustainability is broadly aspirational and can be
difficult to define in concrete terms. Yet, especially considering the
increased human pressures on the national forests and grasslands, it
becomes ever more essential that planners focus on the heart of the idea
of sustainability, that our use today does not impair the functioning of
ecological processes and the ability of these natural resources to
contribute economically and socially in the future.

While one function of the pursuit of sustainability is to chart a broad
and idealistic objective, important aspects of sustainability can also
be defined and measured with some precision in the planning process.
First, species viability, which is essential to ecological
sustainability, is a powerful metric. Second, useful measurements can be
made of 'ecological productivity, through such indicators as water
purity, air quality, soil fertility, fire and flow regimes, plant
growth, and the variety and distribution of forests and rangelands. By
seeking to sustain biological diversity and ecological productivity ---
by first emphasizing what we leave, before we consider what we take ---
forest planning can play a crucial role in laying the necessary
foundation for the economic and social components of sustainability:
making contributions to strong, productive economies and creating
opportunities for enduring human communities. Ecological, economic and
social sustainability are inextricably linked, and thus impairing the
sustainability of any one aspect affects the entirety.

Principles

[Provide for the diversity of plant and animal communities and the
productive capacity of ecological systems---the core elements of
ecological sustainability.]{.underline} Biological diversity and
ecological productivity in turn, depends on the viability of individual
species---diversity is sustained only when species persist. In addition,
they depend on maintaining the characteristic composition, structure,
and processes of ecosystems in the presence of human and natural
disturbances ---on maintaining the ecological integrity of these
systems. The obligation of planners and managers to provide for
biological diversity and ecological productivity is at the center ---
legally, scientifically, and morally --- of stewardship of the national
forests and grasslands.

[Base plans upon science and other knowledge of the world.]{.underline}
The best available ecological, economic, and social information and
analysis must be the foundation of land and resource planning. Planning
should consider information from a wide range of sources, including
scientists in public and private organizations, as well as other
knowledgeable people in tribes and local communities.

[Develop scientifically credible conservation strategies for species and
ecosystems]{.underline}. Regional assessments should suggest methods and
strategies for providing for species viability and ecological integrity.
Using that information, planning should construct conservation
strategies and have them reviewed for accuracy and sufficiency by Forest
Service and other scientists before decisions become final.

[Include mechanisms for evaluating whether stewardship goals have been
achieved.]{.underline} Because one of the core functions of planning is
to foster informed management decisions through ongoing assessment and
evaluation, effective monitoring is a crucial aspect of planning and
management. Additionally, independent field review by Forest Service and
outside technical and scientific experts plays an important role in
monitoring the contribution of plans to ecological, economic, and social
sustainability. The results of monitoring and independent review should
be used in updating plans.

Recommendation #2.

Promote economic and social sustainability by providing for a wide
variety of uses, values, products, and services and by enhancing
society's capability to make sustainable choices.

The national forests and grasslands have long provided for the multiple
uses --- outdoor recreation, forage, timber, wildlife and fish, water
use, and minerals --- of these lands on a permanent basis, following
Gifford Pinchot's dictates that the lands be devoted to "their most
productive use for the permanent good of the whole people . . . always
bearing in mind that the conservative use of these resources in no way
conflicts with their permanent value." The planning and management of
these lands should be a shining example for the entire world of
stewardship that provides a wide variety of uses, values, products, and
services in ways that are compatible with long-term ecological, economic
and social sustainability.

Principles

[Recognize the interdependence of forests, rangelands, and watersheds
with economies and communities]{.underline}. Many communities depend on
the national forests and grasslands for much of their economic, social,
and cultural sustenance. Although the Forest Service cannot and should
not be expected to single-handedly sustain existing economies and
communities, the National Forests and Grasslands nonetheless contribute
many values, services, outputs, and uses that allow economies and
communities to persist, prosper, and evolve according to their own
wills. This charge --- contributing to the well-being of people today
and tomorrow --- is at the heart of the Forest Service's role in
economic and social sustainability. In this role, planning takes
generous account of compelling local circumstances. This includes the
needs of ranching, farming, timber, and Indian communities, and the many
Hispanic communities in the Southwest who depend on the resources in
former Spanish and Mexican land grants. Within the framework of
ecological sustainability, planning should consider the needs,
resilience, and vulnerability of economies and communities in selecting
long-term management strategies.

[Search for strategies and actions that provide for human use in ways
that contribute to long-term sustainability.]{.underline} The national
forests and grasslands should direct much of their planning and
implementation energies toward developing, applying, and rewarding
strategies and actions that enable the multiple uses to occur in ways
that promote long-term ecological, economic, and social sustainability.
Finding strategies and actions that contribute to long-term
sustainability, rather than working against it, is the surest way to
increase the predictability of these uses. As part of this effort,
planning searches for strategies that produce revenue from human use.

[Foster a broad-based understanding of the vital interrelationship
between human use and the sustainability of forests, streams, and
watersheds.]{.underline} By building upon a foundation grounded in
ecological sustainability, planning provides realistic expectations
about long-term uses, values, outputs and services contributed by the
National Forests to economies and communities.

[Enhance community capacity to respond to unforeseen disruptive
influences, such as fires, floods and hurricanes, as well as changes in
federal policy affecting contributions from national forest system
lands.]{.underline} The Forest Service is well-positioned with its
skills, expertise and familiarity and contacts with other government
programs to help ease disruptions and assist communities in times of
transition.

[Recognize the national and global implications of
management.]{.underline} Planning should acknowledge how management of
the national forests can contribute to ecological, economic, and social
sustainability on a national and international scale. Federal lands will
generally need to anchor regional and national conservation strategies
for species and ecosystems so that other landowers can continue
production of goods and services for the global economy without undue
restriction. Also, with the concern over climate change, the national
forests and grasslands should consider the effect that their management
will have on carbon sequestration and consider alternatives that
increase the amount of carbon stored.

[Recognize the rights of American Indian Tribes.]{.underline} Indian
tribes possess unique and important rights recognized by federal
treaties, statutes, and executive orders. The agency has a general trust
responsibility to federally recognized tribes and a duty to acknowledge
them as sovereign governments and to work with them on a
government-to-government basis. Depending on the circumstances of
particular tribes and national forests, such lands also may provide for
tribal hunting, fishing, and gathering rights, access to sacred sites,
protection of graves and other archaeological sites, and watershed
protection for downstream Indian reservations, and fishing sites.

Recommendation #3.

Integrate planning of the national forests and grasslands into the
broader geographic, legal, political, and social landscape within which
these lands exist.

In every sector of the country, the Forest Service and the national
forests and grasslands are just one important agency and one important
land system among many important governmental and private entities and
land ownerships. Some of these agencies have statutory authority over
the national forests. Other agencies, governments, corporations, and
citizens manage land in and around the national forests. Still others
have a keen interest in the national forests and can affect the way the
political process views Forest Service action.

Sustainability of watersheds and other natural areas in which national
forests and grasslands are located will inevitably depend upon
activities on nearby federal lands, tribal, and state lands, and private
lands and on the actions and attitudes of a wide variety of agencies,
governments and citizens. These landowners will vary in their abilities
as well as their interest in providing the mix of uses, products,
values, and services that people seek from forests and rangelands.
Planning, therefore, must be outward-looking with the goals of
understanding the broader landscape in which the national forests and
grasslands lie and achieving the highest values for management of these
lands within the context of how people, businesses, and governments will
conserve, regulate, and use the lands within and around the national
forests and grasslands.

[Recognize the special role that national forests and grasslands play in
regional landscapes.]{.underline} The national forests and grasslands
often have special responsibilities in the context of all ownerships.
The will increasingly be called upon to provide the backbone of regional
conservation strategies to conserve species and ecosystems. Also, they
are counted upon to provide municipal water and dispersed recreation for
an increasingly developed and settled landscape. In addition, in some
areas, they are the only substantial source of timber supplies.

[Utilize a coordinated approach by all affected federal agencies in
assessment and planning.]{.underline} Cooperation from the beginning
with all federal agencies with statutory authority over the national
forests and grasslands is essential. Obtaining early participation of,
and joint planning with, all federal land management agencies in the
area is another key to successful planning. While the Forest Service
cannot require participation and joint planning with other federal
agencies, the agency should seek and actively encourage it.

[Proceed from start to finish in close cooperation with state, tribal,
and local governments.]{.underline} Success in achieving goals for the
national forests and grasslands may depend upon decisions made by other
jurisdictions. Similarly, the Forest Service often can help other
jurisdictions achieve their objectives through cooperation.

[Utilize spatial and temporal scales necessary to assure sustainability
and provide for multiple use.]{.underline} Ecological boundaries that
also have social meaning, such as river basins, mountain ranges will be
useful for planning in the future. These planning boundaries often do
not follow the boundaries of the national forests and grasslands. In
order to achieve long-term sustainability, planning must often take
account of cumulative effects on resources, within and beyond the
boundaries of the national forests and grasslands, well beyond the life
of a plan.

[Acknowledge the limits and variability of likely budgets.]{.underline}
Plans that are unrealistic in budget terms can seldom be implemented,
and hence fail to provide proper management guidance, lead to public
frustration and anger, and undermine high-quality stewardship. Plans
should be resilient in the face of erratic budgets.

Recommendation #4.

Meaningfully engage the American people in the stewardship of their
national forests and grasslands.

The national forests and grasslands belong to the American people. For
these truly to be the "people's lands," the people must understand the
lands' condition, potential, limitations, and niche in resource
conservation in this country. Just as the Forest Service can help the
American people learn about the limits and capabilities of the national
forests and grasslands, so too must the managers be educated by the
unique knowledge, advice, and values of the American people. Citizens
can provide a wide array of services, ranging from volunteer work on
trail crews to participating in collaborative efforts aimed at resolving
disputes over specific projects. The national forests should draw on
this knowledge, wisdom, and energy by building relationships, dialogues,
and partnerships with the groups and individuals who wish to have a role
in setting the future course for the national forests and in
implementing these decisions.

Principles

[Encourage extensive collaborative citizen participation.]{.underline}
Land and resource planning must provide mechanisms for broad-based,
vigorous, and ongoing opportunities for open public dialogue. These
dialogues must be open to any person at any time, conducted in
nontechnical terms readily understandable to the general public, and
structured in a manner that recognizes and accommodates differing
schedules, capabilities, and interests. The participation of citizens
should be encouraged from the beginning and be maintained throughout the
planning process. The public should have a role in assessments,
issue-identification, implementation and monitoring.

[Utilize formal advisory boards and assess their
effectiveness.]{.underline} The Forest Service should utilize advisory
boards as one component of collaborative planning, These boards can
provide an immediate, legitimate, representative structure within which
pubic dialogue can occur. The Committee recommends that the Forest
Service test advisory boards on particular Forests across the nation,
learn from this experience, and then decide whether, and in what form,
they would be most useful.

[Build upon the human resources in local communities.]{.underline} Just
as local communities depend on the national forests and grasslands, so
too does the health of many forests, rangelands, and watersheds depend,
in turn, on healthy communities. Many restoration actions are needed on
these lands, including programs to improve riparian conditions, reduce
fuel loads, and rebuild and decommission roads. These efforts will
require entrepreneurs and a trained workforce. The surrounding
communities, assuming that they continue to exist and prosper, can help
provide these services. Planning and management must realize the full
potential of these human resources to further the stewardship of the
national forests and grasslands.

[Make plans and planning understandable to the American
people.]{.underline} A central purpose of planning is to speak directly
to the public. The language of planning must be clear and
straight-forward. These are the people's lands, and planning must be
welcoming to the public.

[Restore and maintain the trust of the American people in the management
of the national forests.]{.underline} Planning is a principal setting in
which the Forest Service relates to the public. It can be a valuable
forum in which to reestablish the public's confidence. Planners need to
work on the premise that effective planning and management cannot be
achieved without the public's respect and trust. Therefore, planning
should integrate the public into the process, give the public accurate
and complete information in a way that can be understood, make extensive
use of public input, and meet public expectations by adopting realistic
plans and fulfilling their objectives until amended.

[Institute independent field review of plans and actions]{.underline}.
This should enhance the soundness and credibility of the plans as well
as foster public trust in the planning process.

Recommendation #5.

Planning must be both visionary and pragmatic to guide decision-making.

Planning has long been viewed as a burdensome exercise with little
connection to management. In fact, planning must be an organic part of
stewardship of the national forests and grasslands: plans must be
working guides that Forest Service employees find useful and motivating.
Given the frequency with which new issues arise, new information becomes
available, and unforeseen events occur, planning should be viewed as an
ongoing process, where guidance and directions are adapted as necessary
to new understandings.

Principles

[Organize planning around a collective vision of the desired
future.]{.underline} Developing a collective vision of future landscape
conditions, and the uses, products, values, and services that will be
provided by these conditions, is our best hope for a "coming together"
of the people and groups that care about the national forests. Pictures,
maps, and computer imagery of future conditions, including consideration
of the larger landscape within which a planning area is located, will
help people visualize alternatives and reach agreement on a shared
vision. A plan document should begin with a short mission statement that
captures this vision---a mission statement that is broad but vivid and
evocative, a dream rooted in reality. The "desired future condition,"
and the outcomes associated with it, should serve as the central
reference point for planning and management of the national forests.

[Orient performance measures, monitoring, and budgets toward achievement
of the actions and conditions needed to move toward the desired
future.]{.underline} Needed management actions and expected conditions
should become the primary measures of achievement of forest plans goals.
Measurement of plan performance would be accomplished through comparing
the expected treatment outcomes to actual treatment results and
comparing the rate and degree of movement towards the desired future
conditions to that expected..

[Seek out and address key issues, especially the toughest
ones.]{.underline} Planning cannot avoid controversy by trying to bury
it. The best guidelines will emerge from an open, candid, and
collaborative process that tackles key issues.

[Be efficient in achievement of goals.]{.underline} Strategies that
simultaneously address multiple goals and find the least-cost method for
achieving these goals are essential guides to efficient stewardship.

[Search for revenue sources to support management]{.underline} Planning
must seek new sources of revenue to support management in an era of much
smaller revenue from timber sales. Obvious sources include recreation
and income from licensing dams.

[Plan expeditiously.]{.underline} Lengthy planning efforts frustrate
public participants, strain Forest Service resources, and can result in
plan documents that are outdated when adopted. To accommodate this goal,
analytical requirements should be kept to a minimum consistent with
achieving the purposes of planning.

[Make plans dynamic and adaptable.]{.underline} There is no such thing
as a "final plan." While a plan should strive to attain a reasonable
degree of predictability in its implementation, everyone also must
recognize that unpredicted events, ranging from natural disturbances to
changed market conditions, will occur. Forest Service officials must
respond adaptively to new circumstances through plan amendments, small
and large, so the plans will remain fully current. Plans must be living
documents.

Some final considerations

[The Committee's recommendations were the result of much discussion and
debate.]{.underline} While the members earnestly tried to reach
agreement on all points, honest disagreement remains on some issues. The
summary presented here represents the sense of the Committee as a whole.
Discussion scattered through the text of the final report will attempt
to capture the flavor of that debate and the different points of view
represented by Committee members over the course of our work.

[The Committee's recommendations will not eliminate all conflict over
management of the National Forests.]{.underline} We must recognize that
planning and management of these public lands proceeds in the face of
legitimate, but often divergent, interests. While it may be unreasonable
to expect consensus on particular management decisions on the National
Forests, there is a clear national consensus on the importance of
sustaining the resources and their contribution to the social and
economic welfare of the nation. Our report rests on this national
interest in sustainability, and allows the planning process to work
toward regional and local management strategies reflecting areas of
agreement and issues of continuing conflict. Our strong reliance upon
external review stems from our recognition that conflicts will
necessarily remain and can only be addressed through continuing
opportunities for public and agency dialogue and learning.

[Federal budgets are a key: The Committee's recommendations will require
a continued influx of resources to support planning and
management.]{.underline} Much of the recent planning and management on
the National Forests has been supported by timber harvest. It appears
doubtful that those high levels of revenue from timber harvest will
return, regardless of the Committee's recommendations. Therefore, we
must count on the American people being willing to invest public funds
in the management and stewardship of these lands and resources for the
multiplicity of direct and indirect benefits they provide the American
people. Indeed, one outcome of the contentiousness of public land policy
debates over the past decades is broader recognition of the importance
of these public lands and resources to local communities and society as
a whole. This recognition extends beyond the United States and animates
the global efforts to conserve forests and watersheds in order to ensure
a sustainable environment for our children and future generations.

[Ecological sustainability as the foundation of national forest
stewardship\--continuation of existing policies or a radical new
idea?]{.underline} For legal, scientific, ethical reasons, the Committee
recommends that ecological sustainability be the foundation of national
forest stewardship. This recommendation suggests that ecological
sustainability set a framework for planning the management for national
forests within which these forests contribute to economic and social
sustainability. This recommendation does not mean that we should
maximize the protection of native species and ecological productivity to
the exclusion of use of these lands. Rather, it means that planning for
the national forests and grasslands should attempt to provide habitat
that enables a secure existence for these species and protection for the
elements of ecological productivity. Choices in management still exist
and the level of risk to take is a policy choice.

In approach, we feel that this proposal is similar to the existing
regulations implementing the National Forest Management Act. These
regulations (1982) have an extensive section on "Management
Requirements" that calls for provision of adequate habitat to maintain
viable populations of existing native vertebrate species, protection of
streams and watersheds, and many other conservation measures. These
requirements were intended to provide a framework (decision-space) that
would set sideboards on management planning as is our call for
ecological sustainability to be the foundation of national forest
stewardship.

In its details of implementation, however, the regulation proposed by
the Committee on ecological sustainability differs somewhat from the
existing one, reflecting over 15 years of experience. The proposed
regulation continues to focus on habitat for native species as the core
of ecological sustainability, while broadening the focus from
vertebrates to all native species. At the same time, the regulation
recognizes that ensuring the viability of each native species, through
individual analysis, is an impossible task. Therefore, the regulation
suggests a three-pronged strategy: 1) providing for the viability of a
set of selected \"focal\" species, 2) providing, in a more general
sense, for the conditions (called "ecological integrity") under which
native species existed, 3) monitoring the effectiveness of this approach
in meeting the goals of species viability.

In addition, the Committee's proposed regulation takes a number of steps
to ensure that scientifically-credible conservation strategies will be
developed in planning. First, it calls for the use of the best available
scientific information. Second, it calls for assessments by scientists
to select species of interest and develop measures of species viability
and ecological integrity. Finally, it calls for independent scientific
review of proposed conservation strategies before plans are published.

# CHAPTER ONE

Sustaining the Land, Economies and Human Communities

Today, sustainability is widely recognized as the overarching objective
of land and resource stewardship. In its simplest terms, sustainability
means to maintain or prolong. The 1987 Brundtland Commission Report (The
World Commission on Environment and Development, "Our Common Future")
elaborated upon the shorthand definition by articulating both the need
for current productivity and the physical and moral imperative of
intergenerational equity: the goal of sustainability is to "meet the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs." Further, sustainability in this
modern sense has three aspects --- ecological, economic, and social.
These different aspects of sustainability are interrelated: the
sustainability of ecological systems is a necessary prerequisite for
strong, productive economies, enduring human communities, and the values
people seek from wildlands. Most basically, we compromise human welfare
if we fail to sustain vital, functioning ecosystems. It is also true
that strong economies and communities are often a prerequisite to
societies possessing the will and patience needed to sustain ecological
systems.

Sustainability is sometimes criticized as being so vague that it eludes
definition. To be sure, it is impossible to define sustainability in a
generic fashion that applies across the board to all natural systems.
That is not, however, how we approach the term in this report.

We view sustainability as operating on two levels. First, sustainability
has great appeal as a broad societal objective --- as a symbol of the
fundamental values we hold as a people. The concept has this
acceptability because it possesses at once the philosophical and moral
force of fairness to future generations as well as the practical edge of
being necessary for our economic and social well-being. Thus,
sustainability embodies a shared national goal, as do democracy,
freedom, and equality. Such formulations --- idealistic and never fully
attainable, yet undeniable in their essential truths --- are critical to
setting an agreed-upon context for making public policy on difficult and
complex issues.

Sustainability also operates on a much more concrete level. While it may
be a futile exercise to try to define sustainability in an abstract way
that would apply to all lands, it is entirely realistic to apply the
principle to the specific circumstances of a particular geographic area.
Thus, we view sustainability, in addition to its value as a broad
societal aspiration, as applying in varying and particular ways to real
places --- to actual communities, economies, forests, watersheds, and
rangeland. Different areas will have different ecological, economic, and
social touchstones --- different things to sustain. The key is to
develop land stewardship policies and practices, applying the principles
of sustainability, to fit the needs of each place.

Significantly, the application of sustainability to a specific place
will change over time. Policy will evolve according to natural dynamics
(fires, floods, landslides, other natural events) and societal events
(economic upturns or downturns, technological innovations, population
patterns, changing values). Thus, a working policy of sustainability
must be adaptable to change depending upon actual changes in the land
and in human communities.

Seen in this light, sustainability --- which will vary according to the
place and time --- becomes tangible, definable, and measurable.

We have seen recent examples of the concrete application of
sustainability. In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, plans have been
put into place that seek to sustain, among other things, grizzly bears,
wolves, and bison; the lodgepole pine forests; magnificent geothermal
resources; and the economies of local tourist communities. In the
Pacific Northwest, where citizens and their governments have engaged in
perhaps the most ambitious natural resources program ever undertaken,
the application of sustainability is different because the place is
different. The goals in the Northwest Forest Plan and other programs
have included sustaining the Northern spotted owl; the Pacific salmon;
the hydropower generated by dams on the Columbia and other rivers; the
splendor of the region's ancient forests; and the economies of timber
and fishing communities by trying to assure a lower, but reasonably
reliable, level of timber production and salmon harvests important to
the well-being of those communities. This report will allude to other
examples of sustainability as a working, real-world policy goal.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

The term sustainability has come into widespread use in relatively
recent times, but the core value of intergenerational equity ---
providing for current economic use while assuring the productivity of
the land for future generations --- has long played an important role in
natural resources law and policy. This is especially true with respect
to the National Forest System.

From the beginning, the laws and policies governing the national forests
and grasslands have evidenced deep-running currents of the policy of
sustainability. When Congress first authorized presidents to set aside
forest reserves, it acted in response to petitions from local farmers
and townspeople that wanted to be assured of reliable water flows. Thus,
watershed protection was the dominant purpose behind the Creative Act of
1891. In the Organic Act of 1897, Congress decided to permit logging in
the forest reserves and provided that a purpose of the reserves was to
"furnish a continuous supply of timber" (16 U.S.C. § 475). The
first-listed purpose in the 1897 Act remained watershed protection, or
"securing favorable conditions of water flows." (*Id.*)

Those early, formative years of the national forests were idealistic,
forward-looking times. The creation of a system of natural lands,
removed from homesteading and permanently dedicated to the national
interest, was itself a dramatic act. Legislators and administrators
looked for guidance to the work of the rising scientific community,
especially George Perkins Marsh's *Man and Nature*, published in 1864,
where Marsh expounded at length on the dangers of soil erosion and the
importance of forest lands as watersheds. Senator Algernon Paddock, one
of the most influential legislators during the passage of the 1891 and
1897 Acts, emphasized that "the laying waste of the forests of a country
rudely disturbs that harmony between nature's forces which must be
maintained if the earth is to be kept habitable for its teeming
millions" (Senate Report No. 1002 (1892)). President Theodore Roosevelt
championed the conservation cause, which emphasized the needs of
tomorrow, and directed his attention to the national forests. His
executive orders reserved nearly three-fourths of all land in the
National Forest System today. In discussing the timber reserves,
Roosevelt wrote:

> *\[O\]ur entire purpose in this forest reserve policy is to keep the
> land for the benefit of the actual settler and home-maker, to further
> his interests in every way, and, while using the natural resources of
> the country for the benefit of the present generation, also to use
> them in such manner as to keep them unimpaired for the benefit of the
> children now growing up to inherit the land. (Quoted in Harbaugh,
> Power and Responsibility, (1961)).*

The idealism that so characterized the conservation movement burned
hottest in the Forest Service itself. In 1905, Congress transferred the
forest reserves to the Department of Agriculture, establishing the
national forests, and placing them under the supervision of Gifford
Pinchot, one of the most influential figures of the 20th century in
natural resources policy. Pinchot was utilitarian and believed that the
forests should be utilized for the benefit of the American people,
especially local communities. Yet the level of development under his
watch paled in comparison to the magnitude of extraction, especially in
timber harvesting, that the National Forest System would see in the
post-World War II era.

Pinchot was adamant that the national forests, while they should be
used, must be managed conservatively --- sustainability in today's terms
--- for the future. He declared that every federal land manager was "a
trustee of the public property." (*The Fight for Conservation* (1910)).
In words that presaged the notion of intergenerational equity embedded
in the Brundtland Commission Report, Pinchot wrote that conservation
"recognizes fully the right of the present generation to use what it
needs and all it needs of the natural resources now available, but it
recognizes equally our obligation so to use what we need that our
descendents shall not be deprived of what they need." (*Id.*)

The theme of obligations to the future was woven through the influential
Pinchot Letter of 1905 --- still considered one of the Forest Service's
organic documents. Pinchot exhorted all Forest Service employees that
"the permanence of the resources is therefore indispensable to continued
prosperity, and the policy of this Department for their protection and
use will invariably be guided by this fact, always bearing in mind that
the *conservative use* of these resources in no way conflicts with their
permanent value." (*The Principal Laws Relating to the Forest Service*
(1964)). The Pinchot Letter concluded with his admonition that "where
conflicting interests must be reconciled the question will always be
decided from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number
in the long run." (*Id*.)

The official commitment to sustaining lands in the National Forest
Systems continued The Weeks Act of 1911 authorized the acquisition of
national forest lands in the East for watershed protection. The purposes
of the 1944 Sustained Yield Act speak directly to sustainability when
they promote sustained-yield forest management in order thereby (a) to
stabilize communities, forest industries, employment, and taxable forest
wealth; (b) to assure a continuous and ample supply of forest products;
and (c) to secure the benefits of forests in regulation of water supply
and stream flow, prevention of soil erosion, amelioration of climate,
and preservation of wildlife. (P.L. 78-273).

A series of Acts in the 1930s started the federal requisition and
rehabilitation of tax delinquent land, most of it 160 acre parcels of
unsuccessfully homesteaded land. Under a series of statutes enacted
between 1935 and 1953, a program was established for permanent federal
management of the rehabilitated lands. In 1953, about 3.8 million acres
selected for permanent federal ownership was transferred to the Forest
Service for management as national grasslands.

The Multiple-Use, Sustained Yield Act of 1960 also emphasized
conservation for the future by providing for the "achievement and
maintenance in perpetuity of a high-level annual or regular periodic
output of the various renewable resources of the national forests
without impairment of the productivity of the land." (16 U.S.C. §
531(b)).

The National Forest Management Act of 1976 included several requirements
protecting watersheds and wildlife and provided for the protection of
the diversity of plant and animal communities. In the NFMA, Congress
found that the Forest Service has "both a responsibility and an
opportunity to be a leader in assuring that the Nation maintains a
natural resource conservation posture that will meet the requirements of
our people in perpetuity." (16 U.S.C. § 1600(6)).

In addition to these statutes, which apply specifically to the National
Forest System, there are many general laws that also bear upon the
Forest Service's stewardship. They, too, regularly evoke the theme of
sustainability. Thus, the National Environmental Policy Act declares it
the policy of Congress to "fulfill the social, economic, and other
requirements of present and future generations of Americans" (42 U.S.C.
§ 4331(a)) and to "fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as
trustee of the environment for succeeding generations." (42 U.S.C. §
4331(b). The Clean Water Act provides that "the objective of this Act is
to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity
of the Nation's waters" (33 U.S.C. § 1251(a). The National Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act protects rivers "for the benefit and enjoyment of
present and future generations" (16 U.S.C. § 1271) and the Wilderness
Act announces "the policy of the Congress to secure for the American
people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring
resource of wilderness." (16 U.S.C. § 1131(a)). The Endangered Species
Act, which has become a central part of the day-to-day work of the
national forests and grasslands, evidences a profound national
commitment to the sustainability of animal and plant species.

In recent years, federal sustainability policy has evolved in concert
with the policies of other nations. The 1992 Earth Summit (The United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development), which took place in
Rio de Janeiro, recognized the importance of sustainable management of
natural resources. In 1995, the Santiago Declaration, of which the
United States is a party, outlined criteria and indicators for
sustainable forest management. One goal of this report is to recommend
procedures that will allow for the criteria and indicators to be
integrated into the stewardship of the national forests in an effective
and efficient way.

Our country then, has been committed to sustainable management of our
public lands for over a century. In a 1995 message to Forest Service
employees, Jack Ward Thomas, one of the nation's conservation leaders
and Forest Service Chief, encapsulated this long development and
demonstrated the leadership role that the Forest Service has played and
should continue to play in achieving sustainability:

> *Our land ethic is to: Promote the sustainability of ecosystems by
> ensuring their health, diversity and productivity.*
>
> *This ethic provides the constancy of purpose and direction that
> permeates all we dream, do and say. Our land ethic has evolved through
> the thinking and experience of Forest Service pioneers such as Gifford
> Pinchot, Arthur Carhart, Bob Marshall, Aldo Leopold, and others.
> Growing understanding of the complexity of ecosystems has expanded
> thinking on sustainability --- from emphasis on sustained yields of
> products to sustaining the ecosystems that provide a variety of
> benefits. Increased understanding of ecosystem function will demand
> rigorous research and continuing evolution on management concepts and
> actions.*
>
> *Through ecosystem sustainability, present and future generations will
> reap the benefits that healthy, diverse, and productive ecosystems
> provide. Our ethic includes the active use of ecosystems, through both
> preservation and manipulation to gain these benefits --- so long as
> this use does not unduly impact ecosystem sustainability. ("Message
> from Jack Ward Thomas" (1995)).*

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

The complex framework of statutes that governs the Forest Service has
many strands that speak directly to ecological, economic, and social
sustainability. Yet the Forest Service retains broad authority to
articulate its mission and set priorities, as Pinchot originally did and
as later Chiefs did as well. Even now, more than a century after the
passage of the Organic Act, perhaps the fundamental charge to the agency
is the expansive grant in the 1897 Act to regulate "occupancy and use"
on the national forests and grasslands (16 U.S.C. § 551). The courts
have always given the agency latitude, under that statute and the
Multiple-Use, Sustained-Yield Act of 1960, to chart the course that
policy should take to achieve the goals in the multitude of laws
governing the National Forests. With respect to the critical idea of
sustainability, what actions has the agency taken in the past? What has
been the role of science? How can a Committee of Scientists best offer
advice and encouragement on the courses that might be taken in the
future?

Originally, the Forest Service administered the national forests
conservatively. The timber harvest remained low, averaging about one
billion board feet annually. In his first year as administrator of the
national forests, Pinchot adopted a grazing code to reduce overgrazing
and soil loss. Considerable research was done on silviculture and
watershed protection. In 1924, the Forest Service, spearheaded by Aldo
Leopold, created the first government-established wilderness area in the
world. In the 1930s, under Robert Marshall's leadership, the agency
expanded its wilderness system and recreation policies.

After World War II, administration of the national forests changed
radically. By the mid-1960s, the allowable harvest reached eleven
billion board feet --- four times the historical level\--as the Forest
Service responded to the huge increase in demand for softwood products.
It is important to appreciate that the Forest Service viewed its
policies during this era as achieving sustainability. The annual
harvest, high-yield though it may have been, was premised on "even
flow": in spite of the intensive logging, the reasoning went, the
forests could grow more board feet than were being harvested. This
high-yield timber production endured well into the 1980s and dominated
policy in the National Forest System.

Almost unnoticed, beginning in the 1960s, scientists had begun digging
deeper. What are the ecological effects, they began to ask, of the level
of commodity production that the Forest Service had committed itself to?

Various scientific disciplines examined the ways in which fundamental
ecosystem processes were being changed. Hydrologists studied stream flow
patterns and the effects of increased silt loads. Range scientists
researched the impacts of grazing, logging, and water diversions on
riparian zones. Foresters increasingly looked at the whole forest, not
just timber harvest volumes. The research of fire ecologists showed how
fire suppression policies had altered the natural disturbance cycle.
Historic spotted owl research began in the early 1970s and wildlife
biologists conducted many other studies on species extinction and
viability. In this respect, the original Committee of Scientists in 1979
made an historic contribution through its regulation protecting species
viability, which implemented the NFMA's provision on diversity of plant
and animal communities.

A new and deeper way of looking at natural systems emerged. No longer
would the productivity of natural systems be defined solely by their
commodity outputs --- board feet of timber, animal unit months of
grazing forage, acre-feet of water diverted, and kilo watts of
electricity. Today, in addition to those measures, productivity is
measured in terms of ecosystem services, including clean water and air,
fertile soils, and diversity of plant and animal species. Further, a new
respect for the natural dynamics of ecosystems developed: land
management should account for uncertainty by acknowledging that planning
and implementation will be influenced by natural but unpredictable
events such as wildfires, drought, floods, hurricanes, widespread
occurrence of insect and disease, and the introduction and spread of
non-native species. The focus of the scientific community --- and,
increasingly, of on-the-ground land management --- has become
maintenance of overall ecosystem processes.

In a complementary set of developments beginning in the 1970s, the
public became involved in forest and rangeland policy as never before.
Citizens insisted upon greater recognition of recreation, wildlife, and
the beauty and spirituality that also are a part of whole forests and
rangeland systems. The public concerns and scientific advances became
embodied in statutes such as the National Forest Management Act, the
National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, and the
Endangered Species Act, and in many agency regulations.

These were fundamental changes. They amounted to a redefinition of
watersheds, forests, and rangelands --- a new conception of what we are
trying to sustain. By digging deep, scientists of the past two
generations had helped to redefine the approach to land stewardship.
Importantly, in the process, they brought an understanding of the
fundamental ecological processes that make possible the multiple-use
benefits and community values that the public now expects from its
public lands.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

We believe then, that the two guiding stars of stewardship in the
national forests and grasslands are sustainability and the recognition
that these are the people's lands. The remainder of this report is
dedicated to a discussion of what sustainability means in the context of
stewardship of the National Forest System and how the Forest Service
might, in practical ways, organize planning and management to achieve
it.

# CHAPTER TWO

Implementing Sustainability

One challenge of stewardship of the national forests and grasslands is
to translate the broad-gauged policy of sustainability into specific
planning and management practices that will provide long-term
ecological, economic, and social benefits. This chapter defines the
characteristics of these three aspects of sustainability. It also
explores the ways in which the three are interrelated. Ultimately, it
suggests ways in which we can measure sustainability, determine when the
objectives of sustainability have been attained, and fully incorporate
these concepts into decision making.

2A. Ecological Sustainability

The Elements of Ecological Sustainability

Ecological sustainability means maintaining the composition, structure,
and processes of an ecological system. The National Forest Management
Act (NFMA) goals of maintaining species diversity and ecological
productivity should therefore be broadly viewed in terms of ecological
sustainability. That is, species diversity and productivity can be
preserved by maintaining the composition, structure, and processes
characteristic of an area.

Composition

Composition refers to the biodiversity of an ecological system,
including genetic, species, and landscape diversity. [Genetic
diversity]{.underline} is the variation in inheritable characteristics
within and among individual organisms and populations. [Species
diversity]{.underline} is the number of different kinds of species
present in a given area. [Landscape diversity]{.underline} is the
variety of plant communities---including their identity, distribution,
juxtaposition, and seral stage--and habitats evaluated at the landscape
scale.

In the past, management guidelines for biodiversity have focused
primarily on individual species of plants, fungi, vertebrates, and
invertebrates. The species-by-species approach to assessing biodiversity
is impractical to implement, however, simply because there are so many
species. A broader, ecological approach is more cost effective both in
terms of time and finances. Such an approach is strongly focused on
habitat at a variety of spatial scales, ranging from the project to the
landscape scale. It requires identifying and measuring variables that
will allow reliable inferences about ecological composition.

Habitat alone cannot be used to predict wildlife populations, however.
The presence of suitable habitat does not ensure that any particular
species will be present or will reproduce. Therefore, populations of
species must also be assessed and continually monitored. Tools for
assessing both habitat conditions and population dynamics must be
developed and frequently validated. Because of limited time and funds,
however, it may only be possible to assess the status of a relatively
few "focal" species. These species will provide information about the
integrity of the larger ecosystem to which they belong. Focal species
can include those that are threatened and endangered, occupy rare
habitats, are of high management or public interest, are game species,
or are indicator species.

Structure

By structure we mean the biological and physical attributes of sites and
landscapes. Structure can be of biogenic origin, for example, large
trees, fish carcasses, and broken branches or rotting logs (coarse woody
debris) on forest floors, as well as geologic, for example, mountains,
canyons, unconstrained rivers, pools, and riffles. In general, landscape
structure includes the size, shape, and spatial relationships of cover
types. It also includes the sizes, shapes, and patterns of habitats
interspersed across a landscape, as well as their
connectivity**------**all of which influence the kinds of organisms that
can exist in that landscape. For example, connected patches of similar
vegetation can determine the ability of animals to move across the
landscape. Such movements may vary from roaming within a home range to
seasonal migration, dispersal of young, or a changing geographic range
after environmental disturbance. Some habitats, such as bodies of water
or riparian corridors, are both small and discontinuous, but
nevertheless have ecological impacts that greatly exceed their spatial
extent.

Variation in the physical attributes of ecological systems---especially
soil, water, and air---can both constrain and provide opportunities for
biological diversity. For example, natural watersheds have many
habitats, such as alluvial soils, steep slopes, deep pools, shallow
riffles, and waterfalls, that support a diverse biological system. In
contrast, a river that has been dammed to create a reservoir or diverted
from its natural channel may have few habitats and far less diversity.
Landscape structural diversity may also require the retention of natural
disturbances such as fire, flood, and wind throw (trees blown down in
storms). Therefore, planners must consider the larger physical
landscape---its historical legacy, its current condition, and its
biological potential---both within and outside of the national forests,
and the ability of species to respond adaptively to environmental
change. The necessary data to evaluate ecological sustainability should
be collected in the regional and watershed assessments, and considered
in the large landscape and small landscape planning processes.

Processes

Ecological processes include photosynthesis, energy flow, nutrient
cycling, water movement, disturbance, and succession. These processes
are fundamental to the functioning of ecological systems. Disturbances
such as wildfire, floods, or windthrow, for example, are natural and
integral processes in many systems. Organisms that make up the biotic
component of such systems have evolved in response to environmental
changes triggered by disturbances. Disturbances often move ecosystems
towards earlier successional stages, stimulating renewal processes
(e.g., stand replacement forest fires followed by primary plant
succession) and short-term increases in productivity. Large-scale
disturbance may move an ecosystem to a new system state from which it
may, or may not, return to its pre-disturbance condition (e.g.,
conversion of prairie grasslands to agricultural fields, channel
incision).

Often, one goal of management is to mimic those natural disturbance
processes that either allow the system to return to its original state
or move it to a more desirable state. The similarities and differences
between human-induced and natural disturbance processes are poorly
known, and constitute an active area of scientific research. Despite
this uncertainty, managing so as to mimic the disturbance processes that
sustain ecosystems through time, without surpassing the adaptational
limits of the plants and animals**,** is an important goal.

By sustaining the main components of an ecological system, composition,
structure, and processes, the system gains resilience---the ability to
renew or maintain and propagate itself after disturbance**.** The
continuing productivity of an ecological system, including its ability
to produce desirable "outputs" such as clean water, wood, fertile soil,
riparian habitat, or viable wildlife populations, depends upon potential
renewal.

The concepts of composition, structure, and process can be viewed as a
triangle, with a particular corner receiving greater emphasis, depending
on the management at hand (Figure 1). In focusing on one corner of the
triangle, however, the other corners cannot be forgotten, and the focus
may shift as the management situation changes. This perspective on
ecological sustainability is entirely consistent with other approaches
that categorized attributes of sustainability (such as the Santiago
Criteria, Table X).

Sustainability must be evaluated along a continuum, rather than viewed
as a single target value. The range of composition, structure, and
processes required to sustain an ecosystem must be interpreted in light
of the natural and historical variation for the region. The knowledge
that a threshold level may exist, below which a "threatened" component
of the system is at risk, means that sustainability must receive
stewardship emphasis at all times and locations.

Assessment activities must balance short-term gains and losses against
opportunities that provide for long-term benefits. These tradeoffs
become a concern when a system is near a sustainability threshold or
when impacts accumulate over time. Difficult decisions may be necessary
when a system nears the point where its composition, structure, or
processes are at risk of undergoing fundamental changes that may only be
repairable over the long-term. In these cases, attention must be paid to
that part of the triangle that may have the greatest long-term effects
on sustainability. An example occurs in the southwestern forests where
fire suppression has resulted in extensive areas with massive fuel
loads. The risks are high that a large-scale fire may cause long-term
loss of species and significant changes in ecosystem properties.
Therefore, in the near-term, steps should be taken to move the system
closer to one that can retain the full suite of ecological components
that are more typical of this forest system. In some cases, to achieve
sustainability goals may require management actions that upset the
short-term stability of the system.

Factors to Consider in Implementing Sustainability

Implementation of national forest plans is not a precise process; there
are many unknowns and potential pitfalls that are not under the control
of resource managers. Therefore, planning must acknowledge scientific
and social uncertainties, be cognizant of the inherent variability of
natural processes, acknowledge adverse cumulative effects of management
actions**,** and preserve options for future generations**.** This is
the daunting, but essential responsibility that falls on the shoulders
of the Forest Service.

Acknowledge the Non-Equilibrium Nature of Ecological Systems

The classical paradigm of ecology has been the stable-state ecological
system**,** sometimes referred to as the "balance of Nature" or "Nature
at equilibrium". As our understanding of ecological systems has evolved,
that view has been replaced by a non-equilibrium paradigm that
recognizes the inherently dynamic nature of ecological systems.
Ecological systems are regularly subject to episodic, natural
disturbances that change their states---that is, leads to changes in
composition, structure, or process. Contemporary with this shift in
thinking was the recognition that ecological systems are hierarchical
structures best evaluated at a variety of spatial scales. The
traditional ecological hierarchy includes genes, populations, species,
communities, ecosystems, and biomes. The combination of these two ideas
has lead to a view of ecological systems from both local and landscape
perspectives. For example, a large landscape may be in compositional
equilibrium even though individual patches in the landscape are in a
variety of states that may change through time. An example is the
distribution of forest seral stages across a large landscape. The
relative proportion of the different stages may stay approximately
constant through time, even though the seral stage of specific areas is
dynamic.

The new, non-equilibrium paradigm in ecology has the potential to be
misused. If nature is often in a state of flux, then some people may
wrongly conclude that whatever changes occur to ecological systems are
acceptable. However, ecological systems are not infinitely resilient,
and rates of change are bounded. Human impacts must be constrained
because ecological systems have adaptational limits that, if surpassed,
will lead to undesirable conditions. For example, timber harvest on
steep slopes may lead to loss of soil and a permanent reduction in the
productive potential of that part of the landscape. Such degraded
ecological systems will be severely limited in their ability to provide
those critical goods and services required by current and future human
generations. Sustaining ecological processes so that they operate within
their expected bounds of variation is the only way to sustain species
diversity for future generations. Even though we now recognize the
non-equilibrium nature of ecological systems, we also recognize that the
concept of stability of large-scale landscapes is well founded.
Ecological systems have historically changed sufficiently slowly that
there was apparent continuity in landscape processes across human
generations.

Acknowledge the Significance of Natural Processes

National Forests and National Grasslands contain a variety of natural
resources that change over time and space. Over long periods, natural
catastrophic events (e.g., widespread fire, landslides, floods,
droughts, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions) are certain and importance
impacts in most ecological systems. Chronic but important changes also
may occur that alter the character of the vegetation and associated
resources. These changes include succession (i.e., the sequential
changes in vegetation composition and structure through time), long
periods of high or low precipitation**,** loss of site productivity via
compaction or erosion, outbreaks of insects or disease, establishment
and spread of non-native species, and loss of native species diversity.
Although many natural processes have a dynamic and often unpredictable
aspect, an appreciation of the expected intensity, frequency, and
duration of those disturbances must be factored into planning efforts.

In the past, the Forest Service often did not adequately acknowledge the
dynamic nature of natural resources. Notions such as "the regulated
forest", and "maximum sustained yield" that guided the level of timber
harvest generally assumed that natural disturbances (fire and insects
especially) would be suppressed and therefore could be ignored in
planning. When at least temporarily successful, these suppression
policies often created new problems such as fuel buildups. When fires
and insects epidemics occurred anyway, the calculated timber harvest
level generally proved to be overestimates. As mentioned above, future
planning efforts must recognize and acknowledge disturbance processes in
planning and management.

Previous management practices have changed the composition and structure
of forests and rangelands such that a simple return to more natural
conditions is difficult or impossible in the near-term. For example,
widespread harvesting of large-diameter trees in many ponderosa pine
forests, coupled with long-term fire suppression, has resulted in
relatively dense stands of regenerating trees. These stands are more
prone to catastrophic wildfire. How they should be managed is an ongoing
debate. Similarly, in unconstrained river valley systems throughout much
of the American West, historical grazing and other practices have
affected watershed conditions and riparian plant communities; stream
widening and channel incision have been a common result. Even under the
most enlightened future stewardship direction, the recovery of many
streams and flood plain functions is not possible in the short term. In
some instances, the direct effects of increasing human populations near
and within protection boundaries of national forests and rangelands may
limit future stewardship options.

The attempt to "acknowledge natural processes" is a desirable attribute
of the planning process and its implementation. An example of such an
attempt is the current effort to try to identify "historical ranges of
natural variability" which is discussed in more detail below. The
knowledge being gained is providing Forest Service personnel with
opportunities to use their professional understanding of site
characteristics and processes to develop stewardship practices most
appropriate for attaining ecological sustainability. However, the
scientific knowledge base is often limited with regard to specific
ecosystem processes and their interactions. Much previous research has
focused on specific management practices (e.g., timber harvest and road
construction) or cause-and-effect at specific sites, thus our ability to
generalize and extrapolate the results of individual studies to a wide
range of ecosystem conditions remains limited.

Acknowledge Uncertainty

Uncertainty arises from numerous sources and occurs during many stages
of the planning process. Most important to our discussion here is
scientific uncertainty that arises from incomplete understanding of how
ecological systems work or insufficient information to determine the
relationships between processes. Often there is incomplete information
of the relevant ecological processes, the connections among ecosystem
components, and incomplete knowledge of the impacts of management.
Furthermore, ecological systems are often highly variable, and processes
may operate differently above and below some thresholds. Analysis of
management alternatives must consider the lack of complete understanding
of relationships within ecological systems, confidence limits on
projections into the future, and the inherent variability of ecological
systems.

Uncertainty is one of the primary ingredients of nearly all stewardship
decisions. However, previous planning efforts generally did not
acknowledge natural variability, as well as the risks associated with
decisions made under uncertainty. For example, estimates of future
annual timber harvest in a forest plan are usually presented as a
specific value. If nothing unanticipated happens over the implementation
period of the plan, that value may indeed represent the most probable
outcome of a specific plan. However, without including some measure of
uncertainty and variability, that number may falsely imply that the
projected outcome is fairly certain. Given the inescapable variability
of ecological processes, planners have the responsibility to explicitly
incorporate uncertainty into their analyses. It is critical that the
Forest Service learn to make decisions and manage in a highly variable
and uncertain environment, and to fully inform the public of the risks
associated with its decisions.

Acknowledge Cumulative Effects

To aid implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA),
regulations issued by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) in 1978
defined cumulative effects as

> *"\...the impact on the environment resulting from the incremental
> impact of the action when added to other past, present, and reasonably
> foreseeable actions regardless of what agency or person undertakes
> such actions."*

Implicit in this definition of cumulative effects is the concept that a
specific cause-and-effect response to a management action can be
identified. Also, the CEQ definition implies a the simple additivity of
effects---a phenomenon that seldom occurs because of multiple and
non-linear environmental responses to changes in the ecological system.

The CEQ definition of cumulative effects is even less clear regarding
how to incorporate the role of future natural disturbance. Natural
disturbances are a fundamental feature of both managed and unmanaged
ecological systems within a national forest or rangeland. However, many
types of potential cumulative effects from disturbance may not actually
become apparent until disturbance occurs. For example, a decision to not
thin a dry-site forest that has high fuel loads may result in
catastrophic watershed conditions only if a wildfire occurs; a poorly
designed road may not be problem until after a large storm, when
numerous road-related landslides occur; overgrazing in riparian areas
may not manifest itself in a loss of woody species unless the area
suffers an extended drought.

Because of the wide variation in site-specific practices and local
environmental conditions (e.g., vegetation type, topography, geology,
and soils) across a given national forest or rangeland, the direct and
indirect effects of management practices may not always be well
understood or easily predicted. Even when general patterns of cumulative
effects become evident at watershed and bioregional scales (e.g.,
basin-wide and regional patterns of channel incision, reduced abundance
or extent of specific plant or animal species, altered water quality),
the effects on smaller sites may be difficult to estimate.

There are few standard analytical methods available that effectively
address cumulative effects. The field of integrated assessment would
provide the analytic framework in which to consider feedbacks and
cumulative effects; however, the field is just being formalized, and the
is generally applied at broader scales than a national forest.
Assessments of early cumulative effects on the national forests have
often focused on water resources and fisheries issues. Although
watershed analysis procedures have been developed over the last decade
to better understand the spatial distribution and temporal occurrence of
watershed effects, the diversity of watershed conditions and management
activities occurring in a given area may preclude widespread use of
standard analytical methodologies.

Neither the NFMA (1976), nor its subsequent regulations, makes direct
mention of cumulative effects or cumulative effects analysis. However,
the regulations recognized the need to coordinate planning with local,
state, and other federal agencies, as well as, with private landowners
whose lands are intermingled with National Forest System Lands. The
regulations also required monitoring and evaluation of the effects of
management on national forest lands that may be affected by planning
decisions, including the effects of activities occurring on nearby
lands. Preventing potentially adverse cumulative effects to watershed
conditions, water quality, aquatic habitats, or other resources because
of land-use practices has been largely dependent upon NEPA and CEQ
regulations and the evolution of associated case law**.** Unfortunately,
NEPA documents often focus primarily on the direct effects of proposed
action, without fully assessing the cumulative effects*.*

When new NFMA regulations are written, specific language is needed
directing that cumulative effects analyses be incorporated into planning
efforts to the degree possible. These analyses should focus on relevant
issues at both bioregional and watershed scales. As difficult as it is,
we must focus attention on cumulative effects in planning.

Preserve Options

Preservation of future stewardship options is rarely possible when
current rates of resource exploitation are high. Preserving options
assumes that an acceptable range of choices will be available to address
the environmental problems confronting future human generations.
However, many American forest and range ecosystems have been intensively
used and managed with adverse effects on their productivity**.** The
most significant changes in these systems in the West have occurred over
the last 100-150 years**.** For example, in forested systems, much old
growth has been harvested, in response to demand for softwood timber and
the desire to convert to faster growing young growth, and extensive road
systems have been built using technologies that we now consider to be
obsolete. In rangeland areas, alterations to riparian systems and stream
channels have been extensive, a consequence of historical watershed and
riparian management practices. In both of these situations, future
stewardship options have been reduced or, in some cases, essentially
eliminated. Current management practices can potentially change\--reduce
or sometimes increase\--future options, but if these practices
significantly and adversely affect other resources or values, then they
are also likely to significantly limit future options. If current
practices result in such impacts as species becoming threatened or
endangered, water quality standards being exceeded, or public values and
trust violated, then dramatic readjustments to those practices are
clearly needed.

Preserving options is also a way of explicitly acknowledging our
incomplete knowledge of complex ecosystems\--that is, our ignorance of
how they function and their interactions with natural and
human-influenced disturbance regimes\--and our responsibilities to
future generations of humans. This philosophy is perhaps best
encapsulated by focusing first on what we leave before focusing on what
we take from ecological systems.

How Ecological Concepts Affect Planning

Assessing and Monitoring Sustainability

Assessment and monitoring to characterize sustainability is an
indispensable part of land and resource stewardship. To date, they have
not been integrated into the planning and implementation process. Yet,
including assessment and monitoring within the process is, perhaps, the
single most important shift that can happen in forest stewardship.
Assessments inform decisions regarding the current status of land and
resource stewardship. The assessment and monitoring processes create the
information necessary for future decisions, can save costs of future
inventory analysis, and reduce the likelihood of management mistakes.
Monitoring is the means to continue to update the baseline information
and to determine the degree of success in achieving ecological
sustainability. Including these activities in land stewardship means
both that the most up-to-date information will be used to guide
management decisions and that information relevant to those decisions
will be collected.

Assessment and monitoring is meant to be an evolving process. The focus
may change over time or space as concerns change. Whether the current
emphasis is on composition, structure, process, or some combination of
these features depends on pending decisions, characteristics of the
system, and features most at risk. Furthermore, ongoing technological
developments and advances in the scientific understanding of
sustainability will lead to additions and refinements in the ways that
sustainability can be measured. For example, concurrent developments in
geographic information systems (GIS) and the field of landscape ecology
have allowed a broad-scale perspective of land stewardship to be
implemented. Thus, management should be viewed as a learning process
that contributes to our current knowledge and affects the way
sustainability is measured and provided for by future management
practices.

Assessments must recognize the hierarchical organization of ecological
systems. A hierarchical approach to the assessment of ecological systems
recognizes that smaller subsystems change more rapidly than do the
larger systems to which they belong. At a landscape scale, processes
operate so as to constrain faster and more local processes, including
structure and composition, at smaller spatial scales. (e.g., forest
canopy structure affects understory species composition, and rates of
photosynthesis). Given this perspective, current scientific
understanding suggests that sustaining biological diversity over
multiple human generations requires stewardship policies set initially
at a landscape scale. This is a relatively new idea in management.
Therefore, the initial goal of a sustainability policy should be the
retention of those ecological processes that support and retain
biological diversity at a landscape scale.

Given the lack of well-established theories that specify which level of
the complex hierarchy of ecosystems is most appropriate for
sustainability, the guidance to assess at a landscape scale is
imprecise. For the foreseeable future, managers will have considerable
latitude in choosing the boundaries, and thus scale, of the systems they
manage. This indeterminacy is not necessarily bad, as long as managers
realize that the ultimate goal of management and stewardship is to
retain those dynamic processes that provide for biological diversity at
the landscape scale. One major difficulty in landscape management will
be than any one manager usually has authority over only a portion of the
landscape.

Although approaches to stewardship should begin by considering the large
landscape scale, that scale may not work for resolving some management
problems. Therefore, choice of boundaries and spatial scale will remain
an essential part of assessing a system and proposing solutions to
specific problems. Small landscape assessments, however, must be able to
be aggregated upward and be consistent with large landscape analyses.

For pragmatic reasons, only a limited number of measures can be used to
infer the sustainability of complex ecological systems. Therefore, it is
useful to apply a hierarchical assessment to identify the most relevant
spatial and temporal scale for a particular management problem. A
hierarchical approach to assessment allows planning to simultaneously
consider sustainability needs at various spatial scales. This approach
acknowledges that some characteristics of sustainability are best viewed
from a regional perspective, while others are more appropriately
considered at watershed or local, site-specific scales.

The planning process needs to identify the issues that are relevant at
each scale (Table 1). Assessments then use these issues to drive their
inquiry. It is useful to establish terminology for discussing the
hierarchies involved in an assessment process. The nation is the
broadest level (coarsest scale) of assessments for the Forest
Service**.** Regional assessments, for areas such as the Southern
Appalachians or the Sierra Nevada Range, may be based on bioregional
characteristics or planning regions. At the mid-level of this scale are
areas such as watersheds, which follow hydrologic boundaries, or
conservation areas that focus on habitats that cut across hydrological
boundaries. Because watersheds can range from sub-basins to smaller
scales, watersheds are also represented at the fine scale of resolution;
project-level management represents the finest scale.

Broad regional issues

After assessment and monitoring at the landscape scale are addressed,
the value of the regional information for finer-scale analysis can be
considered (Table 2). Regional-scale information typically is derived
from a combination of remotely sensed and ground-based data. Both
satellite imagery and aerial photographs can provide complete spatial
coverage of an area. The availability of this information should be
fully exploited for landscape-scale analyses. The ecological value of
this information, if carefully interpreted, arises from the information
it provides on vegetation composition, pattern, and context at the large
landscape scale.

Processes that are particularly important at a regional scale include
fragmentation and connectivity. Fragmentation is the process by which
habitat is broken up into smaller, separate patches. Habitat
fragmentation can and often does result from human land-use dynamics,
including forestry, agriculture, and settlement, but also can be caused
naturally by wildfire, wind, flooding, outbreaks of pathogens, increased
abundance of herbivores, such as elk , and other disturbances. Land
management decisions can alter habitat fragmentation patterns of natural
forests and rangelands by adding fences and roads, or via changes in
vegetative cover.

The pattern of habitat fragmentation and the resulting connectivity of
the remaining habitat can constrain the spatial distribution of species
by making some areas inaccessible. Connectivity is a threshold dynamic,
meaning that incremental reduction of habitat may have only gradual
effects on the presence or abundance of a species, until the threshold
is reached. At that point, the adverse effects on species viability tend
to be dramatic. Changes in the abundance and distribution of land-cover,
along with changes in connectivity and fragmentation, are more likely to
have substantial effects when habitat for a given species is near its
threshold abundance. The threshold of connectivity varies among species
and depends on the abundance and spatial arrangement of the habitat and
the movement or dispersal capabilities of the organism. For example,
species may become isolated in small patches of habitat, and thus
vulnerable to local extinction, if they are separated by intervening
habitat that is hostile to their movement.

Sub-regions: Watersheds and Conservation Areas

Sub-regions provide a middle scale (between regions and sites) for
assessment and monitoring. Often information relevant to a specific
management issue is best represented at the sub-region scale. Example
sub-regions are watersheds (\<\< see sidebar\>\>) and conservation areas
(\<\<see sidebar\>\>).

In simplest terms, a watershed comprises a land area that drains to a
common point. The use of watersheds as the planning unit focuses
assessment on a physically connected portion of the landscape,
unambiguously delineated by topographic features at the margins (i.e.,
ridges and watershed divides). Implicit in a watershed perspective is
the crucial role of gravity in the general movement of water, nutrients,
sediment, organic matter, and other resources in a downslope direction.
The movement of various ecosystem outputs and products to lower
elevations provides for process "connectivity" within the watershed,
whereby downslope areas are "connected" or influenced by activities and
processes occurring on upslope areas. For example, altered water quality
in a headwater stream may contribute to downstream changes in water
quality or aquatic habitats. In similar fashion, a landslide initiating
along a ridge may carry far enough downslope that it significantly
changes the character of a stream. It is this "connectivity" of various
products and processes within watersheds that can provide an important
ecological basis for undertaking watershed‑based planning efforts.

Although ecosystem products within a watershed most commonly move from
higher to lower elevations, there are mechanisms by which materials and
processes are transferred in an upvalley direction. For example, the
return of adult salmon from the ocean to their natal streams can
represent a significant influx of nutrients. After the adults spawn,
then die, their carcasses provide nutrients for a wide variety of
aquatic and riparian biota. Alteration of a stream channel at a specific
location, either by natural or human causes, may cause upstream
migration of channel gullying and widening. The ecological impact of
channel incision and widening can cause more than an increase in local
sediment production. In some situations these channel adjustments may
represent a major alteration to riparian and aquatic habitats; in others
they may result in undercut toeslopes of hillsides with subsequent
increases in hillslope erosion rates.

From a human perspective, watersheds represent a prominent component of
our culture. We commonly name human communities after the streams and
rivers or other landmarks that arise within their topographic divides.
Thus, there is strong sense of place and identity associated with
specific watersheds, which people can, and do, relate to. In many
instances, this "sense of place" may transcend other cartographic or
political boundaries society has developed (e.g., township, county,
state). Part of the human connection with specific watersheds is perhaps
related to the fact that each watershed has unique features by
consequence of its position in a larger landscape, by its size, by the
character of its streams and rivers, by the spatial distribution of
vegetation types, by the types and abundance of animal species, or by
any combination of these and other factors. The underlying geology,
topography, climatic patterns, plant communities and their
distributions, drainage patterns, and other attributes differ for each
watershed. This uniqueness not only contributes to the appeal for using
watersheds as a basis for many types of planning efforts, but also
challenges managers of the National Forests and Grasslands to understand
and consider these unique qualities in the development of plans and
management decisions.

Although there are often distinct advantages of using watersheds to
address several types of ecological and regulatory concerns (e.g.,
fisheries, riparian management, and clean water) on national forests and
rangelands, there are also situations where a different perspective of
ecosystem conditions and issues may be more useful and appropriate.
Watersheds where topographic relief is not pronounced or readily
apparent may not have well-delineated watershed divides. For example, in
the northern lake states, streams and lakes abound, but the topographic
relief is not large and thus watershed divides are not pronounced
compared what we see in mountainous terrain of the west. Where
watersheds have significant relief, (e.g., prominent hills and
mountains) the distribution of specific forest types and plant
communities are typically arrayed along specific elevation bands; those
vegetation types usually connect with those of adjacent watersheds.
Because many animal species frequently range across watershed divides,
relatively large-scale ecological assessments addressing wildlife,
recreational use, and other issues may best be addressed by using
planning areas that involve multiple watersheds or components of them,
e.g., southern Appalachian physiographic region. As an example, the
range of the northern spotted owl covers many watersheds in their
entirety and portions of others. For wide-ranging terrestrial species
(e.g., wolves, bears, raptors, ungulates) the connectivity of habitat
across the landscape may be a prime determinant of their viability. In
sum, when considering planning areas, it is important to choose
boundaries that enclose the geographic extent of the issues to be
addressed.

Site-specific Information

The requisite information on composition, structure, and processes
needed at finer spatial scales largely depends on the specifics of the
management issue. Compositional information typically focuses on the
status of species---plant, animal, or fungus---that are rare,
endangered, or used for economic or recreational purposes (e.g., timber
or game species). Structural features include topography and land form,
but most often relate to the age and seral stage of the vegetation.
Process information at the fine scale usually relates to the
contributions these species provide to critical ecosystem functions.
Examples include pollination, soil processes, nutrient cycling, and
energy flow across trophic levels. Processes also include disturbances,
such as fire, windthrow, and flooding, which affect the structure and
composition of biogenic and geologic elements at a local scale.

Ecological Integrity---An Integrative Measure of Ecological Condition

Because of the unprecedented rate of change in ecological systems in the
United States, and the accompanying loss of biological diversity,
environmental scientists have sought a way to measure or characterize
the state of these systems. Such a metric would allow managers to assess
the efficacy of their management practices in moving ecological systems
toward, or maintaining them within the bounds of sustainability. The
concept of ecological integrity has been put forth by a wide variety of
scientists as an a way to encapsulate appropriate metrics, and
measurable definitions have been proposed.

According to the dictionary, "integrity" is "the state of being
unimpaired, sound" or "the quality or condition of being whole or
complete." A variety of definitions of ecological integrity exist, most
differing in the scale of the assessment. A fine-scale approach stresses
the structural and compositional aspects of ecological systems, focusing
on individual species and their dynamics within specific ecosystems. A
more coarse-scale approach focuses on macro-scale processes (i.e.,
primary productivity, nutrient cycling, hydrological systems) and pays
less attention to the composition and structure of the systems from
which these processes emerge. It is important to recognize that the
concept of ecological integrity is relatively new and the scientific
foundations underlying it are not fully developed.

Previously in this chapter, we stated that NFMA's goals of maintaining
species diversity and ecological productivity should be viewed in terms
of ecosystem composition, structure, and processes over time and space.
Therefore, we propose that an ecosystem has ecological integrity when it
can maintain characteristic compositions, structures, and processes
against a background of anthropogenic changes in environmental
conditions. Ecosystems with high ecological integrity continue to
express the evolutionary and biogeographic processes that gave rise to
the current biota; they have a species composition, diversity, and
functional organization expected from natural habitats of the region;
and they are resilient to environmental change and disturbance occurring
within their natural range of variability.

Some important considerations in implementing the concept of "ecological
integrity" include the following:

a\) Given the complexity of this concept, it will be difficult to assess
with a single indicator, but rather will require a set of indicators
measured at different spatial, temporal, and hierarchical levels of
ecological systems. As an example, the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem
Management Project (ICBEMP) used a wide variety of measures to describe
the ecological integrity of the interior Columbia River Basin.
Scientists were able to aggregate these measures to evaluate ecological
integrity overall and by major ecosystem component (Figure 2a).

b\) Because ecosystems are inherently variable, managers need some
guidance about the amount of environmental variation that is acceptable
and is within the biota's ability to respond adaptively to it. Estimates
of an acceptable range of variability in compositions, structures, and
processes provide reference distributions or conditions against which
competing management scenarios are compared and ecological integrity
assessed. We believe that these reference conditions were in fact the
"coarse filters" within which the current physical landscape and biota
evolved. To the degree that future management scenarios can achieve
these conditions, the more likely it is that the "coarse filter" will
achieve the objectives for ecological sustainability and the less likely
that "fine filter" strategies will be needed for individual species.

Reference conditions are rarely characterized as uniform "snapshots" of
the past. Considerable variability due to climate change and disturbance
by fire, flood, insects, disease, and other natural factors typically
affects these reference conditions. Reference conditions vary within an
ecosystem over time, and the proportions of old-growth forests or early
seral conditions are never in a true equilibrium state. These conditions
also vary between ecosystems. For example in Washington state,
old-growth forests may be common in both wet, coastal Douglas-fir and
dry ponderosa pine forests. Pine forests that burned frequently from
natural fires were composed of wide-spaced large trees with a grassy
understory. When fire was removed from these systems, they developed a
multi-storied canopy structure much like old growth in coastal
Douglas-fir, but this condition is neither natural or sustainable. The
old-growth structures of these forests are inherently different.

In general, it is easier to reconstruct disturbance regimes (e.g., fire
frequency and intensity) than the effect of those regimes on the
landscape, so reference conditions are rarely precise. Nevertheless,
they play a key role in evaluating the "coarse filter" proposed by
future management plans.

Historical Range of Variability

The historical range of variability (HRV), roughly equivalent to the
natural range of variability concept, refers to the expected variation
in physical and biological conditions due to natural climatic
fluctuations and disturbance regimes (e.g., flooding, fire, windthrow).
It is derived from an ecological history of a landscape, and is
estimated from the rate and extent of change in selected physical and
biological variables. Because HRV is derived from an historical
analysis, its value is dependent upon the time interval evaluated.
Disturbance events have low predictability, but are usually bounded in
space (extent) and time (recurrence interval); that is, small-scale
disturbances occur frequently and large-scale disturbances infrequently.
As a consequence of this relationship, the longer the time interval
considered, the greater the estimated HRV. Therefore, the HRV concept is
only meaningful when a time interval has been specified and justified.

Selecting a time frame for estimating HRV is difficult and often limited
by the availability of information on past landscape patterns. One
approach is to select a time period characterized by climate and species
composition similar to those of today. The rationale is that this
benchmark HRV will encompass the climatic fluctuations and disturbance
regimes that influenced the biota over their evolutionary history and to
which they are adapted. Other time intervals and rationales are, of
course, possible --- the deciding criterion is that the HRV chosen will
result in future conditions that sustain ecological integrity.

The concept of HRV of an ecosystem is appropriately understood as a set
of frequency distributions of physical and biological
conditions\--distributions with both dynamic shapes and dynamic ranges.
It would be inappropriate to consider HRV solely in terms of the upper
or lower value of the range of any given distribution. Equally important
as a management goal is the shape, as well as the range, of these
distributions.

The concept of HRV as a characterization of reference conditions for
management of the National Forests and Grasslands is based on the
common-sense notion that the environmental conditions most likely to
conserve native species are those under which they evolved. Given vast
number of species and the uncertainty about their habitat needs, we seek
management strategies aimed at creating the conditions for conserving
the suite of species without examining them one at a time. In addition,
HRV can provide an early warning system for landscape conditions that
may reduce ecological productivity. Recent assessments such as the
ICBEMP have used HRV in their evaluation of ecological integrity and in
their design of management strategies (Sidebar C).

The HRV concept has become controversial in a very short period of time.
Some people worry that it means taking landscapes back to their
"preColumbian condition", i.e., to their condition before Columbus
discovered America. We would like to offer some observations about the
concept and its use:

HRV does not imply a particular condition, rather it implies a
distribution of conditions for each resource of interest. For example,
if the amount of old growth forest in Oregon's Coast Range varied from
25-60 percent over the last few thousand years, the HRV approach would
argue for management strategies that attempted to keep the current
distribution of old growth conditions within that range in the future.

Utilizing the HRV concept does not prohibit humans from the landscape.
First, actions are often needed to shift altered systems back within the
HRV, as described in the ICBEMP sidebar. Second, the HRV provides a
target distribution of environmental conditions within which human
action can operate without significant risk to the integrity of species
and ecosystems. Conditions that exceed the HRV provide a set of warning
signals when landscapes are beyond the bounds of evolutionary
experience.

HRV is best applied to coarse attributes of the landscape---the
condition of streams, the distribution among seral stages of different
forest types, the amount and distribution of large dead trees, and the
size, and frequency, and intensity of disturbances.

Some dimensions of HRV are difficult to reestablish within some
landscapes. As an example, the forests of the Western Cascades in Oregon
and Washington will not be managed for the large, infrequent, high
intensity burns that created them. It is just not socially acceptable.
Such burns may occur, but not through purposeful public policy.

Much of our current standard of living is based on converting landscapes
to conditions outside the HRV by many measures---the farmland of much of
America is an example as are the cities. Much nonfederal land around
national forests and grasslands is outside of HRV by many measures.
Given that we wish to retain our native species, though, maintaining at
least a portion of the landscape within HRV would seem prudent. With the
continued development of nonfederal land, the responsibility
increasingly rests on the national forests and grasslands to provide
landscape conditions similar to those under which our native species
evolved.

Cross-scale Issue: Species Viability

The emphasis on composition, structure, and processes within ecological
systems directs the focus to broad spatial scales and large landscapes.
A systems approach gives equal emphasis to the components of the system
‑‑that is, the individual species.

The desire to ensure species viability is an expression of both the
intrinsic and instrumental value of biological diversity. It is
important to note that diversity is sustained only when individual
species persist\--the goals of ensuring species viability and providing
for diversity are inseparable.

A viable species is defined as consisting of self-sustaining populations
that are well-distributed throughout the species' range. Self-sustaining
populations are those that are sufficiently abundant, and have
sufficient genetic diversity to display the array of life history
strategies and forms that will provide for their persistence and
adaptability in the planning area over time.

Because of the inescapable uncertainty of environmental events, the
likelihood of a species persisting indefinitely across time is
uncertain. Since it is impossible to ensure the viability of a given
species, it is necessary to be clear about the goals of a viability
requirement, and the process of viability analysis. Some of the
important principles relative to viability and its analysis are as
follows:

a\) The short‑term viability of a species is influenced by many factors,
including its size, sex ratio, age structure, reproductive and survival
rates, and geographic distribution. In addition to total population
size, the spatial distribution of local populations, and of individuals
within populations, can have profound effects on the likelihood of
persistence.

b\) Any statement about the likelihood that a species will be viable
under a management strategy should explicitly incorporate probability
and time ‑‑ that is, the likelihood that a species will be viable under
a management strategy is measured along a continuum, in terms of some
projected likelihood of persistence over a specified time period.

c\) The purpose of a viability assessment is to gain insights into how
resource management can change those parameters under Forest Service
control (e.g., habitat quality and distribution) that influence the
probability of persistence.

d\) A first step in providing for species viability is to assess the
likelihood that a species will be viable over specified periods, based
on our current understanding of how populations change in space and time
as a consequence of internal and external factors. Since viability can
never be ensured with 100% certainty, whether a population is deemed
viable is a decision on an acceptable risk of extinction. This is a
value‑based, not a science‑based decision.

e\) Given that habitat loss and fragmentation are often major factors
that put species at risk, the Forest Service planning process should
stress the quantity, quality, and distribution of habitat necessary for
viability of species.

An example of species viability assessment is provided by the work done
for the Northwest Forest Plan.

Focal species

Because of the impossibility of monitoring the status and assessing the
viability of all species, it is necessary to focus on a smaller subset
of species. We propose the generic term "focal species" to allow a
variety of approaches to selecting those species to monitor and assess
for viability. The key characteristic of a focal species is that its
status and time trend provide insights to the integrity of the larger
ecological system. The term "focal" includes several existing categories
of species used to assess ecological integrity:

a\) Indicator species-- species selected because their status is
believed to (i) be indicative of the status of a larger functional group
of species; or (ii) be reflective of the status of a key habitat type;
or (iii) act as an early warning to the action of an anticipated
stressor to ecological integrity.

b\) Keystone species -- species whose effects on one or more critical
ecological processes or biological diversity, are much greater than
would be predicted from their abundance or biomass.

c\) Ecological engineers -- species who, by altering the habitat to
their own needs, modify the availability of energy (food, water, or
sunlight), and affect the fates and opportunities of other species.

d\) Umbrella species -- species who, because of their large area
requirements or use of multiple habitats, encompass the habitat
requirements of many other species.

e\) 'Link species' -- species that play critical roles in the transfer
of matter and energy across trophic levels or provide a critical link
for energy transfer in complex food webs. For example, prairie dogs in
grassland ecosystems efficiently convert primary plant productivity into
animal biomass. Prairie dog biomass, in turn, supports a diverse
predator community.

Some species of concern may not satisfy the requirement of providing
information to the larger ecosystem, but because of public interest,
will also be monitored and assessed for viability. Such species include
some threatened and endangered species, game species, sensitive species,
and those that are vulnerable because they are rare.

Available knowledge of species' ecologies and their functional roles in
ecological systems is so limited that it is not always possible, *a
priori*, to unambiguously identify focal species. Therefore, the
selection of focal species, based on existing information and the
criteria for inclusion, should be treated as a hypothesis, rather than a
fact. Given this uncertainty, the assumption that a specific species
serves a focal role must be validated by monitoring and research.

An emphasis on focal species, including their functional importance or
their role in the conservation of other species, combines aspects of
single-species and ecosystem management. It also leads us to consider
species directly, in recognition that focusing only on composition,
structure, and processes may miss some components of biological
diversity.

Spanning Ownership Boundaries in Assessments

Relationship of Assessment on National Forests and Grasslands to
Assessment Efforts of Other Agencies.

Monitoring on national forests and rangelands must relate closely to
assessment efforts of other agencies. At broad scales, land is composed
of multiple-agency ownerships, and in many places, private ownerships
are intermixed with federal lands. It is therefore imperative that
assessment opportunities are coordinated with private, state, and other
federal landholders. An examples of issues that may arise as a result of
multiple ownerships is the management of wide-ranging species, such as
grizzly bear in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem or the red cockaded
woodpecker in the southeastern states. Where management issues cross
ownership boundaries, there is a clear need for common assessment
information at regional and sub-regional scales. Uniform data collection
and documentation standards are necessary for the agencies to collect,
map, and share data across boundaries.

An example of such cooperation was accomplished by the Southern
Appalachian Assessment, which involved both federal and state natural
resource agency specialists in order to describe the ecological,
economic, and social characteristics of the multi-state region. In that
case, an interagency cooperative was formed, which directed the scope
and depth of analysis. By avoiding the duplication of work that might
have been necessary had each agency acted independently, the scope and
depth of analysis were significantly broadened. The breadth of the
Southern Appalachian Assessment allows for opportunities to further
expand the analysis, depending on the general availability of the data.
(Sidebar ??)

Implementing Ecological Sustainability*.*

What are the implications of planning for sustainability on National
Forests and Grasslands? First, ecological sustainability should be
interpreted broadly. Planners must look at the land in a large-landscape
context, including lands and communities beyond the boundaries of the
national forests and rangelands.

Second, the characteristics of the land, the ways in which people
interact with it, and what they expect from it must be assessed. For
example, watersheds provide a link to social and cultural issues, and
most people develop a sense of place that relates to a watershed and its
defining geographic features. The planner first asks whether the human
uses of the land appear compatible with a goal of sustainability. To
reliably answer this question requires an emphasis on assessment and
monitoring.

Third, national forests and rangelands are open systems, affected by
land use outside of their boundaries. Therefore, assessment and
monitoring must be consistent with the programs of other agencies.
Attaining this consistency requires a high degree of interagency
collaboration, consistency in documentation and measurement standards
across public and private lands, and a spirit of collaboration to solve
shared environmental problems.

Fourth, for the foreseeable future, decisions on appropriate management
of natural resources will be made in the context of considerable
uncertainty about the outcome of those actions. Where risks are high,
and uncertainty about outcomes is great, active adaptive management
(discussed in Chapter 4) will be needed. Implementation of adaptive
management approaches will speed up the process of learning how
ecological systems function, and decrease the likelihood of large-scale
management errors.

Fifth, perhaps the single best metric of sustainable use of land is the
persistence of species over time. The public needs to understand that
the productivity of an ecosystem can be sustained over the long-term
only if species persist.

Finally, the Forest Service must recognize the need to regain the trust
of the American public, and to reestablish its credibility as a
competent steward of the nation's natural resources. To regain this
position of leadership will require extensive public input to the
planning process, and an independent review of Forest Service decisions
by outside reviewers. We therefore recommend that the Forest Service
establish a standing advisory board to ensure that it is making use of
the best available technology and scientific knowledge (see Chapter 4b
for more discussion of this proposed board).

2B. Economic and Social Sustainability

The Forest Service, as trustee and steward of our great national
treasure --- the National Forests and Grasslands --- has a legal and,
moreover, a moral obligation to preserve opportunities and choices for
future generations, while providing for the economies, communities, and
people of today. Although the Forest Service cannot and should not be
expected to single-handedly sustain existing economies, cultures, and
communities, the National Forest System lands nonetheless contribute
many values, services, outputs, and uses that allow economies and
communities to persist, prosper, and evolve according to their own
wills. This charge contributing to the well-being of people today and
tomorrow --- is at the heart of the Forest Service's role in economic
and social sustainability.

Over the ages, the use and treatment of land and resources has shaped
the opportunities for generations that followed. Around the world,
places once rich and productive, teaming with plants and animals, now
lie barren due to the actions of people. The capacity of human society
to destroy the ecological integrity of the land places a high
responsibility for stewardship on how society uses and protects its land
and resources. In the case of the public forests and rangelands, this
stewardship responsibility means that in promoting the economic and
social sustainability of communities and economies, the Forest Service
must first ensure the ecological integrity essential to long-term
sustainability.

There are four dimensions to the Forest Service's role in promoting
economic and social sustainability and each is inextricably linked to
ecological sustainability. First, the forests and rangelands *provide
many and diverse contributions*, through which economies and communities
define and sustain themselves. Whether these contributions are the
timber supplying local mills, clean water for downstream farms,
spiritual resources valued by Native American tribes, or the scenery and
solitude sought for recreation, they are important elements that, in
turn, contribute more broadly to the achievement of sustainability in
our society.

Second, an effectively structured planning process can *build society's
understanding* of the interconnectedness of communities and economies
with sustainably-managed forests and grasslands. In so doing, it
promotes the ability of people to act in a manner that does not
undermine ecological sustainability and, thereby, their own long-term
sustainability. In other words, by promoting an understanding of the
linkages between human and ecological systems, establishing realistic
expectations about the nature and scope of contributions from the public
lands over time, and providing opportunities for active stewardship, the
planning process for the National Forests and Grasslands can contribute
to society's capability to progress in a sustainable manner.

Third, planning processes with continuous, open public deliberation can
*enhance society's capabilities* to make sustainable choices. The
planning process can provide mechanisms and forums that provide focus
for societal and community decision-making that is realistic, informed
and sustainable. Planning is the logical process through which linkages
between the many different organizations, businesses and community
groups that care about an area can communicate, address shared problems,
articulate a common vision for the future, and craft strategies for
pursuing this future that are compatible, if not complimentary, and that
are consistent with the goal of sustainability.

Fourth, assessment and planning *identifies and assists communities in
need*. When natural or policy influences disrupt the economic or social
fabric of a community, planning can highlight where assistance is needed
for economic transitions. The federal government can identify key
opportunities for such communities and make the essential linkages
between communities and federal or state programs that can ease or
overcome such disruptions.

In short, effective management of National Forest System lands provides
important material, aesthetic, and spiritual contributions to society,
and promotes the ability of people in society to make sound and
sustainable choices by building understanding, maintaining public
dialogue, enhancing capabilities to act in a sustainable manner, and by
identifying and assisting with the community transitions brought on by
disruptive natural or policy influences.

National Forests: Places Where People Work, Live, Worship, and Play

The long-term economic contributions of the forest reserves were
recognized from the very beginning. Residents of irrigation districts in
the West, wanting to be assured of reliable flows for their fields,
pressed Congress for protective legislation, which was achieved in the
Creative Act of 1891. Today farmers continue to rely upon the clean,
reliable flows from national forest watersheds, which comprise most of
the high country in the West and a significant proportion in the East.
Second to watershed protection was commercial timber production, which
was recognized as an official use of the National Forests in the Organic
Act of 1897. Timber harvesting in the National Forests remained low
until World War II, soared during the post-war boom, and has receded
since the late 1980s. The timber volume is unlikely to return to 1980s
levels, but a steady supply of wood products from the National Forests
will continue to provide significant economic benefits.

The National Forests and Grasslands benefit the economy in many other
ways. Grazing of domestic livestock takes place on more than half of all
National Forest System lands. Extractive activities, such as hard rock
mining and oil and gas production, are found on nearly every national
forest. Recreation on the lands and waters of the National Forests is a
multi-billion dollar industry. Indeed, most of the nation's ski areas
are located in the National Forests.

National Forests and Grasslands provide numerous benefits and services
to adjacent towns and cities; thus, for millions of Americans, their
connection to the forest is tangible. The watersheds that bring green
life to irrigation fields also serve the critical function of providing
drinking water to towns and cities. Grocery stores, motels, restaurants,
guides and outfitters, and other businesses in hundreds of communities
depend in whole or in part on tourism revenues from nearby public lands;
these economic enterprises help knit communities together. Indian tribes
have treaty-based hunting, fishing, and gathering rights within many
National Forests, and watersheds on the National Forests provide
essential habitat for salmon to fulfill tribal fishing rights
downstream. Traditional Indian people also revere sacred sites within
National Forests and Grasslands. For centuries, Hispanic communities in
the Southwest, with origins dating back to Spanish land grants 500 years
ago, have relied on public lands for firewood-gathering, grazing,
subsistence hunting, and water supply for their family farms.

The National Forests and Grasslands give essential definition to
day-to-day life in many local communities. People hunt, fish, boat, and
hike in them. Perhaps even more fundamental, the people's lands are the
backdrop to town --- the ridge lines in the distance that each year go
from green to white and back to green again. The forests and grasslands
are places to daydream about, to seek refuge in. Sense of place is a
deep, intimate emotion --- these lands create it and sustain it through
the force of their grandeur and the comfort of their constancy.

Nearby communities have a special role in providing stewardship for
these resources. People who work on the land often have a rich knowledge
of it and of its history, knowledge that is accumulated through
experience and passed down through generations. This knowledge is an
important contribution to understanding social and ecological processes
over time. Also, these communities are often the first line of defense
when wildfire strikes on the National Forests and provide much of the
workforce and equipment for fighting unwanted fires.

The economies of many towns and cities are materially dependent on both
resources and environmental services from the watersheds, forests, and
rangelands. For example, when siltation levels increase in streams,
fishing and coastal communities are affected by reduced fish populations
and increased harbor dredging costs. When timber harvest levels decline
in response to changes in economic organization or public policy, small
communities with little economic diversity can experience sudden high
unemployment. Even in nearby urban areas, high-tech industries dependent
on clean water can be immediately affected by increases in siltation or
declines in water supply. The National Forests and Grasslands must serve
all of the nation's people; nevertheless, local residents deserve
particular attention when the contributions of the forests to economic
and social sustainability are being considered. So, too should the
stewardship capacities of adjoining human communities be considered in
planning for ecological sustainability of the National Forests and
Grasslands.

Variability And Uncertainty: The Realities Of Economic And Social
Sustainability In A Dynamic Landscape

The notion of economic and social sustainability does not imply the
persistence of the status quo. The health and vitality of economic and
social systems lies in their diversity and, moreover, their ability to
adapt and evolve as conditions and needs change. The same diversity that
characterizes an ecological system characterizes a human system. The
idea that an ecological system seeks a stable equilibrium was once
popular in ecology, as was the expectation that communities and
societies could be stabilized through economic and social policies based
on equilibrium models. Today, ideas of stability and equilibrium have
been replaced with a new appreciation for the dynamic and emergent
qualities of biological and social systems. Ecological sustainability,
from this perspective, assures that conditions are maintained that allow
and promote natural processes of change at any time or place, while the
overall essence of the ecological system remains. The same understanding
applies to human systems and economic and social sustainability ---human
systems change through time, and sustainability is based on the capacity
of human systems to adapt and evolve. Sustainable social systems learn
to self-organize so as to further their own well-being within the
context of opportunities. In order to support and enhance social and
economic sustainability, public planning processes can help illuminate
the range of contributions available from a sustainably-managed forest
or grassland and facilitate society's ability to make informed and wise
decisions.

Assessing the Contributions of National Forests and Grasslands to
Society

The land and resource planning process for national forest system lands
provides an important opportunity to better understand and define the
many connections between forests and rangelands and their associated
economies and communities. Because forests contribute in numerous
tangible and intangible ways to the spiritual, cultural, social, and
economic well-being and identity of many communities and individuals,
the planning process must actively consider and engage the different
cultures, communities and economies that give these contributions value.
It is not always possible to quantify or rank diverse uses and values in
order to determine such elusive concepts as highest and best use--- just
as it is impossible to identify, count, and value all plants and animals
in an ecological system. It is nonetheless essential that important uses
and values be recognized, assessed, and accommodated as practicable and
appropriate. The process must also consider values that have been given
specific legal or historical protections---such as Indian treaty rights
and Wilderness ---and ensure that these values are provided for and
protected and that other management activities do not detract from them.

Assessments of the contributions of National Forests and Grasslands to
communities and economies must be a dynamic process, tracking changes in
social values and resource definitions along with changes in knowledge
and understanding. A dynamic planning process recognizes that the value
of uses, products, and services from resources changes over time. For
example, areas that may have been highly valued for timber harvest or
minerals extraction may assume higher value to society, both locally and
nationally, as sources of clean, reliable water, or recreation.
Furthermore, as new knowledge becomes available, the full worth of some
contributions will be better recognized and more fully assessed.

Assessing And Acknowledging The Social Consequences To Rural Economies
And Communities Of Changes In Federal Land Use Policy

Rural communities often bear the brunt of changes in agricultural and
natural resource polices. This has been especially true in recent years
in small communities centered around wood products, ranching, mining, or
agriculture. In many cases, these small communities are isolated from
transportation corridors and lack alternative employment opportunities.

In the case of wood production, often logging and milling communities
grew up with the encouragement of the Forest Service, as the agency
attempted to assist economic development in the West. Especially during
the exodus from homesteads in the 1920s and the Great Depression of the
1930s, potential mill owners were often assured that a supply of raw
materials, such as timber, would be available forever from the federal
forests in the area. As a result, current residents, employees, and
owners were taken by surprise when concerns for environmental protection
led to sudden significant reductions in timber harvest on the National
Forests. While these communities were accustomed to temporary,
market-driven boom and bust cycles, the notion of timber harvest
reductions as an instrument of federal policy was new and troubling to
many people in these communities.

Across the interior west, livestock grazing on the public domain
occurred long before permanent settlement. In many places, grazing
predates the establishment of the National Forests and many ranchers
with federal grazing permits are the descendants of the pioneer families
who settled the area. As with the timber industry, ranchers have learned
to survive market ups and downs, but substantial limitations in the area
available for grazing in order to protect species and ecosystems is
somewhat new. Today, with both market prices for livestock low and
grazing allotments limited, many ranchers are selling their land to
private developers for subdivisions and recreation development, creating
a whole new set of environmental and land use problems.

Social Assessments

Understanding the local, national, and international forces affecting
communities, economies and natural resource policies is the first step
in making decisions about resource management policies and management
activities. A social assessment can help policy makers and managers
understand the regional and community-level consequences of changes in
land use policy, and also identify particular places and people that
will most feel these consequences. In so doing, it will provide the base
of knowledge from which to assess whether or not changes in policy or
management may be necessary and, if so, what those changes might be.

A good social assessment uses quantitative, qualitative and
participatory methods for gathering data and analyzing it. First, a
social assessment analyzes and interprets available quantitative
demographic, economic and social information, like the census data and
employment sector data at the county level. This information must be
used carefully, however, as counties often have both towns and large,
sparsely populated rural areas; in such cases, average effects across a
county may not tell the whole story.

Second, a social assessment undertakes a qualitative analysis of the
economic and political history of the region, the culture of groups and
communities and how they have changed over time, the organization and
leadership of local communities, the political and religious
organization of the area, and other dimensions of social life. However,
in order to adequately understand any particular community or place, it
is critical that a participatory social and economic assessment process
be organized and conducted by each individual community in these rural
areas. Part of these community-based participatory social assessments is
a refinement of the quantitative demographic, employment and social data
for the specific place by using a qualitative approach to estimate
actual levels and trends. A participatory assessment also engages
communities in a learning process about their identity, their history,
the forces for change affecting them and the opportunities for
collective action. Thus, the social assessment is both a strategy for
developing site-specific information useful for policy makers and a
collective learning process that enhances community capacity by
encouraging common understanding of shared problems and opportunities
for community leadership and action.

Assessment Methodologies

A social assessment attempts to inform policy makers of the social,
political, economic, and cultural context prior to the development of
options or alternative courses of action. It is used to inform
decision-making about approaches that might minimize or avoid
unnecessary disruptive influences and maximize the value of
contributions from national forest system lands to local communities and
economies. In general, social assessments provide a regional context for
understanding community level conditions, but most of the methodologies
use the community as the primary unit of study. This distinction is
important because regional trends typically are not characteristic of
conditions in rural, small communities, largely because economic growth
generally occurs in the larger, metropolitan areas or in recreation and
second home developments. Thus, the social assessment provides a
foundation of baseline data from which to evaluate the likely
consequences of different policy options. "Social impact analysis" is
the term for the analysis of the specific consequences likely to follow
from a specific policy option or management alternative.

A social assessment provides the information base from which
policy-makers can estimate the magnitude of the changes in land use
policy and the ability of rural communities to respond. The community is
the basic unit of analysis, defined in the place-specific sense. In some
analyses, that place is the county and in others it is particular towns
or census units. It has been long recognized that there are many
different kinds of communities such as communities of interest,
communities of place, and others. Still, geographic communities are
important from an economic and policy standpoint, especially for
relatively isolated areas whose fortunes are linked to their location.

Local and regional economies are strongly and directly affected by
distant forces found in national and international capital markets,
economic trade policies, and environmental polices. As a result,
communities engaged in primary resource production -- timber, grazing,
mining, recreation -- are especially sensitive to national and global
economic and political changes. This sensitivity can lead to a boom and
bust economy\--times are either very good or very bad. This
vulnerability is two-dimensional: one, primary production economies
generally export their products without doing much secondary processing
or manufacturing, and two, these communities are often small, physically
isolated from transportation corridors, and organized around a very few
industries.

To understand both dimensions of vulnerability, social assessments
employ a variety of methods. First, economic and social analysis of
quantitative data sources is an excellent basis for regional comparison
and the identification of communities with the factors associated with
economic and social vulnerability -- isolation and lack of diversity.

Second, while communities of place are generally the basic unit of
analysis, there are cross-cutting communities of interest, occupation
and value. This means that aggregate measures of community trends based
on the geographic community are inadequate to assess the specific social
and economic sectors most likely to be negatively affected by changes in
policy. For example, specific occupations are often more directly
affected by changes in timber or grazing policy than others. This means
that while a community-wide economic effect would result, specific
individuals would be more directly affected than others. Policy options
need to recognize these differential effects both at the community level
-- often adjacent communities are different enough to have very
different consequences from the same policy changes -- and at the
individual level -- some occupational groups will be much more affected
than others. Clearly, it is the negative effects on both communities and
individuals that call for public policy consideration as people seek to
adapt to broader social changes.

Third, the land ownership and management patterns of an area are a
critical factor in understanding the limits as well as the opportunities
for social and economic activity. Understanding the federal importance
in the area means understanding the broader land ownership and supply
picture of the region --- percent of land in federal, state and private
ownership; percent of resource supply (timber, forage, recreation,
minerals) from federal, state and private lands; percentage of budget
from federal revenue sharing and percent of economy supported by
transfer payments (social security, pensions, welfare, etc. These and
other variables provide the context within which the magnitude of change
in federal policy can be estimated.

Fourth, the consequences to communities that result from federal policy
and management changes are often measured in likely effects on capital
availability, employment opportunities, wage levels, local tax base,
federal revenue sharing and the ability to support public infrastructure
and social services---factors important to maintaining a vital
community. These economic effects are complex; each decision has
positive effects on some and negative effects on others. A full economic
analysis examines the net consequences of decisions. Several factors
make estimating the net effects of decisions difficult. Some examples of
such factors are the following: economic trends that would have occurred
without the decision need to be identified (for instance, investment in
capital may be lowering employment in sawmills independent of changes in
wood availability); normal variation in product prices due to
international markets have to be separated out from local events (for
instance, economic turmoil in Asia has reduced wood prices recently);
and interest rates affect the number of housing starts, which in turn
affects demand for wood products. In a particular local area, the affect
of amenity values on the location decisions of "high-tech" industries
may have to be contrasted to the effects of reductions in commodity
outputs on employment in directly forest-related industries."

Fifth, and the crux of a social assessment, is estimating the adaptive
capacity of communities. Several concepts and approaches to developing
integrated measures have been developed to estimate community
adaptability. The essential feature of all of these concepts is the
ability of the community to mobilize its members to collectively respond
to the need to change and develop the leadership, organization and
resources to carry out common goals.

Concepts

1\) Community capacity. Community capacity is the ability of residents
and community institutions, organization and leadership -- formal and
informal -- to meet local needs and expectations. It includes physical
and financial infrastructure (roads, capital availability); human
capital (occupational skills, educational levels); and civic
responsiveness (leadership). Community capacity focuses on the internal
dynamics of specific communities and their particular history, location,
and identity. This concept was used in FEMAT, along with the concept of
community stability, an equilibrium based concept of community
adaptability, to identify how specific communities might respond to
anticipated drops in federal timber harvest, increases in watershed
protection, and increases in scenic quality. All these changes were
associated with the management options under analysis and were linked to
specific social and economic factors.

2\) Economic and Social Resiliency. Resiliency focuses on the
adaptability of human systems at the more macro-scale. Since
adaptiveness is defined as directly correlated to diversity, resiliency
is measured by population density and diversity, lifestyle diversity,
and economic diversity. High resiliency ratings imply that these systems
are highly adaptable. In areas where in-migration has been occurring at
a fairly nigh rate and new economic sectors have been developing, this
measure captures a dynamic of change in even small communities that the
capacity measure would miss. Since low ratings suggest that communities
will have difficulty in adjusting to rapid change, the less diversified
communities are identified for further analysis.

Integrated Measures

1\) Communities at risk. A risk analysis entails estimating the
likelihood that a particular community has sufficient internal capacity
to respond to the magnitude of policy change anticipated. The FEMAT
attempted to utilize a risk analysis approach but did not develop a
conceptual description of risk. Rather, a ranking of communities based
on the level of "risk" \--a matrix of community capacity and likelihood
of successful adaptation from an expert panel rating
exercise\--identified those communities most likely to be strongly and
negatively affected by reductions in federal timber supply, those with
more neutral responses, and those which would benefit from increased
watershed protection and scenic quality. A risk approach is a good
integrated measure of adaptive capacity of specific communities and the
projected magnitude of change. However, before such analyses are widely
used, it is critical that a conceptual definition of risk be developed.
(See FEMAT sidebar)

2\) Community vulnerability. Vulnerability analysis works from the
concept of resiliency and estimates the likelihood that there is
sufficient resiliency in the system of communities and associated
economies to adapt to expected changes in federal land use management
and policy. To estimate the potential effects of policy changes, a
resiliency measure looks at the dynamics within the area and estimates
the adaptive potential of communities based on their diversity. This
approach was applied in the ICBEMP (See ICBEMP sidebar).

These measures of risk and resiliency stand in contrast to past planning
processes that assumed that analyses of commodity supplies -- timber,
water, forage -- provided sufficient information to project regional and
local economic conditions and effects. Pursuant to the requirements of
NEPA, the environmental impact statement included a brief section on
community demographics and employment, but little other social
information. Social values for recreation, water, scenic and spiritual
qualities were not assessed. Occasionally a brief introduction to the
history and culture of the region was included. Thus, the social
assessment work done in both the FEMAT and ICBEMP bioregional
assessments points to the urgent necessity of refining concepts and
measures as well as greatly improving the existing data available for
analysis.

It is also important to note that the economic values of ecological
services have never been assessed in the traditional NEPA document.
Systems with ecological integrity provide critical ecological services.
Examples include the cycling and purification of water, sustaining the
productive capacity of the soil through decomposition and mineral
cycling, and control of local and regional climate mediated by
vegetation structure and composition. Technological replacements for
these essential functions are either impossible or prohibitively
expensive.

In the recent bioregional science assessments, social scientists have
conducted social assessments that include some of the features discussed
above. In the case of FEMAT, a social science team utilized available
census and employment data, public participation records and research
results found in the literature. However, the lack of social assessments
as part of the planning process meant that there was not a base of
information to work from. As a result, the FEMAT team used an expert
panel approach to develop comprehensive, regional and comparative
information about rural communities throughout the region (sidebar). In
addition, it also used expert panels to evaluate the effects of the
management options on a wide range of resource values. In the Columbia
Basin assessment, social scientists conducted baseline studies to
understand the potential economic and social resiliency of different
communities in the region and many other economic and social
relationships (sidebar). In the Southern Appalachian assessment, local
communities developed series of questions about themselves and the
region and participated in gathering the data to analyze them.

Given that one purpose of the National Forests and Grasslands is to
contribute to social and economic stability, it is essential to describe
the social and economic context in which plans are developed.
Bioregional assessments such as FEMAT, ICBEMP and the Southern
Appalachian Assessment have contributed significantly to the development
of methods and concepts to achieve this goal. Future assessments of, and
planning for, the National Forests and Grasslands should utilize and
build upon these approaches.

Developing an adequate methodology for conducting social assessments at
different scales is not conceptually difficult. Rather, ideas for how to
conduct adequate social assessments abound and have been tested in other
policy arenas over the past decades. What is needed is for the Forest
Service to convene the best social scientists in the country and to
explore different conceptual approaches. An ideal result would be a
flexible methodology sensitive to scale, drawn from many analytical
traditions (ethnography, qualitative analysis, demography, organization
theory, quantitative analysis, political science to name a few), capable
of developing a foundation of data amenable to many different kinds of
analysis and able to be maintained over the long term. Given the
experience available and the importance of understanding social and
economic sustainability, this is a high priority and can produce
near-term results.

Considering The Economic And Social Impact Of Land Use Change in Setting
Federal Policy

Federal policy can consider the potential social consequences of land
use change in three major ways: 1) in setting the overall land use
policy, 2) in tailoring the policy for specific geographic areas, 3) in
delivering resources to help the communities and individuals adapt. We
will use the Presidents Plan for the federal forests of the Northwest to
illustrate a recent application of these concepts.

In the section 2, we emphasized the need to achieve ecological
sustainability as a fundamental goal in the management of the National
Forests and the role of species viability and ecological integrity in
this quest. We also pointed out that the degree of risk to take with the
achievement of species viability and ecological integrity was, in part,
a social decision. Consideration of the economic and social consequences
of different levels of risk can influence the alternative chosen. In the
President's Plan for Northwest Forests (see sidebar in Chapter 2A), as
an example, instructions included the requirement that species should
have at least a medium chance of persisting, and this was assessed by
requiring an 80% likelihood of achieving viable populations over the
planning period. Each of the 10 options was rated by expert panels on
various groups of wildlife species. Of all the alternatives, Option 1
was unanimously viewed as providing the greatest assurance of long term
viability, because it allowed the least amount of disturbance based on
timber harvesting. However, this alternative was not chosen. The reason
was largely because of the anticipated impacts on communities and
economies. As a result, an option was chosen that provided somewhat
greater risk to wildlife species, but reduced the risk to communities
depending on federal timber for processing and milling.

In addition to consideration of social and economic consequences in the
selection of policies, the application of a broad policy framework can
be mitigated by creating a sub-policy tailored to reduce the impact on
the most vulnerable communities and individuals. The President's Plan
for Northwest Forests, as an example, attempted to achieve this result,
in part, through the placement of "Adaptive Management Areas (AMAs)"
where approaches to technical, administrative, and social issues could
be developed and tested. The AMAs were intended to represent that major
ecological communities in the planning area so as to allow for
experimental approaches to forest management. Option 9, the selected
option, specifically ensured that the AMAs were located so that strong
ecological protections surrounded them to allow managers to risk failure
without risking the integrity of the larger system. The location of
particularly hard hit communities was one of the location criteria that
led to several of the AMAs being associated with adjacent timber based
communities. In order to make AMAs of immediate benefit to these
adjacent communities, several specific requirements were added to the
list of "experiments" expected in AMA areas: information sharing
strategies, such as ensuring the availability of resource data bases;
training local residents for technical support, especially in monitoring
programs, and encouraging local processing of timber harvested from
AMAs. The proposed AMA program called for expanded funding in these
areas for research, demonstrations, monitoring, training, and capital
investments. Unfortunately, the AMAs have not fulfilled their potential,
in part because of inadequate budgets, but also due to a lack of agency
commitment to ensuring their success. On a hopeful note, the Applegate
AMA, which was established as an AMA because it had a strong,
community-based partnership dedicated to reducing conflict over natural
resource management, has become the center of activity on federal lands
in Southeast Oregon, but still faces the problem of coordinated agency
support and funding.

Finally, the federal government can utilize other programs to deliver
resources to help the affected economies and communities cope with the
change. The Clinton Administration worked with Congress to allocate
hundreds of millions of dollars to mitigate the negative economic and
social impact of the President's Plan for Northwest Forests. First, they
guaranteed that the counties would receive, for a number of years,
payments covering much of the revenue that had previously been received
from in lieu payments associated with timber sales. Second, they made
available funds that counties certified as "timber dependent" could
obtain to support projects that would help them diversify their
economies. Third, they provided earmarked funds for federal job
retraining and education programs for displaced workers.

National Forest System Contributions to Social Sustainability: The
Importance of Establishing Realistic Expectations

As conceived in the Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act of 1960, within
the limits set by ecological sustainability, land and resource planning
was to seek the achievement and maintenance in perpetuity of high levels
or regular periodic outputs of the various renewable resources of the
National Forests (see sidebar on legal mandate). Two realities make this
goal difficult to reach. First, the dynamics of ecological systems makes
it difficult to schedule a regular, predictable output of a single
product (e.g., timber or forage) because productivity varies through
time. Second, an even flow can be sustained under variability, but it
often comes by over-exploiting the system's productivity in some years
(harvesting more than is produced annually) or by impairing other
elements of the system (e.g., grazing under conditions that cause
erosion).

When they are managed to provide regular outputs, National Forests and
Grasslands may appear to promise stable commodity flows, but it is
difficult for them to deliver such flows for extended periods.
Unfortunately, public expectations have been raised about the long-term
capability of the land and likely future resource flows, based on
limited analysis estimating maximum yields for a few resources. At the
extreme, forests and rangelands managed this way become subject to
catastrophic surprises when infrequent, but natural, events occur
(catastrophic fires, drought). Human communities that grow dependent on
commodity flows kept artificially high and constant can eventually
suffer the same catastrophic surprises--- often losing all semblance of
economic or social sustainability.

In fact, economic fluctuations and disruptions are minimized and
economic vitality is enhanced when ecological systems are sustainably
managed. Contrary to earlier assumptions, social sustainability and
sustained outputs are not synonymous. By focusing attention on a short
list of commodity outputs from a forest, many other uses and values and,
furthermore, the communities dependent upon them, were overlooked and
undervalued. The productive capacity of the ecological system--rather
than single measurable outputs--should be sustained over the long term
so that the land, water and resources continue to contribute to the many
and diverse values, services, outputs, and uses valued by people. In
this sense, the flow of any product, whether a commodity like timber or
an amenity like recreation, will not necessarily be constant or regular.
Indeed, over the past centuries we have learned that expecting an
ecological system to deliver stable and high outputs of any single
product has had disastrous effects on human systems.

Clearly, prosperous communities and economies only remain healthy and
vibrant if their foundation is ecologically sustainable. Thus, the
Forest Service must be cautious and avoid making resources available in
a manner that establishes unrealistic expectations for economies and
communities that cannot be fulfilled over the long-term within the
context of ecological sustainability. Doing so will only lead to
hardship when abrupt changes become necessary to restore the ecological
system to a sustainable path. The ghost towns found across the country
stand in mute testimony to the human consequences of rapid resource
depletion. It was to avoid these kinds of abrupt and painful losses that
a policy framework was developed for the National Forests that protects
the forests' productive capacity, as measured by favorable conditions of
waterflows, prevention of soil erosion, amelioration of climate, and
preservation of wildlife, as well as steady flows of goods and services.

Increasing the predictability of resource use

The difficulty of obtaining stable resource flows from the National
Forests creates a dilemma in terms of achieving ecological, economic,
and social sustainability. Achieving ecological sustainability may
require active management to achieve desired conditions. Without
predictable outputs, though, the needed capital may not be invested to
created the capacity for the needed actions. Thinning to reduce the
accumulation of fuels in the Intermountain West, as an example, may be
an important part of a strategy to return forested ecosystems to
conditions within the historical range of variability. Yet, without some
predictability to the timber output, it will be difficult to justify
investments to harvest and process the small material from the
thinnings. And without some predictability, the potential of the
National Forests to contribute to ecological, economic and social
sustainability will be unfulfilled.

How can this predictability be increased? On the national forests and
grasslands, it can generally be expected that actions contributing to
long-term ecological sustainability have a higher probability of
occurrence than actions working against attainment of this goal. Actions
that produce outputs at a cost to ecological sustainability will be
ultimately be greeted with public protest and dismay by agency
professionals. Actions that produce outputs while contributing to
ecological sustainability have a much broader agency and public support.
The Siuslaw National Forest, as an example, is finding it much easier to
thin stands in reserves than to clear cut in areas dedicated to timber
production. (Side bar). While it is easier to say than do, finding
strategies that simultaneously contribute to ecological, economic, and
social sustainability is the key to increasing predictable resource
flows from the National Forests and Grasslands.

Contributions to Communities with Specific Protections under the Law

Resource management is inherently a process of allocating scarce
resources among competing yet legitimate interests within society.
Tradeoffs occur. Because some uses have particular values to society
that may be overlooked in short-term decision-making, Congress has
bestowed specific protections in order to ensure that these values and
obligations are not forgotten or undervalued. It is essential that
national forest planning recognize and accommodate these protected
values and uses.

Indian Tribal Rights

In the American federal system, American Indian tribes have a special
position that has evolved over two centuries of policy development. As
tribes ceded territory, they retained reservations and certain protected
activities outside of the reservations. This section summarizes the key
points that Forest Service planning must incorporate: treaty and other
reserved rights, the trust responsibility, the government-to-government
relationship, and other federal laws that affect tribal rights.

Treaty Rights.

Many American Indian tribes, especially in the Pacific Northwest and
Midwest, have rights to hunt, fish, trap, and gather on National Forest
lands. Courts have supported these rights, particularly since the
landmark decisions United States v. Washington and United States v.
Oregon, which upheld provisions in treaties that allowed access to
salmon fisheries in all usual and accustomed places. Courts support
similar language in other treaties to protect fishing, hunting, and
gathering rights on open and ceded aboriginal lands that include
National Forests. Recognition of these rights is necessary in planning
processes, if the rights are to be respected and included in plans.

During the past decade, the Forest Service has made impressive progress
on Indian issues. The agency has created several liaison positions, held
training sessions on the subject, developed a useful source book, and
established a working relationship with many tribes. The Forest Service
should continue and expand these promising efforts, always being
careful, when Indian rights are asserted, to evaluate such assertions
objectively, rather than resisting Indian rights on the implicit ground
that they infringe on Forest Service prerogatives. An open recognition
of Indian rights and a fully cooperative government-to-government
relationship with tribes is one of many examples of how Forest Service
stewardship should be outward looking and broadly cooperative with the
many other governmental agencies that have authority and rights within
the National Forests.

Trust Responsibility

The entire federal government, not just the Department of the Interior,
is responsible for carrying out the government's trust responsibilities,
which include recognition of treaty-based and other legal rights of
American Indians on lands outside and inside of reservation boundaries.
Current operative regulations for carrying out the NFMA do not provide
explicit recognition of treaty rights and the affirmative responsibility
of the Forest Service to protect trust resources. In addition, the
handbook, Principal Laws Relating to Forest Service Activities (PUB
YEAR???), does not inform Forest Service officials that treaty
obligations apply in some regions. Nor are there requirements to work
cooperatively with tribes in the protection of trust and treaty
resources. This should be changed in new regulations.

The Forest Service is obligated to recognize and to avoid adverse
effects upon tribal rights to utilize National Forest Lands. For
instance, the court in Klamath Tribes v. United States Forest Service
(D. Or. 1996), found that the Forest Service has a "duty to manage
habitat to support populations necessary to sustain Tribal use and
non-Indian harvest, including consideration of habitat needs for any
species hunted or trapped by tribal members." In carrying out this duty,
tribal rights are to be protected "to the fullest extent possible." The
court found that these standards had not been met, and issued an
injunction in favor of the tribes regarding challenged timber sales in
the Winema and Fremont National Forests in Oregon.

The Forest Service must consider the effects of its actions on rights
that may be acted upon outside of National Forest boundaries. Protection
of salmon harvest is a prime example of this principle. Tribes with
treaty and reserved rights to salmon have in some cases argued that
management of such species should be good enough to assure a harvestable
surplus, in addition to conserving the population. Arguments over this
concept are continuing in the courts. A decision in the Indians' favor
will affect forest management where spawning grounds and habitat used by
salmon are impacted by forest management activities.

Sovereignty and the government-to-government relationship

Carrying out the fiduciary responsibilities of the trust relationship,
as well as enforcing other federal laws that recognize tribal rights (to
be discussed below), require that the Forest Service and other federal
agencies work to develop cooperative relationships with tribal
governments. Executive Orders require adequate consultation. As the
Forest Service develops its ability to establish cooperative
relationships with States---an issue that Western Governors called to
the Committee's attention---it must also work to develop effective
cooperative relationships with tribal governments.

Sending a letter to the tribal council is not enough; the principle of
the government-to-government relationship requires personal contact and
establishment of ongoing cooperative relationships. In the Klamath case,
for instance, the court found the government had a procedural duty to
consult with tribes. Tribes are particularly interested in cooperative
relationships in the planning and monitoring processes. Some issues to
address are access, land exchanges, interaction between National Forest
Lands and tribal lands regarding disease and insects, traditional
knowledge, protection of sensitive information, and adequate monitoring
for protection of trust resources.

The flow of information and management policies will be two-directional
in such cooperative relationships. Despite receiving less funding than
federal agencies, many tribes have established excellent records in
uneven-aged forest management and recognition of the multitude of values
that people have for forests. As tribes obtained control of forest
planning processes on reservations, harvests typically fell, as concerns
for the protection of non-timber resources in the forests were
recognized. These reductions were not as controversial within Indian
communities as has been observed in other situations; many tribes had
argued with the Bureau of Indian Affairs over high harvest levels for
some years. Interestingly, many tribes are able to handle salvage
operations after fire and windthrow without long delays. Part of the
reason is some shielding from the National Environmental Policy Act; but
another major reason is that forest planning processes within tribes,
supervised by tribal councils, lead to plans with broad tribal public
support. Flexibility in implementation, with approval of tribal
councils, is easily attained in most cases. The Forest Service can learn
from these successes.

Tribal stewardship of forests and rangelands can also learn from
experiences and approaches on the National Forests and Grasslands. The
Forest Service has pioneered interdisciplinary planning and development
of strategies for the conservation of species and ecosystems in the
context of providing for the multiple use. Also, the innovative
strategies for increasing the compatibility of grazing and protection of
riparian areas developed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land
Management have many valuable lessons for tribal management of rangeland
resources on reservations.

Other federal laws

The application of the term, "trust resources", has been extended by
laws such as the Antiquities Act, Archaeological Resources Protection
Act, American Indian Religious Freedom Act (as amended), the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act, the Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and an
Executive Order on Indian Sacred Sites (#13007). The current NFMA
regulations refer to the general purpose of many of these acts: the
recognition of sacred sites and sites of archeological and historic
importance. Of the many concerns listed above, this is the only one that
receives explicit attention in the regulations, although only in the
principles section. In planning and implementation, the Forest Service
must comply with these laws, and in doing so must seek meaningful
consultation with tribal governments.

Tribal treaty rights and federal laws create distinctive rights that are
different, and sometimes stronger, than those of the general public.
Regulations must recognize that the Forest Service needs to forge these
stronger relationships. In addition, development of the capacities of
tribal governments through the Indian Self-Determination Act has enabled
tribes to become true cooperators. Many tribes have a strong record in
sustainable forest management, and many tribal concerns regarding the
many values that forests provide communities are the same concerns that
the Forest Service is now learning to address. The Forest Service should
actively seek the cooperation of such tribes in planning.

Hispanic Communities

The circumstances of rural Hispanic communities in the Southwest present
another compelling example of how the Forest Service can make important
contributions to local communities.

For many years before the War of 1848, most of the Southwest was
controlled by Spain, succeeded by Mexico. In the United States-Mexico
War, the United States annexed New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada,
Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The United States promised in
the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that it would respect the land
rights of Mexican citizens. The United States failed that pledge.
Through a well-documented pattern of fraud and deceit, Hispanic
landowners and communities lost millions of acres.

Today, many of those former Spanish and Mexican grant lands are within
National Forests. Yet, especially in the Rio Grande watershed in
northern New Mexico and parts of southern Colorado, traditional Hispanic
communities remain tied to those lands, both economically and
emotionally. These communities, many of them poverty-stricken, use the
National Forests for many purposes critical to their land-based
lifestyle, including firewood gathering for residential heating and
cooking, grazing, subsistence hunting, and, in a few instances,
commercial timber harvesting. Those communities can be greatly aided or
severely disadvantaged by land-management practices within the National
Forests. Most notably, acequias---the arteries of traditional Hispanic
irrigation cooperatives---suffer when the national forest watersheds
fail to provide steady flows of clean water.

Unlike Indian tribes, whose rights stemming from treaties and federal
statutes remain in force, Hispanic communities generally do not possess
explicit legal rights in the former grant lands of the National Forests;
however much the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo might have intended
otherwise. Nevertheless, these communities have powerful historical and
contemporary equities that should be reflected in Forest Service
policies. The first duty in the stewardship of the National Forests and
Grasslands must be to protect ecological system integrity. Once that is
assured, however, the Forest Service should plan and manage land-grant
national forest lands to contribute to the traditions and needs of local
Hispanic communities, as has been the policy (announced but not always
followed) of the Southwestern Region since 1972, as set forth in its
"Northern New Mexico Policy", and to give priority to watershed
protection and to the personal uses of community members for firewood
gathering, grazing, and hunting.

Economic and Social Sustainability:

When are the National Forests and Grasslands Fulfilling their
Responsibilities?

The notion of economic and social sustainability speaks to the very
capacity of a society to ensure the long-term well-being of people and
the communities they inhabit. To fulfill their responsibility in the
broader challenge of pursuing social sustainability, national forests
and grasslands play important roles in building this capacity (1) when
assessment and decision-making processes recognize, appropriately
consider, and act upon the wide range of products, values, services and
uses contributed by the national forests and grasslands; (2) when they
meaningfully involve the many communities that give voice to the value
of these contributions; (3) when they foster an understanding of the
linkages between social and ecological systems; (4) when they recognize
the differential capacity of communities to respond to policy changes
and work to reduce the negative economic and social impacts of these
changes, and (5) when they foster responsibility for stewardship
behavior that directly or indirectly enhances ecological, and thereby
social, sustainability. In other words, the Forest Service promotes the
long-term economic and social well-being of the nation both through the
tangible and intangible contributions of the national forests and
grasslands, as well as by enhancing the ability of communities to make
sustainable choices.

Human and ecological systems are highly variable, dynamic processes, and
their future natures and structures are often uncertain. Just as a few
static measures of plant or animal abundance are not representative of
the dynamic and process-oriented components of ecological
sustainability, measuring economic and social sustainability is equally
complex. Simple measures of employment or income levels or numbers of
recreation visitor days, while important as descriptors of current
conditions, reveal little about whether conditions are improving;
whether conditions are sustainable; and whether communities have the
capacity to pursue their desired futures. Consequently, it is much more
appropriate and realistic to ask either, "Are the processes in place
that will accommodate and encourage sustainability?" or, "Do the
communities and economies have the ability to persist over time through
innovation and adaptation to new conditions?" than the question, "Has
social sustainability been achieved?"

Objectively assessing economic and social well being, and in particular
their relationship to the contributions of National Forest System lands,
is not a simple task. For the Forest Service to do so in a manner that
the American people find meaningful and acceptable is an added
challenge. Regardless, it is essential that the planning process
dynamically assess the connections between the National Forest System
and associated economies and communities, the consequences of differing
planning choices, and ways in which to minimize disruptive influences.
Effective assessments are best informed when undertaken in a
participatory manner, involving the people and communities that can
reflect upon their own history, current status, and desired future.

To determine whether the planning process is fostering the assessments,
connections, and actions needed to contribute to economic and social
sustainability, a number of questions could be asked:

• Does the process illuminate and consider the broad range of values,
uses, products and services of a national forest or grassland, and the
communities that rely upon these contributions for their identity, well
being, and livelihood?

• Is it open and accessible? Do people know about it? Do people feel
welcome to actively participate in it? Are people able to meaningfully
participate? Is it transparent, and easily followed and understood?

• Does it recognize and accommodate the diverse needs, knowledge, and
capabilities of all participants?

• Does the process fit the organization, communication, and
decision-making styles that characterize the community?

• Does it recognize the differential capacity of communities to respond
to policy changes and work to reduce the negative economic and social
impacts of land use change?

• Does it facilitate understanding and learning? Is it enhancing
understanding about the capabilities of the national forests and
grasslands? Is it enhancing understanding of the wide-ranging values,
associated with the contributions of the national forests and grasslands
and the communities who hold those values? Are people's concerns and
interests effectively expressed? Is information readily accessible and
in meaningful forms for the diverse individuals and groups who are, or
might be, interested in it?

• Is it serving as a catalyst for diverse and dispersed communities to
organize, reflect and constructively contribute to the planning process,
and to the stewardship activities that are identified through this
process?

• Does it recognize future Forest Service needs for stewardship
activities provided by non-agency sources, and explore mechanisms for
ensuring that these needs will be met? Are groups and individuals
actively involved in providing stewardship services to the forests and
rangelands that are appropriate and necessary within the context of
ecological sustainability?

Recommendations

Assessments

Recognizing that economic and social sustainability relies partly on all
participants understanding the economic and social conditions in which
decisions are made, the planning process should include an assessment of
economic and social conditions and trends as a processor to large-scale
landscape planning. The nature of the assessment should be designed for
each landscape, to account for the specific nature of the local
economic, social, and cultural community and the broader national or
regional values and interests in the landscape. This assessment should
highlight the role of specific contributions of the national forests and
grasslands to the well being of the social systems contained in the
landscape and the capacity of communities across the landscape to
accommodate land use change.

Adequate social assessments require concepts, approaches and
methodologies developed specifically for the bioregional and watershed
level assessment processes. At both levels, quantitative, qualitative
and participatory methods are required to adequately understand the
past, present and possible futures. Experiences from recent science
assessments are a useful starting point for future assessments and
plans.

Planning

The planning process should foster the meaningful involvement of diverse
communities that can most effectively speak to the value of the many
contributions of the national forests and grasslands and ensure that
they are fairly considered in planning. At the same time, the planning
process must foster a sense of community responsibility for achieving
social sustainability and enhance the capability of individuals and
communities to act knowledgeably and wisely in pursuing a sustainable
future.

Within the framework of ecological sustainability, planning should
consider the potential economic and social consequences of land use
change in setting overall land use policy, in tailoring the policy for
specific geographic areas, and in delivering resources to help
communities and individuals adapt. The planning process must also
consider values that have been given specific legal or historical
protections and ensure that these values are provided for and protected
and that other management activities do not detract from them.

Planning should take care to avoid setting unrealistic expectations
about future outputs from the National Forests and Grasslands. At the
same time, the process should minimize dramatic fluctuations in
contributions and, as possible, provide some measure of predictability
about future contributions to society. As part of this effort, planning
should encourage actions that simultaneously contribute to ecological,
economic, and social sustainability.

Ecological, social and economic sustainability are inextricably linked,
and thus impairing the sustainability of any one aspect affects the
entirety. Stewardship speaks to the responsibility of the human
community to protect the ecological system that supports life. Balance
speaks to the inevitable weighing of specific actions intended to
promote ecological sustainability with the social and economic
consequences of that action.

2C. Building the Stewardship Capacity for Sustainability

To achieve ecological sustainability and contribute to economic and
social sustainability in the terms outlined in the previous two sections
of this chapter are formidable tasks and, furthermore, tasks that no
agency can realistically accomplish alone. To succeed, the Forest
Service must be willing to try new approaches, organize in new ways,
experiment, learn and adapt. To succeed, they must recognize the
imperative to work with others outside the agency. And, to succeed, the
capacity of these non-Forest Service entities to help must be present.
In other words, the stewardship capacity to achieve sustainability must
be fostered both within the Forest Service and within the other
agencies, governments, communities, groups and individuals who must be a
part of this endeavor. This section discusses the concept of stewardship
capacity and the opportunities and challenges the Forest Service faces
in building this capacity. The forest planning process should play a
central role in recognizing, enhancing, and capitalizing upon
stewardship capacity for sustainability.

As Webster defines it, capacity, generally, is "the ability to get work
done; the power to grasp and analyze ideas and cope with problems."
Stewardship capacity therefore refers to the ability to bring about
effective stewardship. This includes on-the-ground activities as well as
the potential to conceive and analyze new ideas and to effectively solve
problems. Stewardship capacity is not a single item, but rather the
amalgam of relationships, organizations, processes, skills, resources,
understandings, knowledge and expertise, legal mandates and
institutional structures that accommodate, encourage, and implement
stewardship activities. The essential foundation of stewardship capacity
is contained in the many and diverse relationships that, through open,
honest, and reliable communication and collaboration, link the different
pieces of the stewardship puzzle. As conceived in this report, effective
stewardship implies a fundamental change in relationships; relationships
within the Forest Service, between the Forest Service and other agencies
and governments, and between the Forest Service and the American people,
whose lands they have the great honor and responsibility to steward.

The Eight Essential Building Blocks of Stewardship Capacity

Hindsight is often twenty-twenty, benefiting both from an understanding
of the actual consequences of specific actions and from new knowledge
that is subsequently acquired. It is not surprising, therefore, that
after twenty years of experience, we now have greater clarity about the
necessary elements of an effective forest-planning process. National
forest and rangeland management has traditionally been approached with a
fairly narrow view of the nature of the task at hand, the range of
factors to be considered, and the scope of responsibility. Consequently,
in the past, the capacity for land management was most often equated
with the presence of specific capabilities; that is, the manpower,
skills, resources, equipment, time, and authority to get the job done.
And, although those capabilities are indeed essential to the task of
public land stewardship, we now know that, by themselves, they are not
enough. As has become all-too-evident in observing the functioning and
consequences of the national forest planning process over the last
twenty years, there are several other critical components of stewardship
capacity that must also be present within the Forest Service, as well as
within society. Capabilities is but one of eight core building blocks of
stewardship capacity. The others, discussed below, are Trust,
Collaborative Relationships, Understanding, Joint Fact-Finding, Dealing
with Conflict, Will, and A Learning Organization. Capacity is created
and enhanced when linkages are made, connecting these building blocks of
stewardship capacity. It is the function of the planning process to
construct these linkages.

1\. Trust

Trust in the Forest Service and among the many groups and individuals
that care about the National Forests and Grasslands has diminished after
years of a planning process that has been both divisive and
disillusioning for all involved, agency and non-agency alike. This lack
of trust has heightened conflict over national forest planning and has
brought most planning efforts to an impasse. While it will be some time
before trust in the actions of the Forest Service can be restored, trust
in the process by which forest and rangeland management decisions are
made is an essential component in building stewardship capacity. And,
for the planning process to be trusted, it must be perceived to be
legitimate, credible, and fair to the diverse groups, individuals, and
communities who care about national forests and rangelands. To be
legitimate, it must satisfy legal mandates, be sanctioned by
administrative procedure, have the support and commitment of agency
officials, and recognize other rights and authorities. To be credible,
the base of knowledge informing decisions must be widely perceived as
sound and complete. To be fair, it must be inclusive and representative,
with mutually agreeable criteria for decision-making and equal access to
information. There is little capacity for working together if there is
no trust; hence, the first step in building stewardship capacity is to
begin rebuilding that trust through a process that is deemed trustworthy
by all participants.

2\. Collaborative Relationships

Effective stewardship demands that people begin working together in ways
that the previous approach to planning did not recognize or accommodate.
Some of these people reside within the Forest Service, and must work
together, linking researchers and policy-makers, managers and
scientists, and leaders and managers. Some of these people reside in
other state and federal agencies, and the Forest Service needs to
establish constructive working relationships with them. Others reside in
the communities of interests and communities of place that care about
the National Forests and Grasslands and they, too, are essential to
sustainable stewardship; they, too, must be brought into the planning
process in productive and meaningful ways. And, many of these people
reside in diverse communities that care about the national forests -
communities-of-place defined by where they live and
communities-of-interest defined by the issues and concerns they
advocate---and they, too, are essential to sustainable stewardship and
they, too, must be brought into the planning process in productive and
meaningful ways.

The ability of the Forest Service and other individuals, organizations,
agencies and governments to work together toward common purposes is the
foundation of collaborative stewardship capacity. It provides the
essential connections between the people and resources necessary to
achieve sustainability. To effectively pursue sustainability,
stewardship of National Forest System lands must engage those who have
the information, knowledge, and expertise to contribute to developing
courses of action (i.e., other agencies, governments, universities,
tribes, national and regional nongovernmental organizations, community
organizations). Those who have sole control or authority over lands and
activities adjacent to national forests and rangelands (i.e., other
public and private landowners). Those who have the skills, energy, time,
and resources to carry out stewardship activities (i.e., communities,
individuals, organizations, other agencies). Those who can help monitor
and assess on-the-ground consequences of management actions in order to
help better inform future decisions (i.e., communities, individuals,
organizations, other agencies). Those who can independently validate the
credibility of stewardship decisions and the reality of achievements
(i.e., scientific experts and knowledgeable people). In short, many and
diverse collaborative relationships comprise a core building block of
stewardship capacity. The planning process must provide opportunities
and incentives for people to work together, establishing these
collaborative relationships.

What is Collaboration?

Collaboration, quite simply, is based on the old adage that "Two heads
are better than one, and one by itself is simply not good enough." Two
heads can be "better" in many different ways. They bring more issues,
perspectives, and ideas to discussions. They bring more resources, time,
and energy to the resolution of issues and the implementation of plans.
They foster better decisions, decisions that are better informed, better
understood, better accepted, and more apt to be implemented.

With such a simple premise applied to so many varied contexts, it is not
surprising that "collaboration" is not a uniformly structured process.
Instead, collaborative processes work precisely because they are always
tailored to fit the particular situation of concern. Consequently, there
are many varied shapes, sizes, functions, and outcomes of collaborative
processes that can be observed across the landscape of resource
management activity. What is important is not the precise formula or the
rigid structure, but rather that each is guided by some fundamental
principles. They strive to be inclusive, open, representative, guided by
clear expectations and objectives, and flexible, yet linked to a
scientific basis and existing law and procedures, as well as having
clear decision rules and authorities. They build on current scientific
understandings and knowledge and seek out relevant expertise as needed.

There is no magic to collaboration. And, there are only two key
ingredients that must be present and that all successful collaborative
efforts have in common: Effective collaborative efforts involve
individuals who 1) share a concern about a place, an issue, or a problem
and 2) are committed to working together on its behalf. Shared concerns
and commitment are the essential ingredients. It is worth noting that
the Committee of Scientists found a common element in many of the
promising approaches to resource management: Individuals involved ---
Forest Service and non-Forest Service alike --- viewed what they were
doing as an experiment, and learned and adapted accordingly. They were
"in it together." Consequently, expectations and behaviors within the
process were very different from those of traditional planning
processes. Views of responsibilities differed; the Forest Service
planner's role was more flexible and adaptive; and those involved seemed
more open, forgiving, and motivated by the process. This is what
collaboration is all about: working together on issues of mutual concern
in a manner that best fits the needs of the people, place, and issues of
concern.

There is a certain synergy to collaborative stewardship capacity; the
capacity to collaborate in turn enhances the effectiveness of that
collaboration. So, the presence of structures that promote effective
communication and ongoing dialogue is both evidence of the existence of
collaborative stewardship capacity, and a mechanism through which
collaborative stewardship capacity is itself enhanced. Partnerships,
joint fact-finding efforts, effective conflict management, community
leadership, and mechanisms that foster understanding and education are
all evidence, as well as building blocks, of collaborative stewardship
capacity.

Instituting Opportunities for Collaboration

As the United States has come to acknowledge the growing fragmentation
of its forested ecosystems, the fragmentation of the institutional
structures affecting those ecosystems has also become apparent. The
institutional structures seldom accommodate effective collaboration. For
example, a single watershed, e.g., the Applegate area in Oregon, has a
checkerboard of land ownerships--- private, state, and federal --- each
of which has its own distinct objectives for land use and management.
Without strong relationships among agencies and meaningful community
engagement in identifying issues and solving problems, effective forest
management is virtually impossible. The forest planning process should
be a key avenue for organizing fragmented institutions and communities
in order to foster the communication and coordination essential to
sustainable forest management.

Multiple mechanisms of public dialogue need to be devised in order to
enhance the capacity of the American people to effectively engage in the
planning process. People are diverse in their conceptions of which
forest and rangeland contributions hold the highest value and,
therefore, what social choices should be made concerning the stewardship
of National Forest System lands. They are diverse in their cultural
practices and cultural values. They are diverse in their willingness to
engage in participatory public processes (some like meetings, others
prefer face-to-face discussions, still others need to be in the woods to
address the issues). And, they are diverse in their economic activities.
Regardless, people with different backgrounds often share at least one
common ground: they care about and/or want to live or visit here. The
National Forests and Grasslands have significant meaning to many people
in many places. The process of forming a land and resource plan is a
critical avenue for people of differing cultures and interests to find
commonality and community through their mutual concern for their lands.
In so doing, they build the capacity of that community to effectively
assist the Forest Service in pursuing sustainable ecosystem management,
instead of undermining collaborative efforts through protracted
conflict. However, a mechanism that allows them to do so must first be
present. And, no single "public participation" process will accomplish
this end; rather, multiple opportunities are needed that capture the
diverse array of people and issues at play on our national forests and
rangelands.

Engaging the American public in deliberating the future of the National
Forests and Grasslands is more than just talking to people living near
those lands. Gifford Pinchot, first Chief of the Forest Service, set
forth the principle that local decisions should be made on local grounds
at a time when local meant "people living nearby." Today, people who
live great distances from the forests and rangelands feel strong
attachments to them and want to participate in making decisions about
them. Just as transportation systems have changed the meaning of "local"
in decision-making, so have information technologies transformed the
abilities of people living far from the public lands to join in
deliberating their future. New approaches, such as the Internet, should
be considered in drawing more geographically dispersed, yet equally
committed and concerned, individuals into the planning process.

3\. Understanding

A lack of broad-based understanding pervades the current planning
process. Groups, including the Forest Service, do not fully understand
the issues of concern to each other, the constraints that circumscribe
the agency's considerations, and the realm of possible, realistic
outcomes. The National Forest System planning process is currently
structured only to solicit input, then criticism from non-agency groups
and individuals; it provides no incentives for constructive development
of ideas and solutions to problems. Hence, people involved in the
process do not have to grapple with the very real legal, financial,
ecological, social, and resource constraints that confront the Forest
Service, or with the very real concerns and interests of others.
Moreover, there is little incentive for people involved in the process
to develop proposals that recognize these realities; in fact, the
incentive is just the reverse. The current process has the Forest
Service positioned like an arbiter in the middle of the fray, providing
each group with the perverse incentive to argue for as much as possible,
in hopes of maximizing what, in the end, it receives. There is no
incentive for reasoned or fully-informed proposals, and, there is no
ownership in or commitment to the resulting decisions.

There are many factors that bear on National Forest and Grassland
management decisions and many issues of concern to both Forest Service
and non-Forest Service entities. For stewardship capacity to be
enhanced, the broad array of issues, interests and concerns, legal and
administrative constraints and possibilities, and budgetary realities
must be understood across the spectrum of individuals, agencies, and
groups who are a part of the process. It is only through working with an
informed and realistic understanding of the complexity of the
stewardship task at hand, that people will be both encouraged and
enabled to make reasoned and reasonable contributions to the process.
While planning documents are not the path to providing this
understanding, the planning process must facilitate it.

Fostering understanding also implies an expanded conception of the
Forest Service's role in education, one that encourages people to become
aware of their connection to the forests and rangelands and their
responsibility to assist with stewardship. Many natural resource
benefits are taken for granted in daily life. For example, the waters
that flow from the national forests and grasslands have a significant
economic value to large urban populations, to agriculture, and to other
highly profitable industries. Many of these users are not even aware of
their connection to the watershed that supplies a vital ingredient of
their lives and livelihoods; hence, they do not actively assist the
Forest Service in ensuring that these critical watersheds are
sustainably managed. The planning process must be structured in a manner
that builds broad-based understanding, and engages those who can provide
a voice for the wide-ranging interests that must be recognized and
understood, if effective stewardship is to be realized.

Planning and assessment processes are critical opportunities for
building and strengthening the understanding and relationships necessary
to work toward sustainability. These processes can enrich and broaden
agency understanding of the country's economic, social, and
institutional environment, at the same time that they help build
community capacity. By engaging in meaningful public dialogue, citizens
and interest groups can learn about one another and develop a deeper
appreciation of different points of view. They can begin identifying
shared issues of concern and envisioning mutually agreed-upon approaches
for dealing with these issues. A central function of the planning
process is to facilitate community-building by providing the opportunity
and incentives for people to come together. In so doing, this can help
strengthen a community's ability to chart and pursue a common future
course, to be vibrant and healthy, and, therefore, to be able to assist
in the pursuit of sustainability for the public lands.

4\. Joint Fact-Finding

The current planning process is plagued by "advocacy science." Different
groups, individuals, agencies, and communities, working with different
sets of information and assumptions about the resource base, challenge
Forest Service decisions. Different "experts" reach different
conclusions about what is, and hence what should be. As different groups
rally around their experts, they deepen the chasm between the agency and
society and undermine our ability to achieve sustainability. Joint
fact-finding --- jointly conducted assessments and analyses --- is
essential to establishing a credible and common base of information from
which all who care can draw. Conducted in an inclusive and collaborative
manner, and building broad-based understanding and concurrence on the
facts to bear on decision-making, joint fact-finding provides the
opportunity for science to shed light on issues and possibilities rather
than cloud them as currently is the case. Joint fact-finding, if
conducted in an open and credible manner, also provides the first and
critical step in building productive collaborative relationships between
the many different people who care about and can contribute to
stewardship.

Information is a key element in building an accessible planning process
and an honest relationship between the agency and communities. Open
information policies, where key information about the resources and
management of national forests and grasslands is readily available in a
range of locations and formats, and can provide any interested
individual the ability to understand, critique, and participate in
planning processes. Involving diverse groups in acquiring and analyzing
this information has several advantages. It forces the groups to come to
grips with and articulate their true issues of concern, as well as the
assumptions on which they are basing their decisions. It forces them to
listen to the concerns of others, to test each other's assumptions, and
to have a legitimate forum within which to make adjustments to
accommodate each other's needs. It allows them to understand and account
for the legitimate concerns and needs of other groups. And, it places
everyone on an equal footing, understanding the full resources at stake,
the ramifications of different decisions, and the constraints bounding
the realm of possible outcomes. Moreover, it promotes each group's
ability to contribute meaningfully to the process, make creative
suggestions, articulate their different assumptions, and jointly develop
a mutually satisfactory outcome when possible. When planning and
assessment processes are viewed as joint inquiry processes between the
agency and the public, then the attitudes of both are aimed toward
mutual learning, issue identification, and problem-solving, thereby
enhancing the ability of the process to promote effective stewardship.

5\. Dealing With Conflict

The National Forests and Grasslands cannot be all things to all people
at all times. Conflict is unavoidable. Providing for multiple human
uses, values, and services within the context of ecological
sustainability represents the point of greatest social conflict in
natural resource management. The current condition of the national
forests and grasslands and the events that created those conditions have
exacerbated this reality. As noted in the introduction to this report,
stewardship of National Forest System lands is being challenged on
several fronts. The demand for the many uses, values, and products of
the national forests and rangelands has dramatically increased, while
ecological integrity has declined. Restoring ecological integrity, while
continuing to contribute to economies and human communities, is not an
easy task. The challenge for the Forest Service within the planning
process is to meaningfully and credibly illuminate the nature of and
rationale for decisions, as well as the inevitable tradeoffs implied by
these decisions. Rather than serving as the lightning rod, the planning
process needs to be the catalyst that helps society both understand the
range of options before it and make reasoned and reasonable choices that
are ecologically sustainable and of significant value to society. An
important role for a revised planning process is to build the linkages,
the forums, and the understanding that create the capacity within
communities to engage in and share responsibility for making these
difficult decisions\--and thereby to better manage their inevitable
conflicts.

Conceptually, it is quite easy to talk about balancing competing
interests and pursuing mutually agreed upon paths. Consensus is a
compelling concept. Practically, however, achieving consensus when so
much is at stake, and in the face of such divergent claims, is a
difficult task. None know this challenge better than the men and women
of the Forest Service. Nonetheless, conflict can be a source of
tremendous opportunity; a critical building block of stewardship
capacity is the ability to recognize and capture those opportunities.
Differences in values, perspectives, and experience can all provide
opportunities for learning and critique. Getting an alternative
perspective on things that have become "routine" over time is difficult
without someone with a different viewpoint; conflict brings these
perspectives and energy to the forefront. The capacity to take advantage
of this opportunity will be enhanced by a planning process that
recognizes the inevitability of legitimate, yet competing values in
National Forest System management--a process that encourages divergent
interests to collectively deal with their differences, while pursuing
shared goals for the national forests and grasslands.

6\. Capabilities

Traditionally, capabilities would have been the primary, if not sole
focus in a discussion of stewardship capacity. Capabilities are the
skills, resources, people, equipment, time, and authority to get work
done. And, many of the capabilities to undertake on-the-ground
stewardship activities already exist in varying forms and places. These
capabilities are found, for example, in the devoted, hard-working
employees of the Forest Service, as well as the many and diverse groups
and individuals who care so deeply about National Forest System lands.
They reside in the agency and in academic research communities, in
budgets, in legal mandates, in institutional structures and
administrative procedures, in individuals' ability to access and use
information, or to run equipment. And, the critical aspect of these
capabilities is not just their presence or potential, but rather how
they are linked in order to affect action; this is an important function
of the planning process. An additional function of the process is to
recognize particular capabilities that are needed and to facilitate
their development. Community organization and leadership, for example,
are important capabilities that, when present, facilitate the more
effective involvement of these communities in stewardship of the public
lands.

Traditionally, the relationship between the National Forests and
Grasslands and the broader society was treated as a one-way street:
public and private goods flowed from federal lands to numerous
beneficiaries; omniscient public servants made choices based on their
own beliefs about what was best for the resources as well as society.
Sustainability, however, requires a two-way relationship between the
Forest Service and society. To build this two-way relationship requires
engaged communities with sufficient leadership capability to coalesce
resources for action. "Community" speaks to the quality of relationships
among diverse and dispersed groups of people, not the geographic
location of where they live. One goal of forest planning is to enhance
the capability of diverse communities and, in so doing, facilitate their
ability to constructively contribute to national forest management.
Moreover, doing so will help create and enhance the leadership,
institutions, and informal networks within communities that, in turn,
help the Forest Service to interact more effectively with these
communities.

Forming management partnerships is one way to harness the potential of
dispersed capabilities. In many places, sustainability depends on
contributions from communities and economies beyond a national forest or
rangeland's border. The Forest Service has always relied on individuals,
organizations, industries, and communities to provide resources for
society and to protect the forests from fire, insects, and disease. This
list includes volunteers who help address the needs of a burgeoning
number of recreational users \[see San Gorgonio Side Bar\];
nongovernmental organizations who have unique knowledge and expertise
about particular resources or ecological attributes; and local
industries that can provide the labor and services necessary for
restoration or harvesting the commodity outputs that a sustainably
managed forest provides to society \[see Clifton Choctaw Side Bar\].
Today the American people are more interested than ever before in
actively participating in providing stewardship support for the National
Forests and Grasslands. Understanding and actively cultivating this
public commitment and capacity can significantly improve the Forest
Service's stewardship capabilities.

The capability to undertake protective management, for instance fuel
reduction in fire-prone ecosystems, requires adequate financial
resources, a skilled workforce, and entrepreneurship. Current policy
often assumes that finances, skilled labor, and entrepreneurship are
provided by normal economic institutions. We argue here that maintenance
of these capabilities is important in order to ensure ecological
sustainability in many places. For example:

• A viable timber industry will be needed for vegetation treatments to
achieve ecological goals; otherwise the public expense of these
treatments could be much higher.

• Local stewardship will often be necessary for watershed restoration.

• Entrepreneurs must be interested in organizing resources to undertake
needed management activities.

• A regular level of projects helps ensure that the needed workforce
will be available.

• A strong and locally enforced legal and institutional infrastructure
is necessary to protect ecological resources from degradation or over
exploitation. Strong and stable communities, along with a sense of
personal responsibility help provide this infrastructure.

Today the Forest Service needs to take an active role in considering
what kinds of community and business capability are necessary for
effective stewardship and developing both the awareness of this
relationship and local entrepreneurship though the planning process.
Achieving this may mean placing individuals in positions where they are
responsible for maintaining these linkages and fulfilling these tasks.
It also means using the planning process to forecast future needs and
taking the steps necessary to ensure that key industries are present and
intact, in order to meet those needs as they arise.

7\. Will

The old maxims, "Where there's a will, there's a way," coupled with the
converse wisdom "Where there's no will, there's no way," speak volumes
about a critical building block of stewardship capacity: the will to do
what is necessary to be effective stewards. While a well-structured
process is essential to effective stewardship, without a willingness to
engage in that process and a commitment to see it through to fruition,
success is not assured. And although the many physical capabilities
supporting stewardship are present, or can be accumulated and organized
in new ways, they will amount to little without the organizational and
public will to use them in pursuit of the purposes and principles
articulated in the planning regulations.

To some extent, the will of the Forest Service is currently stymied by a
lack of public trust. And, within the agency, it is stymied by a
perceived lack of broad-based support for pursuing the core elements of
a reformed planning process. Why should the public engage in a new
planning process, after devoting considerable time and energy to the
last round of forest planning, but with little apparent effect? Why
should Forest Service planners embark on a new process, if support for
it is not forthcoming from within the agency's own hierarchy?

Forest Service leaders must provide a supportive agency environment
through which internal capacity can be fostered and nurtured and
internal will enhanced and harnessed. Agency leaders can create this
fundamental will within the agency by providing encouragement,
flexibility, support, resources, skills, training, and rewards; by
evidencing the will themselves; and by providing opportunities, through
internal dialogues and projects, to experience and contribute to the
development and refinement of a new planning process in a manner that
fosters ownership in it. If the will exists and is acted upon by the
leaders, it will be followed by those on-the-ground. And if the will is
in evidence on-the-ground, it will be recognized and embraced by the
American people. The will to engage in a process in pursuit of
sustainability, and the commitment to the purposes and principles, as
well as a desire to further them, is a fundamental building block of
stewardship capacity. And, this will has its roots in agency leadership
and manager ownership of the process and its ideals.

8\. A Learning Organization

Because stewardship in pursuit of sustainability is fundamentally
different from the way the previous approach to planning was structured,
a change in perspective and approach is necessary. Because of the
complexity of the problems at hand and the reality that this is
uncharted terrain, the precise path to follow is unclear. Consequently,
the necessary changes in Forest Service management activity can only be
brought about through an openness and willingness to experiment, learn,
and adapt accordingly. The internal capacity for stewardship within the
Forest Service cannot be effectively established without an
organizational context that promotes ongoing learning and appropriate
change. An openness to learning is predicated in humility; in
recognizing, unlike in the past, that there is yet so much to learn
about the ecological systems of the National Forest System lands, and
about ways to work more effectively as an organization and a society. It
means acknowledging that someone else, at times, might know more and
should be consulted and listened to. It means acknowledging that there
are different ways of knowing and different sources of knowledge that
contribute in important ways to understanding the full context of
stewardship. In short, stewardship capacity cannot exist without a
learning organization, and the foundation for such an organization is
humility.

Organizational learning is a process that relies on the ability of an
organization to experiment, recognize the lessons of experience, and use
an adaptive approach to developing and carrying out policies. In many
ways, this type of behavior is anathema to the functioning of any large
bureaucratic organization, and the Forest Service is no exception. Large
bureaucratic organizations in both the public and private sectors are
notoriously poor learners. They exhibit several characteristic problems:
contrary information rarely makes it to the top; bearers of bad news are
punished; essential risk-taking and creative problem-solving are blocked
by organizational norms and professional paradigms that are challenged
by them. Humility is not a strong suit. Regardless, if the Forest
Service chooses to pursue the purposes and principles articulated in the
planning regulations, then it must recognize, confront, and overcome
these organizational hurdles.

Consequently, if the Forest Service is sincere about pursuing an
improved stewardship capacity, then it must institute some structures
that force the agency to act in ways that defy the normal organizational
tendency to adhere to long-held norms and behaviors. Both carrots and
sticks will likely be necessary: carrots that tease, encourage, and
support the necessary efforts for sustainability; sticks that sanction
inappropriate behavior and identify inadequate or inappropriate
practices. Organizations that recognize the imperative to learn,
particularly in times of significant change, adopt a diverse set of
strategies. Some provide internal incentives and rewards; others
institute systems of checks and balances that externally validate the
assumptions and actions of the agency. External reviews provoke two
learning impulses: 1) to be up-to-date, informed, and honest in order to
"pass muster" in the external reviews; and 2) to provide an opportunity
to hear a different perspective, one that is less apt to be constrained
by organizational norms and professional paradigms and hence more likely
to raise issues and questions that may otherwise be left unseen. At the
same time, external reviews add credibility to agency actions, something
that is essential to effective stewardship. Together, these carrots and
sticks will provide a boost to the Forest Services's ability to learn
and to thereby pursue the purposes and principles underlying effective
stewardship.

Organizational learning and change require a supportive and open
environment in which the organization --- both its leadership and its
members --- want to learn and are willing to change. This desire to
learn and willingness to change cannot be forced from the top down, nor
acted upon at lower levels without approval and support from above. An
organizational desire to learn comes from a common understanding of the
need for change and a shared perspective on the direction that change
should take. In other words, it needs a vision that all involved find
compelling and motivating. And people will only rally around a vision
and a process that they have ownership in, preferably through their own
experience and assessment.

Healthy and dynamic organizations have diverse activities occurring
simultaneously within them. In particular, they encourage
experimentation and learning in times of change. Very briefly, the key
characteristics of learning organizations are that they

• recognize that they need to be learning, and acting on that learning

• view their task as an experiment; and recognize that the point of an
experiment is to learn from its results and modify successive steps
accordingly

• encourage team approaches that bridge skills, expertise, and interests

• lend helping hands and share ideas and responsibilities

• provide the flexibility that prompts creativity and innovation

• learn from what hasn't worked

• shine spotlights on endeavors that did work

• provide skills, training, resources, and similar kinds of support

• have constructive feedback loops in place

• have champions who provide the leadership and enthusiasm for the
learning process

• support and encourage, but seldom dictate

• institute mechanisms for external review.

Change is seldom a smooth and seamless process, even in the best of
times and with the best of plans. Few would dispute that the Forest
Service is in a time of great change. Although it is an understandably
frustrating time for Forest Service employees at all levels of the
organization, it is a time of tremendous opportunity as well.
Nevertheless, the internal capacity of the Forest Service will be
enhanced if agency leaders provide the environment, guidance, and
support within which individuals can rise to challenges facing the
agency and begin operating in new and different ways, thereby providing
important insights into the appropriate steps on the path towards
sustainability.

Connecting the Building Blocks of Stewardship Capacity

The Committee of Scientists recognizes that pursuing a planning process
constructed of these building blocks will not be easy. Many of them
contradict long-held professional paradigms and organizational norms
that have focused on commodity outputs; hence, they may not be readily
accepted and adopted. People who have not worked together constructively
in the past and who distrust one another (e.g. scientists and managers;
interest groups; Forest Service and other agencies; agencies and
communities) will not suddenly begin collaborating. However, if the
Forest Service adopts sustainability as its fundamental goal, then these
new perspectives and behaviors must also be adopted. It is important to
be realistic about the inherent challenges and to remain committed if
progress is to be made. And, although the building blocks apply to
everyone, the Forest Service must recognize its particular
responsibility to provide leadership, through commitment and
opportunities, for stewardship to be realized.

The Forest Service is a large organization, with its own internal mix of
knowledge, values, skills, experiences, creativity, and attitudes
towards change. The adoption of new approaches to planning will not
occur overnight. As one Regional Planner commented to the Committee, "we
can't turn on a dime." Consequently, building this internal stewardship
capacity to achieve sustainability will only be brought about by an
organizational willingness to adopt this perspective, followed by
structures that link the essential knowledge and energies to affect
action.

Proposed Recommendations

• The USDA Forest Service should recognize the necessity to develop and
enhance both internal and external stewardship capacity in order to
facilitate its efforts to achieve sustainability.

• Organizational structures should be developed that provide a ready
forum and mechanism for the collaboration, information-sharing, and
linkages between people and resources that are internal as well as
external to the agency. This can be done through routine planning
procedures that provide opportunities for ongoing and meaningful
involvement, as well as through formal structures that better connect
National Forest System stewards with agency and academic research
communities, formal advisory councils, and external review panels.

• Internal stewardship capacity will be enhanced by improved
communications between on-the-ground resource managers and agency and
academic research communities. These linkages are essential to both
promote the application of up-to-date knowledge and understanding by
managers, as well as to inform the research community of problems and
needs that warrant examination.

• External review panels should be employed to verify the soundness of
management accomplishments and provide incentives for managers to seek
out knowledge that will better inform their actions.

• The formation of partnerships that provide linkages to the skills,
resources, knowledge, and capabilities of non-agency entities essential
to accomplishing stewardship should be encouraged .

• The Forest Service should recognize that achieving sustainability will
require ongoing learning and experimentation, both within the agency and
within society. The flexibility and support should be provided that will
encourage on-the-ground activity that will illuminate effective
approaches to enhancing stewardship capacity and diffuse what is learned
throughout the agency.

• To facilitate communication and learning beyond the local level,
information about the National Forest should be available on the
Internet. The planning process should include a participation strategy
designed for the Internet so that interested parties living away from
the area can participate in planning for it. Working analyses and
discussion papers should be continuously available and contributions
invited.

• As the framework and concepts provided by the Committee of Scientists
are translated into specific organizational strategies and
administrative procedures within the Forest Service, agency leaders
should provide multiple opportunities for dialogue among and
contributions by Forest Service employees. Ways must be found to foster
the understanding, experience, and ownership of the eventual process
and, thereby, the will to pursue it.

Proposed Actions regarding Formal Advisory Boards

In order to achieve collaborative stewardship of the national forest
system lands, the planning process must invite participation by all
interested individuals and groups from the beginning. Furthermore, the
process for communication with the public as well as all the other
agencies, organizations and interested parties needs to be
institutionalized so that it is continuous and easily accessible to
people living both nearby and far away from the planning area.

Section 14 of RPA/NFMA includes clear requirements for public
participation, including authorization for the convening of advisory
boards as part of the overall processes for public participation:

\(a\) In exercising his authorities under this Act and other laws
applicable to the Forest Service, the Secretary, by regulation, shall
establish procedures, including public hearings where appropriate, to
give the Federal, State and local governments and the public adequate
notice and an opportunity to comment upon the formulation of standards,
criteria, and guidelines applicable to Forest Service programs.

\(b\) In providing for public participation in the planning for and
management of the National Forest System, the Secretary, pursuant to the
Federal Advisory Committee Act (86 Stat. 770) and other applicable law,
shall establish and consult such advisory boards as he deems necessary
to secure full information and advice on the execution of his
responsibilities. The membership of such boards shall be representative
of a cross section of groups interested in the planning for and
management of the National Forest System and the various types of use
and enjoyment of the lands thereof. (16 U.S.C. 1612)

The statute makes clear that the Forest Service should develop
relationships with other federal agencies, State and local governments
and the public that are directly related to effective participation in
developing the policy framework for its programs. The specifically named
elements -- standards, criteria, and guidelines -- are key decision
points in that they are the basis for making choices. In order for the
public, including other governments, to effectively and wisely
participate in these key decisions, the public participation process
needs to be broadly educative. By this we mean that it needs to be
explicitly organized as a learning process, not merely a "review and
comment" process.

To develop good policy standards, criteria and guidelines, everyone
involved needs to have a broad understanding of the ecological, social
and economic context and the kinds of strategies needed to achieve
sustainability. This kind of a public participation process rests upon
the development and deliberation of substantive resource and
social/economic information. It requires long-term engagement of the
entire community of interested and affected parties and needs to result
in collaborative stewardship capacity. At the same time, the process
must always be open to new people, new ideas, and new problems.

Gifford Pinchot was an early proponent of advisory boards and formed
many of them to contribute to the national and local management of the
federal forests and grasslands. The use of advisory boards became a
common administrative mechanism for ongoing participation, especially
when technical information was often know best to those using the land
and resources. Early advisory boards were often formed for specific
resources, especially timber and range, but concerns with public
representation in the 1970s led to the passage of the Federal Advisory
Committee Act in 1972. FACA required all formal groups formed by
government agencies to provide advice on public policy and decisions to
be representative, to have a clear charter, to be appointed for a
specific time period for a specific purpose, and so on. In the late
1970s, efforts to "downsize" the federal government led to the
disbanding of many advisory boards working with National Forests. Today,
concerns regarding when public participation involves giving advice on
public policy choices, the point at which a FACA charter is necessary,
have raised concerns across the country with appropriate mechanisms for
public participation in land and resource management planning.

Since it is not possible for the Forest Service to carry out the mission
of sustainability alone, it needs the help of others. We believe it
should develop both formal and informal collaborative structures that
engage the broader community of interests and responsible governments to
work together. Mechanisms for ensuring ongoing, long-term, broadly
inclusive public relationships that build the capacity for creating
effective collaborative stewardship are necessary for effective
planning. It is the obligation of every line officer to build and
maintain strong relationships with members of the public, interested
organizations, other governments and appropriate federal agencies. In
some areas, especially when communities are spread over a large areas,
multiple, informal, localized networks can be a useful approach to
maintaining these relationships. In other cases, especially when large
landscape plans cross multiple social communities and other political
boundaries, formal advisory boards may be the appropriate mechanism for
ensuring full and representative participation.

Formal advisory boards, chartered under the Federal Advisory Committee
Act and appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture, can provide an
immediate, legitimate, representative, and predictable structure within
which public dialogue can occur so that Forest Service relationships
with a broad, and dispersed, community of interests can be efficiently
maintained. The RPA/NFMA recognizes this potential and authorizes the
formation of such advisory committees. These groups should contain
representatives of the diversity of interested institutions and
individuals, as currently required in the law. Thus, when they are the
appropriate mechanism, the Forest Service should not hesitate to
formally charter Advisory Boards at the individual national forest level
or at the large landscape level, whichever provides the greatest
opportunity to gain representative, structured, and focused public
interactions through which the key issues can be most effectively and
meaningfully addressed.

The goal of public participation is not merely "notice and comment," but
substantive, creative, formative participation in developing the
information, policies, strategies, activities and treatments, monitoring
protocols and evaluation standards for managing the national forest
system lands. Given strong commitment to this goal, line officers need
to carefully determine whether informal public networks or formal
advisory boards, or as will likely occur for many areas, a mix of both
mechanisms are the best approach to meeting the goal. A participatory
approach, broadly inclusive of all actors, is necessary to build
collaborative partnerships and stewardship capacity. Line officers and
staff must work with each other, across administrative and political
boundaries, to create effective relationships and partnerships in order
to achieve the goals of sustainability.

# 

# CHAPTER THREE

Implementing the Laws and Policies Governing the National Forests and
Grasslands in the Context of Sustainability

The previous chapters have developed a framework for management of the
national forests and grasslands to achieve ecological, economic, and
social sustainability. In this chapter, we apply the concepts from those
chapters in suggesting planning principles for implementing the
environmental laws and policies under which the Forest Service
operates---the National Forest Management Act, Multiple Use-Sustained
Yield Act, Organic Act, Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean
Air Act, and related legislation. We utilize the suite of legislation
that influences the management of the national forests and grasslands,
rather than focus solely on the National Forest Management Act, in
keeping with our overall goal of assisting in the development of an
integrated planning process.

We look in depth at four key elements of planning: 1) ecological
sustainability., 2) water and watersheds, 3) the suitability of lands
for different types of resource management, and 4) the role of timber
harvest in achieving sustainability. We choose those four topics for two
reasons. First, they are emphasized in much of the legislation at issue,
especially the National Forest Management Act. Second, they have been
the subject of attention and controversy in land and resource planning.

3A. Ecological Sustainability as the Foundation of National Forest
Stewardship

In the previous chapters, we have discussed ecological sustainability in
terms of diversity of native species and ecological productivity. The
Committee believes that ecological sustainability is the foundation of
national forest stewardship--- legally, scientifically, and ethically.

A suite of laws call for ecological sustainability---often in terms of
native species and ecological productivity. The Endangered Species Act
call for federal agencies to undertake all possible means to conserve
native species and the ecosystems upon which they depend. The National
Forest Management Act calls for maintaining the diversity of plant and
animal communities to meet multiple use objectives, which in the
existing regulations implementing the Act have been stated as providing
habitat to maintain the viability of vertebrate species, and the
protection of streams and watersheds. The Clean Water Act calls for
protecting the physical, chemical, and biological integrity of the
nation's waters. The Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act calls for ensuring
that multiple use and sustained yield does not impair the productivity
of the land. The Clean Air Act calls for protecting the Nation's air.
Individually and collectively, our environmental laws express a profound
commitment to the protection of native species and our air, water, and
soil. While it leaves considerable discretion in interpreting these
laws, their thrust is clear.

As we have found in the Northwest and throughout the country, ignoring
the letter and spirit of these laws has, time after time, led to
lawsuits that have overturned long-term plans for the national forests
and grasslands frustrating the people who have put so many hours into
them (See sidebar on planning in Region 6). In addition, the abrupt
changes that often follow court decisions are often incredibility
disconcerting to communities and economies. The Committee feels that it
would be better for the Forest Service to recognize its responsibilities
for ecological sustainability as part of planning, rather then to wait
for lawsuits to force the issue.

Science points out the necessity of protecting our natural systems to
enable the continuance of the benefits that we seek. Lessons from all
over the national forest system suggest that we ignore the conservation
of natural systems at our peril. As an example, concerns over the effect
that declining water clarity will have on tourism in Lake Tahoe has led
to an intensive and expensive effort to reverse this trend. More
generally, the cost of replacing the natural watersheds that supply the
municipal water for many communities has caused them to become very
protective of these lands. Once natural systems get pushed to the edge,
the cost of recovery can be come astronomical, if at all possible, and
the ability to apply the experimentation of adaptive management is
significantly contracted.

Finally, many members of the Committee believe in an ethical commitment
to ecological sustainability. As stated in the Bruntland Report, the
goal of "sustainability is to "meet the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
The proposed regulation will help ensure that our use does not foreclose
options for future generations. Also, some members have expressed the
belief that each species has a fundamental right to exist.

For all these reasons---legal, scientific, ethical---we recommend that
ecological sustainability be the foundation of national forest
stewardship. This recommendation suggests that ecological sustainability
set a framework for planning the management for national forests within
which these forests contribute to economic and social sustainability.
This recommendation does not mean that we maximize the protection of
native species and ecological productivity to the exclusion of use of
these lands. Rather, it means that planning for the national forests and
grasslands should attempt to provide habitat that enables a secure
existence for these species and protection for the elements of
ecological productivity. Choices in management still exist and the level
of risk to take, as mentioned in Chapt 2, to some degree, a policy
choice.

Comparison to the Existing Regulations

In approach, we feel that the Committee's proposal is similar to the
existing regulations implementing the National Forest Management Act.
These regulations (1982) have an extensive section on "Management
Requirements" that calls for maintenance of habitat to provide for the
viability of native and desired nonnative species, protection of streams
and watersheds, and many other conservation measures. These requirements
were intended to provide a framework (decision-space) that would set
sideboards on management planning.

A number of recent planning efforts, often triggered by lawsuits, are
generally consistent with the philosophy and spirit of the proposed
regulation. The Northwest Forest Plan, as an example, developed a
scientifically-credible conservation strategy for the late-sucessional
and aquatic species and ecosystems (see sidebar). Efforts to conserve
the cockaded woodpecker in the south and the goshawk in the southwest
also reflect the goals of the Committee's proposal (see sidebars).

In its details of implementation, however, the proposed regulation
differs somewhat from the existing one, reflecting over 15 years of
experience. It continues to focus on habitat for native species as the
core of ecological sustainability, while broadening the focus from
vertebrates to all species. At the same time, the regulation recognizes
that ensuring the viability of each species, through individual
analysis, is an impossible task. Therefore, the regulation suggests a
two pronged strategy: 1) maintaining the viability of a set of selected
species and 2) maintaining, in a more general sense, the conditions
(called "ecological integrity") under which the native species evolved.

In addition, the Committee's proposed regulation takes a number of steps
to ensure that scientifically-credible conservation strategies will be
developed in planning. First, it calls for the use of the best available
scientific information. Second, it calls for assessments by scientists
to select species of interest and develop measures of species viability
and ecological integrity. Finally, it calls for independent scientific
review of proposed conservation strategies before plans are published.

Introduction to the Proposed Ecological Sustainability Regulation

Because ecological sustainability is the foundation of national forest
stewardship, the Committee of Scientists recommends that a strong
provision on ecological sustainability must be included in the
regulations. Although some degree of agency discretion is desirable for
administering ecological sustainability, we believe that specific
language is necessary to provide rigor and scientific context for this
critical issue. Accordingly, the Committee has drafted a proposed
regulation on ecological sustainability and recommends it to the Forest
Service and the Secretary.

We consider the protection of ecological diversity at three hierarchical
levels --- ecosystems (including landscapes), species, and genes --- all
of which are necessary parts of a strategy to achieve ecological
sustainability. Although all three levels of diversity are essential to
the production of nature's goods, services, and values, the most
developed scientific knowledge and assessment strategies relevant to
broad-scale forest management occur at the ecosystem (especially
landscape scales) and species levels. Accordingly, this section
primarily addresses ecosystem and species diversity.

Explicitly describing and managing all elements of diversity and their
interconnections within a single assessment or planning effort is beyond
the capacity of the agency. The challenge in providing for both
ecosystem and species diversity, therefore, is to identify surrogates
that rely on a subset of ecological measures, that are sensitive to
management, and that are indicative of overall diversity.

In the regulation that follows, we emphasize the protection of ecosystem
diversity and species diversity in a two-phase approach. First, we call
for sustaining compositional and structural variety of ecosystems and
their functions. Key structures to sustain include fine-scale biological
features, such as fallen trees on the forest floor, or unique physical
features such as seeps or springs, as well as coarse-scale features such
as old-growth forests and wetlands. Disturbance processes, such as
fires, landslides, and floods, must also be sustained. Often the
historical level of, and variation in, these features and processes are
used as reference points in defining whether forests, rangelands, and
watersheds are in a sustainable condition or determining how their
condition might need to be altered to achieve sustainability. In this
approach, the goal is to maintain the diversity of native plant and
animal communities and the productive capacity of ecological systems by
providing for the habitats and ecological processes that have formed
these ecosystems.

Secondly, we call for the agency to provide the ecological conditions
needed to protect and, as necessary, restore habitat for the viability
of threatened, endangered, and sensitive species and "focal" species
that indicate suitable habitat conditions for a broader suite of
species. This provision serves two purposes: 1) to determine the degree
to which the effort to maintain ecosystem diversity is sufficient to
protect habitat for particular species, and 2) to adjust and improve the
conservation strategies associated with the maintenance of ecosystem
diversity in order to address the habitat needs of particular species of
concern. In the terminology of the times, this second phase uses a "fine
filter" to catch the requirements for species that fall through the
"coarse filter" of the first phase. As the agency becomes more and more
effective in applying the "coarse filter" approach to ecological
sustainability, it should need fewer and fewer adjustments when it
addresses the requirements of particular species. The Southern Region is
currently using both coarse and fine filters to ensure ecological
sustainability.

On the National Forests and Grasslands today, a blend of coarse and fine
filters are used to monitor for ecological sustainability. Coarse-filter
stewardship strategies are based primarily on distributions of habitats
(numbers of types, range of sizes, and their interspersion), and other
large-landscape elements. Fine-filter, species-specific approaches,
however, are required to ensure maintenance of species viability and
genetic diversity.

In the section on ecosystem diversity, the regulation also calls for
special attention to flows of streams and rivers draining national
forests and grasslands. These flows and their associated riparian
systems are increasingly recognized as fundamental to maintaining
diversity for a large number of aquatic and terrestrial species. Stream
and river systems have evolved over long periods with characteristic
hydrologic disturbance regimes (magnitude, duration, and timing of
precipitation and runoff) that function to transport sediments, organic
matter, and various nutrients. Numerous aquatic organisms have adapted
their life history strategies (e.g., timing of fish spawning) to these
regimes and the conditions they create (e.g., clean spawning gravels).
Similarly the long-term maintenance of riparian vegetation is
intrinsically connected to these same regimes that recharge soil
moisture of riverine systems, influence nutrient availability, and
provide suitable microclimates for plant establishment. Riparian plant
communities, in turn, influence the shape and structure of stream
channels, nutrient availability, water quality, and the availability of
large woody debris and leaf litter.

A wide variety of aquatic and terrestrial plants and animals are
dependent upon the maintenance of flow regimes. The Forest Service must
help protect and maintain those species via establishing the quantity
and quality of water needed for their viability. To do so, the full
range of flows (peak flows, intermediate flows, and low flows) need to
be considered. Unfortunately, the "use it or lose it" philosophy of many
states has often precluded setting aside instream waters for fish and
aquatic organisms, for maintenance of riparian vegetation and riparian
wildlife, for recreation use, for aesthetics, to meet water quality
needs, or for other purposes. Nevertheless, the Forest Service must
expand their efforts at protecting and maintaining instream flows that
are fundamental to a wide variety of ecological needs and public uses.

In our discussion of sustainability we invoke the concept of ecological
integrity -- that is, we contend that sustainable ecosystems demonstrate
ecological integrity. In general, systems with ecological integrity
maintain their characteristic species diversity and ecological processes
such as productivity, soil fertility, and rates of biogeochemical
cycling. A more detailed definition is provided below.

In the proposed regulation that follows, the Forest Service has leeway
to develop and apply scientific methodologies. This approach is
consistent with the Committee's view that the planning regulations
generally should provide discretion to Forest Service officials in order
to promote creativity and allow for change over time. The agency will
decide the appropriate scales --- for example, particular watersheds or
landscapes --- for assessing ecosystem diversity. Forest Service
research scientists and resource specialists have broad latitude in
selecting focal species and in choosing a method to determine species
viability. In the area of genetic diversity, where the research is not
as advanced as with ecosystem and species diversity, the proposed
regulation does not include specific requirements. The goal here,
however, is clear\--it is to maintain the diversity of life histories
needed for adaptive response to environmental change.

The Forest Service has maintained that the existing regulation
addressing species viability, 36 CFR Sec. 219.19, needs to be amended
because it creates an impossible task for the agency. Among other
things, the regulation provides that the agency must "ensure" viable
populations. Of course, the Forest Service can never accomplish this in
a literal sense because many factors --- most notably resource
development outside the national forest boundaries or natural phenomena,
such as El Nińo --- remain beyond the agency's control. Although the
courts have given the Forest Service considerable leeway in
administering the regulation, we agree that it is appropriate to revise
the current regulation.

The species diversity provision of the Committee's proposed regulation
seeks to define a framework for specific prescriptions, yet remains
pragmatic. The provision focuses on the intent of Forest Service
decisions, with a clear obligation to conserve species, yet recognizes
that some conditions and decisions may be beyond the agency's control.
As an overall matter, the thrust of the proposed regulation is to leave
the means of achieving the goals of species diversity to agency research
scientists and resource specialists. The Committee recognizes that the
science on biodiversity is evolving rapidly and that agency research
scientists and resource specialists need flexibility to respond to the
advances that surely will come. Thus, the type and level of habitat
protection necessary to achieve viability remain matters of technical
and scientific judgment. Also, as pointed out in Chapter 2, the level of
risk to a species' persistence involves values in addition to science.
As an example, the Northwest Forest Plan defined a threshold level of
habitat condition for species viability that was used to screen
different alternatives relative to their achievement of viability
(Sidebar B in Chapter 2). We view that approach as consistent with the
regulation suggested here.

While the agency should choose the analytical methods, the Committee
intends that the Forest Service rigorously adhere to the goal of
achieving species viability. The key phrase is in section D(2) of the
proposed regulation: "The decisions of resource managers must be based
upon the best available scientific information and analysis to provide
ecological conditions needed to protect and, as necessary, restore
habitat for the viability of focal species and for threatened,
endangered, and sensitive species." By the phrase "based upon the best
available scientific information and analysis", the Committee means that
such information and analysis will be used, understood, and relied upon.
The standard of "best available scientific information and analysis" is
similar in concept to "best available technology", which has been widely
implemented, and with great success, in United States environmental
policy, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.

The Committee's proposed regulation on ecological sustainability will,
we believe, at once provide a scientifically sound, workable approach
toward land management and, as well, restore the Forest Service to its
traditional place at the forefront of progressive conservation policy.
Species viability and ecological integrity are at the center ---
legally, scientifically, and morally --- of natural resources
stewardship, and the Forest Service should take a strong stand in its
agency regulations.

This proposed regulation is set forth in full below.

Committee's Proposed Regulation on Ecological Sustainability

36 CFR Sec. 219.\_\_\_\_ Ecological Sustainability.

A. Goals. Nature provides many goods, services, and values to humans.
These ecological benefits occur as two major, interdependent forms: the
variety of native plants and animals, and the products of ecological
systems, such as clean water, air, and fertile soil. The most
fundamental goal of the National Forest System is to maintain and
restore ecological sustainability --- the long-term maintenance of the
diversity of native plant and animal communities and the productive
capacity of ecological systems. Ecological sustainability is the
foundation of national forest stewardship and makes it possible for the
national forests to provide a wide variety of benefits to present and
future generations.

B. Diversity. Ecosystems are inherently dynamic; changes regularly
result from natural events such as floods, fire, or insect outbreaks.
Human intervention, such as through forest cutting and water diversions,
is often substantial. Thus, because species must have the capability and
opportunity to respond adaptively to changes in their environment,
species diversity and ecosystem productivity can only be sustained if
the essential elements of the natural dynamics of ecosystems are
recognized and accommodated when human intervention occurs. Planners and
managers must apply the best available scientific information and
analysis so that the diversity and adaptive capability of ecosystems
will be maintained and restored.

1\. Levels of diversity. Ecological diversity must be considered at
three hierarchical levels --- ecosystems, species, and genes --- all of
which are necessary parts of a strategy to sustain species values and
ecological goods and services. Ecosystem diversity, including landscape
diversity, is the coarsest level of resolution in this hierarchy.
Ecosystems are physical environments and associated communities of
interacting plants and animals. Ecosystem diversity can be described by
the variety of components, structures, and processes within an ecosystem
and variety among ecosystem types and functions across broad areas such
as watersheds, landscapes, and regions. Ecosystem diversity provides
essential elements for sustaining individual species and the productive
capacity of ecosystems. Species diversity refers to variation in the
number and relative abundance of species (including subspecies and
distinct populations) within a given area. To maintain species
diversity, individual species must have the capability and opportunity
to respond adaptively to their environment. Genetic diversity, at the
finest level of resolution in this hierarchy, refers to the degree of
variation in heritable characteristics (including life histories) within
and among individual organisms and populations.

2\. Use of surrogate approaches. Ecological diversity is expressed at a
variety of spatial and temporal scales. Explicitly describing and
managing all elements of diversity and their interconnections within a
single assessment or planning effort is beyond the capacity of the
agency. Thus planners must identify surrogate approaches that rely on a
subset of ecological measurements that are sensitive to management and
indicative of overall diversity. Although all three levels of diversity
are essential to providing ecological sustainability, the most developed
scientific knowledge and assessment strategies relevant to broad-scale
resource management occur at the ecosystem (especially landscape scales)
and species levels. Accordingly, this section primarily addresses
ecosystem and species diversity.

C. Ecosystem Diversity. The first step in providing for ecological
sustainability is to sustain the variety and functions of ecosystems
across multiple spatial scales, from microsites to large landscapes, in
order to maintain the diversity of native plant and animal communities
and the productive capacity of ecological systems.

1\. Management standards: ecological integrity. The decisions of
resource managers must be based upon the best available scientific
information and analysis to provide for conditions that support
ecological integrity sufficient to meet the goals of this section. The
ecological integrity of an ecosystem can be defined as the completeness
of the composition, structure, and processes that are characteristic of
the native states of that system. Ecosystems with high ecological
integrity continue to express the evolutionary and biogeographic
processes that gave rise to the current biota, have a species
composition, diversity, and functional organization expected from
natural habitats of the region, and are resilient to environmental
change and disturbance occurring within their natural range of
variability. As part of this analysis, planning must address needs for
variation in frequencies and intensities of fire and instream flows of
water, and, as appropriate, establish standards for fire regimes and for
quantity and quality of water needed to meet aquatic goals. Ecological
integrity should be analyzed at appropriate spatial and temporal scales
and consider the cumulative effects of human and natural disturbances.

2\. Assessment and planning. Measures of ecosystem integrity shall be
developed in regional assessments based on scientific principles and
knowledge of local conditions. As national forests and grasslands may
comprise only a portion of the landscape under consideration,
coordination with other landowners and institutions concerning probable
future conditions is critical. Planning documents must explicitly set
forth the constraints and opportunities for sustaining ecological
systems presented by jurisdictional patterns and varying land management
objectives. In general, in assessing and planning for ecosystem
integrity, the planning process must address the larger physical
landscape --- its historical legacy, its current condition, its
biological potential, and its expected changes over successional time
--- both within and beyond the national forests and grasslands.

3\. Validation. The assumption that coarse-filter elements can serve as
a basis of sustaining native species diversity shall be validated
through monitoring and research. The best available scientific
information and analysis shall be used to assess this assumption in a
timely manner. If this assumption is invalid, then additional
coarse-filter elements will be required or modification of the
coarse-filter approach will be needed, and appropriate management action
shall be taken to meet the goals of this section.

D. Species Diversity. A second step in providing for ecological
sustainability is to sustain the diversity of native plant and animal
communities through maintaining and restoring the viability of the
species that comprise them. The goal of this section is to provide the
ecological conditions needed to protect and, as necessary, restore the
viability of native species.

1\. Focal species. The primary obligation is to provide for the
diversity of native species. However, since it is not feasible to assess
the viability of all species, this section will employ focal species to
provide for plant and animal diversity. The status of a single species,
or group of species, such as a functional guild of species, can convey
information about the status of the larger ecological system in which it
resides or about the integrity of specific habitat or ecosystem
processes. Regional assessments shall select an appropriate number of
focal species that represent the range of environments within the
planning area, serve an umbrella function in terms of encompassing
habitats needed for many other species, play key roles in maintaining
community structure or processes, and are sensitive to the changes
likely to occur.

2\. Management standards: species viability. The decisions of resource
managers must be based upon the best available scientific information
and analysis to provide ecological conditions needed to protect and, as
necessary, restore the viability of focal species and of threatened,
endangered, and sensitive species.\* A viable species is defined as
consisting of self-sustaining populations that are well-distributed
throughout the species' range. Self-sustaining populations are those
that are sufficiently abundant, and have sufficient genetic diversity to
display the array of life history strategies and forms that will provide
for their persistence and adaptability in the planning area over time.

3\. Validation. The assumption that focal species are providing reliable
information about the status and trend of species not being directly
monitored shall be validated through monitoring and research. The best
available scientific information and analysis shall be used to assess
this assumption in a timely fashion. If this assumption is invalidated
for a given focal species, then such focal species shall be augmented or
replaced by species that better meet the criteria, and appropriate
management action shall be taken to meet the goals of this section.

E. Implementation. The determinations required regarding ecosystem
integrity and species viability shall be made at the appropriate
planning level. Decisions at each level must be consistent with such
determinations. For example, viability determinations for wide-ranging
species are best made at the regional scale. Planners and managers must
then demonstrate consistency with this determination in all subsequent
decisions made at finer scales of planning, including the project level.

F. Monitoring. Effective monitoring is a critical aspect of achieving
ecological sustainability. Monitoring, which must be an ongoing process,
provides a better understanding of how to sustain ecosystems and serves
as an "early warning system" to detect declines in ecosystem integrity
and species viability before irreversible loss has occurred. The
monitoring program must select indicators of ecosystem integrity and
species viability; develop methods for measuring such indicators;
designate critical indicator values that would trigger changes in
management practices**;** obtain data to determine whether such critical
values are being approached; and interpret those data in relation to
past and potential management decisions. If analysis and assessment
concludes that some critical values are being approached, then the
appropriate plan must be re-evaluated to determine whether amendments
are necessary to comply with the provisions of this section.

G. Development of Viability Assessment Methods and Conservation
Strategies. Regional assessments shall develop methods for assessing
ecosystem diversity and species diversity, including methods for
assessing ecological integrity and the viability of focal, threatened,
endangered, and sensitive species, and apply them to estimate the likely
condition of ecosystems and species. These assessments shall also
propose strategies for use in testing the effectiveness of plans in
conserving ecosystem diversity and species diversity.

H. Evaluation of Plans. The following evaluations shall occur during
planning: (a) an evaluation of the plan's capability to provide for
ecological conditions necessary to support ecosystem diversity and
species diversity, and (b) an independent review, before publication of
the plans, by forest service and other scientists of the effectiveness
of the plan in meeting the goals of this section. The results from this
work shall be made available to the public.

\* NOTE: Sensitive species should be defined in the definitions section
of the planning regulations (219.2). This definition will read as
follows: Sensitive Species. Those species identified as sensitive under
the Forest Service's sensitive species program, currently set out in the
Forest Service Manual, Chapter 2670.

3B. Water and Watersheds

Because watersheds are typically imbedded within broader biophysical
regions, their individual characteristics, functions, and processes have
an important role in the maintenance of biodiversity. And, while
watersheds *per se* are simply geographic areas, the degree to which
ecosystem functions and process operate within them provides an
important perspective regarding their overall "integrity" (i.e., the
quality or state of being unimpaired, sound). At a variety of landscape
scales, human uses, either individually or collectively, have influenced
the character and integrity of many national forests and grasslands. As
a result, there is an increasing need to protect those watersheds in
which modifications have been minimal and integrity remains relatively
intact. Those watersheds (i.e., key watersheds) can provide important
refugia to species and can provide important references for
demonstrating how relatively intact systems operate. The identification
of key watersheds should thus be a high priority in any planning effort.

A loss or degradation of watershed integrity can occur in many ways ---
a loss or reduction in specific species or their abundance, a change in
the timing, amount, or quality of ecosystem outputs, or some combination
of these and other factors. Historically, a wide number of human uses
have occurred on national forests and grasslands; many of these have
contributed to altering watershed integrity, both locally and at
landscape scales. For example, loss of watershed integrity might be
represented by a reduction in beaver populations, alteration in the
abundance and distribution of wild ungulates, a change in fire regimes,
extensive use of short-rotation and even-aged silvicultural systems,
modification of streamflow and sediment regimes, introduction of exotic
plant and animal species, season-long grazing, high-density recreation
use, private land uses associated with adjacent landowners (particularly
where mixed ownership patterns prevail), and others. Because restoration
of impacted watersheds is generally considered to be more difficult than
maintaining intact systems, planners and managers must continually
strive to prevent and minimize the occurrence of significant impacts to
national forest and grassland ecosystems.

The Legal Mandate to Conserve Watersheds

Watershed protection has always been a central theme in national forest
law and policy. When Congress authorized the President to establish
forest reserves in the 1891 Creative Act, the overwhelming reason was to
meet the request of municipalities and irrigation districts for
watershed protection. In the 1897 Organic Act, the first listed purpose
of the forest reserves was "securing favorable conditions of water
flows". Timber production was the other announced purpose, but logging
proponents regularly assured Congress that watershed functions would not
be compromised. The Weeks Act of 1911 was also a watershed protection
statute. The Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960 listed watershed
purposes as one of the multiple uses and, taking the long view, provides
for "the maintenance in perpetuity of a high-level of regular or
periodic output" of the multiple uses "without impairment of the
productivity of the land." While the NFMA of 1976 indicates timber,
range, and other resources were important multiple uses of National
Forest System Lands, Congress nevertheless emphasized the importance of
long-term sustainability:

"Sec. 2. (6) the Forest Service . . . has both a responsibility and an
opportunity to be a leader in assuring that the Nation maintains a
natural resource conservation posture that will meet the requirements of
our people in perpetuity.

The NFMA calls for consideration and protection of water courses and
watersheds in a number of places. First, the NFMA identifies water as
one of the multiple uses. Second, it has specific provisions about
protection of water courses and watersheds when timber harvest is
considered:

1\) " (6) (g) (3) (D) insure timber will be harvested from National
Forest System lands only where--- (i) soil, slope, or other watershed
conditions will not be irreversibly damaged; . . . (iii) protection is
provided for streams, streambanks, shorelines, lakes, wetlands, or other
bodies of water from detrimental changes in water temperatures,
blockages of water courses, and deposits of sediment, where harvests are
likely to seriously and adversely affect water conditions or fire
habitat."

2\) "(6) (g) (3) (D) insure that clearcutting, seed tree cutting,
shelterwood cutting, and other cuts designed to regenerate an evenaged
stand of timber will be used as a cutting method on National Forest
System lands only where--- . . . (v) such cuts are carried out in a
manner consistent with the protection of soil, watershed, fish,
wildlife, recreation, and esthetic resources, and the regeneration of
the timber resource."

Other federal legislation, such as the Clean Water Act (CWA) (1972 and
as amended 1987) also mandate the conservation of water resources. The
overall purpose of the CWA is to "restore and maintain the chemical,
physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters." To
accomplish this, individual states are responsible for regulating both
point and non-point sources of pollution by designating beneficial uses
for each body of water, by defining criteria necessary to ensure these
uses are met, and by implementing an antidegradation policy, which
requires, at a minimum, water quality to be maintained and protected. As
a component of the antidegradation policy of the CWA, high-quality
waters, which represent "an outstanding national resource", such as
waters of national and state parks, of wildlife refuges, and of
exceptional recreational or ecological significance, should be
designated and afforded a high level of protection. Waters of many
national forests clearly meet these criteria.

In addition, the Federal Power Act requires the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) to consider the protection of fish,
wildlife, recreation, and watershed values in the relicensing of federal
dams. This authority could have important implications for the
protection of water resources and associated beneficial uses, as
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nonfederal dams come up for licensing in
the next few decades (See sidebar).

Watershed Integrity and Restoration

Where watershed conditions, functions, or processes on national forests
and grasslands have been significantly altered by human activities, the
restoration of those conditions, functions, and processes should assume
a high priority. From an aquatic perspective, the National Research
Council (1992) defined restoration as representing

"re-establishment of pre-disturbance aquatic functions and related
physical, chemical, and biological characteristics; . . . it is a
holistic process not achieved through the isolated manipulation of
individual elements".

"Disturbance" in this context refers to the intensive land use that has
often occurred in the last 50 to 150 years in the West and much longer
in the East. From a larger watershed or ecosystem perspective,
restoration should also include the conditions, functions, and processes
of riparian and terrestrial ecosystems. The definition of restoration by
the National Research Council is similar in intent to the definition of
ecological integrity given in Section 3A--- "The ecological integrity of
an ecosystem can be defined as the completeness of the composition,
structure, and processes that are characteristic of the native states of
that system. Ecosystems with high ecological integrity continue to
express the evolutionary and biogeographic processes that gave rise to
the current biota, have a species composition, diversity, and functional
organization expected from natural habitats of the region, and are
resilient to environmental change and disturbance occurring within their
natural range of variability."

Restoration of watersheds and their ecosystems can often represent a
major scientific and management challenge. Forest and range systems are
relatively complex (have many components and processes), are adaptive
(conditions and the biota may respond over time to changing
environmental conditions and human uses), and their responses to
environmental conditions and human uses are often non-linear (e.g.,
antagonisms and synergisms are common). While "restoration science" is
currently developing a better understanding of factors affecting
restoration trajectories of various ecosystems, managers have few models
of restoration success from which to emulate in their planning efforts.
Nevertheless, some restoration principles are beginning to emerge:

\(1\) The historical range of natural variability of ecosystem
conditions and processes at watershed and bioregional scales needs to be
considered and understood as a context within which to consider planning
decisions across a variety of spatial scales.

\(2\) An important component of natural systems is that they have
developed in conjunction with, and in response to, disturbance regimes
(e.g., varying hydrologic patterns at landscape and micrometeorologic
scales, fires, insects, diseases). Thus, where such regimes have been
significantly altered, their re-establishment will generally be a high
priority.

\(3\) Because vegetation is a key component of natural ecosystems and
often experiences the effects of land-use activities (e.g., grazing,
timber harvest, fire-control policies), the ecological role of plant
species and communities must be understood relative to terrestrial,
riparian, and aquatic systems. Although some of this information is
available in the scientific literature, it will almost always be
incomplete at some level, or it may not be fully applicable to specific
watershed conditions. Thus, local "reference sites" or demonstration
areas of functionally intact plant communities need to be identified,
protected, and used to gain local understanding and experience of
related functions and processes.

\(4\) The history of resource development and land-use patterns
associated with national forests and grasslands must be understood
within watersheds and across bioregions. This information may be
critical, not only for understanding the present status and trends of
various resources, but also for identifying potential reasons for
existing conditions. Since many watershed effects have occurred prior to
the current generation of resource managers, understanding historical
trends in resource conditions often provides important insights for
developing restoration strategies and plans.

Because of the numerous local and landscape-scale modifications to
vegetation, to soil characteristics, to disturbance regimes, and to the
distribution and abundance of terrestrial and aquatic species that have
occurred on many national forests and grasslands as a result of human
uses, there is increasing recognition in the scientific community of the
need to protect watersheds, and particularly those portions of
watersheds that currently remain in good ecological condition. In other
situations where resource degradation has occurred, the restoration of
watershed processes and functions is a high priority. Although
restoration can take a number of pathways, two general approaches are
commonly recognized. For example, many areas are capable of ecological
recovery simply by stopping or removing the human perturbations that
originally contributed to degradation. In such situations, the natural
disturbance regimes are likely still operating and the biota are
sufficiently resilient to recover, despite the effects of previous
management practices and the occurrence of natural disturbances. This is
considered to be a "passive" approach to restoration and may be the most
effective approach for wide number of situations. In other instances,
degradation may have been sufficient that more direct intervention is
required before restoration can occur. This might include such practices
as stand-density reductions before the reintroduction of fire, removal
of an exotic species that compete with native species, reintroduction of
a locally extirpated species, deconstruction of highly erosive roads,
and others. This more proactive approach represents "active"
restoration. However, in both situations the general improvement of
aquatic functions and related physical, chemical, and biological
characteristics is the goal.

Key Elements in a Strategy for Conserving and Restoring Watersheds

To conserve and restore watersheds, we suggest a six-part strategy:

\(1\) [Provide conditions for the viability of native riparian and
aquatic species]{.underline}. The status of native riparian and aquatic
species is typically an important indicator of watershed condition.
Thus, it is important that native riparian and aquatic species be
included as focal species in the analysis, discussed in section 3A , to
provide the ecological conditions needed to conserve native species. In
particular, threatened, endangered, and sensitive riparian and aquatic
species should receive extensive consideration in the analysis. The
needs of these species should represent a driving force in developing
goals and standards for areas near streams and in estimating the overall
ecological conditions of watersheds.

\(2\) [Maintain and restore watershed integrity]{.underline}. Watershed
integrity is the expression of ecological integrity at the scale of a
watershed. Based on the definition of ecological integrity in Section
3A, watersheds with high integrity continue to express the evolutionary
and biogeographic processes that gave rise to the current biota, have a
species composition, diversity, and functional organization expected
from natural habitats of the region, and are resilient to environmental
change and disturbance occurring within their natural range of
variability. In the discussion above, we defined restoration as the
re-establishment of functions and related physical, chemical, and
biological characteristics. While the wording is somewhat different for
these two definitions, both have a similar intent. Controlling,
modifying, and, in some instances, eliminating land-use disturbances
that adversely affect watersheds are important components of maintaining
and restoring watershed integrity.

The maintenance of flow regimes is of fundamental importance to
sustaining riparian and aquatic systems. The protection and long-term
maintenance of flow regimes in many areas will likely require the Forest
Service, as a high priority, to pursue the development and attainment of
instream flow claims, and to follow through on its legal mandate to set
conditions for the relicensing of nonfederal dams for flow regimes and
fish and wildlife. For degraded watersheds, improving their integrity
will require the re-establishment of aquatic functions and related
physical, chemical, and biological characteristics to within the
historical range of natural variability. Again, as indicated by the NRC
(1992), restoration is a holistic process not achieved through the
isolated manipulation of individual elements.

\(3\) [Recognize watersheds in assessment and planning]{.underline}.
Assessment and planning efforts directed at conserving and restoring
watershed integrity can generally be most effective when watersheds are
used as the organizing concept for analysis. The cumulative effects of
historical and ongoing management practices upon various environmental
measures (e.g., erosion and sediment production, riparian habitat, water
quality, aquatic species) often become manifest in a watershed context.
Thus, Forest Service efforts directed at ecosystem protection and
restoration should utilize watersheds as their fundamental landscape
unit, to the extent practical, in both assessment and planning.

\(4\) [Develop an overall strategy for setting priorities for
restoration and use.]{.underline} A common saying among the watershed
community is to "save the best, restore the rest". From an ecological,
cultural, political, and economic perspective, it is almost always
easier to protect intact and functioning ecosystems than it is to
restore degraded ones. Thus, it is important that assessments classify
watersheds as to their ecological condition and integrity. Planning
should then use this information in deciding where protection is
warranted and where land use and restoration activities should occur.

Generally, management should be cautious in taking risks in watersheds
in good condition---there is too much at stake. Sometimes thresholds on
watershed condition are used to set limits on activities, allowing for
the deterioration of watersheds with high integrity, as all watersheds
approach a common level. In general, such an approach should be avoided:
management in different watersheds should reflect the values of concern
and the characteristics and conditions of the watershed itself. Where
watershed conditions have diverged significantly from the historical
range of natural variability**,** opportunities for restoration should
be considered in planning efforts. In these situations, land managers
may want to assume a risk of short-term ecological impacts in order to
attain long-term restoration goals.

At both the site-specific and aggregate scales, it is important to limit
the adverse effects of land-use disturbances, particularly those that
are unrepresentative of the natural disturbance regimes or that have
significant unintended consequences to species, productivity, water
quality, and other watershed conditions. At the same time, it is
important to encourage land uses that emulate natural disturbance
regimes. In this manner, and over the long-term, undesirable cumulative
effects of land use can be controlled and minimized at both
site-specific and watershed scales.

\(5\) [Energize the people of the watershed to help.]{.underline} Most
watersheds of any size in which national forests are located contain a
mixture of federal and nonfederal lands. Often national forests cover
the upper watershed and private landowners hold the rest. Or national
forests might cover the entire watershed, except those lands adjacent to
rivers and major streams. Collaborative stewardship by all the
landowners, along with state and local governments and the public, will
be needed for successful conservation and restoration of these
watersheds. Watershed councils can often motivate and direct crucial
voluntary conservation efforts.

(6) [Monitor watershed condition over time as part of adaptive
    management.]{.underline} Restoration efforts need to be monitored as
    part of the adaptive management approach to natural resources. Such
    efforts, which may ultimately succeed or fail, should be tracked and
    reported in an open manner. Monitoring is of fundamental importance
    for learning about the effects of various management practices
    because it provides a linkage between the original management
    decisions and the consequences of those decisions. Because not all
    attributes of a particular watershed or plan can be tracked in any
    given monitoring program, monitoring efforts need to be directed at
    selected components---those that provide important feedback to
    land-use managers and the public in a timely and effective manner.

3C. Identifying the Suitability of Lands for Different Types of Resource
Management

Section 6(g) is the heart of the National Forest Management Act. It is
the section that outlines the requirements that planning must meet.
These requirements include maintaining diversity of plant and animal
communities to meet multiple-use objectives, ensuring that timber will
be harvested only where watersheds will not be irreversibly damaged, and
ensuring that clearcutting will be used only where it is the "optimum
method."

The NFMA states additionally that the Committee of Scientists named
therein should direct its attention to Section 6(g). The very first
requirement mentioned in Section 6 (g) is that guidelines are to be
developed which ". . . require identification of the suitability of
lands for resource management." This section was eclipsed by Section 6
(k) in the previous regulations, which required the identification of
lands not suited for timber production.

We view the classification of lands relative to their suitability for
different kinds of resource management as a part of planning for large
landscapes. Furthermore, we place the identification of lands not suited
for timber production as a subset of the identification of the
suitability of lands for different types of resource management. This
approach presumes a conservation strategy for species and ecosystems as
the foundation of that planning effort. As stated in the recommended
Purpose, Goals, and Principles in Chapter 6, "Planning first provides
for the diversity of native plant and animal communities and the
productive capacity of ecological systems---the core elements of
ecological sustainability". With these scientifically based conservation
strategies as a foundation, planning can respond to national, regional,
and local issues.

Out of this planning process should come the classification (zoning) of
lands by suitable types of resource management. Types of resource
management include timber production, range, and different kinds of
recreation. Some lands might be classified as suitable for all types of
management; others might only be suitable for one type. Site-specific
analysis might be necessary to refine the estimates of where activities
could actually occur and the form they could take. For example, further
analysis might be needed to determine exactly where understory thinning
near a stream could occur.

Thus, we envision the large landscape plans as estimating the
suitability of the lands on each national forest and grasslands for
different kinds of resource management . This analysis would lead to the
following designations for each land area on the national forests and
grasslands for each type of resource management considered:

A\) resource management prohibited

B\) resource management permitted with the understanding that these
estimates might be refined in more site-specific planning.

The most complicated portion of this analysis addresses resource
management involving timber harvest and timber production, where timber
production is defined as a long-term commitment to produce commercial
timber volume. NFMA states "*Sec. 6 (k) In developing land management
plans pursuant to this Act, the Secretary shall identify lands within
the management area which are not suited for timber production,
considering physical, economic, and other pertinent factors to the
extent feasible, as determined by the Secretary, and shall assure that,
except for salvage sales or sales necessitated to protect other
multiple-use values, no timber harvesting shall occur on these lands for
a period of 10 years. Lands once identified as unsuitable for timber
production shall continue to be treated for reforestation purposes,
particularly with regard to the protection of other multiple use values.
The Secretary shall review his decision to classify these lands as not
suited for timber production at least every 10 years and shall return
these lands to timber production whenever he determines that conditions
have changed so that they have become suitable for timber production."*

Because timber harvest under this clause can occur for the "protection
of other multiple use values" where the forest is not suitable for
timber production, lands suitable for resource management involving
timber harvest need two sub-categories:

A\) timber harvest is prohibited

B\) timber harvest is permitted

> 1\) for protection of other multiple use values, but timber production
> is not itself a goal
>
> 2\) timber production is one of the goals.

Examples for each of these designations are as follows:

A. timber harvest is prohibited (not suited for timber harvest)

Examples: Congressionally designated Wilderness lands; lands too
unstable to allow timber harvest without irreparable damage.

B 1. Timber harvest is allowed in support of other ecological and
multiple use goals, but timber production is not itself a goal,

Example: the late-successional reserves in the Northwest Forest Plan. In
these reserves, timber harvest is permitted if it helps accelerate the
development of late-successional characteristics. Generally, timber
harvest in these reserves is used to thin plantations created as a
result of past clearcut harvest. When this work is finished over the
next 30 years, little further harvest is planned, although more may
occur as needed.

B 2. Timber production is one of the goals.

Examples: the matrix allocation in the Northwest Forest Plan. Timber
production is a goal on the "matrix" lands in the Northwest Forest Plan,
although that goal is secondary to the goal of maintaining
late-successional species and ecosystems at the specified level of
protection in the Plan.

In many situations, silvicultural practices can be used to help achieve
the desired future condition of forests and can enhance both stand- and
landscape-level goals for ecological, economic, and social
sustainability. Silviculture is the process whereby humans tend,
harvest, and re-establish forest stands and landscapes. Silvicultural
practices, such as timber harvest and prescribed burning, can be used to
help meet stand-specific objectives for species composition and forest
structure, as well as landscape-level objectives for abundance, size,
shape, and pattern of patches of different stand conditions. Many stand
and landscape objectives can be expressed in terms of these variables;
they should be the focus of regulations that give silvicultural
instructions for land and resource planning.

Silvicultural Aspects of the National Forest Management Act

The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) was most prescriptive in its
sections on silvicultural practices within forests. This becomes
especially evident in a comparison of the detailed instruction in the
section repeated below and the broad language on biological diversity
within the Act. Yet whatever regulations are written for the National
Forests and Grasslands, it is important that they allow flexibility in
designing methods and systems to create and maintain the species
composition, stand structure, and processes that are the foundation of
ecological sustainability--- which, in turn, sustains healthy economies
and human communities. The Committee of Scientists believes that NFMA
provides adequate flexibility for conditions of today, and, we hope, for
tomorrow.

In our discussion below, we emphasize the need for regional assessment
to provide information on the characteristics of stands and landscapes
that historically occurred in the different forest types, such as
ponderosa pine or mixed conifer forests, and landscape units, such as
mountain ranges, watersheds, or the range of some species. This
information would then be used, in turn, to guide and limit the
silvicultural approaches to achieving stand and landscape objectives,
including the selection of silvicultural systems and restocking
standards.

Silviculture

When managing for ecological, economic, and social sustainability,
silvicultural practices should strive to emulate the effects of natural
disturbance processes such as fire, wind, insects, and disease on the
forest. This approach applies at both the stand and landscape levels. In
forests managed for timber production, regeneration harvest methods
(clearcut, shelterwood, selection) can be analogous to natural
landscape-level (coarse-scale) disturbances, which have periodically
reinitiated succession. These methods represent a gradient of
disturbance intensities from the high intensity disturbance of
clearcutting to the moderate disturbance of selection harvest.
Silvicultural systems, such as even-aged, two-aged, and uneven-aged,
that are achieved and maintained through various silvicultural
activities such as thinning, can mimic the structural conditions
produced by different types and intensities of stand-level (fine-scale)
natural disturbances.

In general, silvicultural systems were originally designed to achieve
natural regeneration after harvest, as the technology for planting stock
(seedlings) had not yet developed. We suggest that, for reasons of
genetic diversity, natural regeneration and the systems that provide it
be considered specifically in the regulatory process.

6(g)(3)(D) "\...permit increases in harvest levels based on intensified
management practices \... \[the "allowable cut effect"\]

From a silvicultural perspective, the linkage between intensified
management practices and increases in harvest levels is certainly
understandable. Intensified management often means increased growth
which, in turn, translates into increased harvest levels under an
even-flow (or nondeclining yield) constraint. The reality, however, is
that the intensive silviculture implied in this provision has not always
materialized in the past, and it is questionable whether it will be a
primary focus of future investment on much of the National Forest System
lands.

Allowable sale quantities (ASQs) for many forest plans were derived from
stand-level growth-and-yield estimates based on assumptions of fairly
intensive silvicultural practices (e.g., precommercial thinning,
commercial thinnings, fertilization). The stand-level projections were
generally reasonable, if intensive silvicultural practices had actually
been used; in many cases, however, they had not been implemented at the
scales envisioned in the plans. For this and other reasons, the
projected ASQs for many planning areas have proven overly optimistic. If
estimates of future timber yields are to be part of planning analysis,
they should be based on realistic land-use allocations, as well as
realistic assumptions concerning investment in silvicultural practices.
Put another way, a silviculture system designed to capture the potential
timber productivity of a site is simply a theoretical exercise if there
is little likelihood of its implementation.

6 (g) (3) (E) insure that timber will be harvested from National Forest
System lands only where . . . (ii) there is assurance that such lands
can be adequately restocked within five years after harvest.

In this context, "harvest" applies only to "regeneration methods" such
as clearcutting, selection, or the initial cut to establish a
shelterwood or seed-tree system, that are intended to precede the
establishment of a new stand. We presume that it does not refer to
thinning, sanitation, or other harvests not intended to regenerate a new
stand. We believe that the intent of this provision is to minimize
situations in which combinations of difficult sites and inappropriate
silvicultural methods result in regeneration failures. There are still,
for example, many acres of poorly stocked spruce-fir clearcuts in the
Central Rockies dating from the 1960s.

Two major questions immediately surface in interpreting this provision:

When does the five-year clock begin when the overstory is removed in a
sequence of harvests?

Does the clause require that the sites in question "will be" restocked
within five years or that they "could be" restocked within that period?

We recommend that ". . . adequately restocked within five years after
harvest" should correspond to the period following cutting, e.g., five
years after clearcutting, five years after a seed tree cutting, five
years after a cutting to establish a shelterwood, and five years after
selection cutting. An alternative, and the current regulation, would be
to start the five-year clock at the final harvest, regardless of the
silvicultural system used. Although this alternative works in an
acceptable way for clearcuts, it makes no sense for other even-aged
harvest methods, such as shelterwood or seed tree. With these methods,
some trees are left on the site to provide shelter for seedlings and/or
seed for natural regeneration. The final harvest, in which the remaining
large trees are cut, is not intended to occur until the new seedlings
are well established and regeneration is deemed successful, at which
point, no clock is necessary. For these methods, then, the biological
clock should begin with the initial cut, not the final harvest.

We further recommend that the clause should be interpreted as "could be"
adequately restocked rather than "will be" adequately restocked, within
constraints discussed below. Our reasoning is as follows. Under
ecosystem management, it will be important to consider natural
regeneration for the maintenance of genetic diversity. Interpreting the
clause to mean that sites "will be" restocked within five years of
harvest, rather than "could be" restocked, could have a chilling effect
on the willingness of managers to give natural regeneration a chance.

Consider, for example, shelterwoods on which natural regeneration of
trees has a very high probability of success, and the trees themselves
are considered valuable for maintaining genetic diversity. If the parent
trees on the site are not expected to produce good seed crops for
several years, artificial regeneration (planting seedlings) may be
necessary to ensure that the site is replanted within five years.
Artificial regeneration could become the norm and perhaps even the
default.

This situation may occur even after natural disturbance, such as a fire,
because regeneration on such sites takes more that five years, on the
average. The question has important implications in areas ranging from
economics to conservation biology. O'Hara et al. (1994) (NEED THE BOOK
OR ARTICLE TITLE HERE) argue that "it is ironic, and possibly prophetic,
that well-meaning policies designed to cure previous failings in
forestry (regeneration delays) have produced a legacy (high-yield stands
with no range in age and little species diversity) that is now under
indictment. Thus we make the following recommendation:

1\) Any proposal for harvest should be based on the objectives for the
stand and broader landscape and on an assessment of appropriate
regeneration methods for each combination of major forest type and
landscape unit within each major region (see discussion concerning 6 (g)
(3) (F) and 6 (g) (3) (F) (iv) below). As a starting point in the
analysis, the regional assessment would highlight the potential for
successful regeneration in the major forest types and conditions likely
to be encountered in the region. Through this process, the assessment
would rule out forest types and/or landscape conditions in which it had
not been shown, though experience or research, that it was possible,
using established techniques, to restock an area within five years after
harvest. "Within five years after harvest" should correspond to the
period following cutting, e.g., five years after clearcutting, five
years after a seed tree cutting, five years after a cutting to establish
a shelterwood, and five years after selection cutting. This analysis,
would serve as a first step in addressing lands "marginal" for
restocking within five years.

2\) An assessment of the potential for artificial and natural
regeneration should accompany each silvicultural prescription associated
with a proposed regeneration harvest. These harvests can be considered
only if the site can be adequately restocked within five years.

3\) In the silvicultural prescription, the basis for a conclusion that
the site can be successfully restocked within five years would be
presented. Potential evidence for this conclusion could include
successful regeneration within five years on similar sites based on
research findings or past experience. This process will serve as a
second screen in eliminating lands marginal for restocking.

4\) Natural regeneration would be permitted, even if it took more than
five years, if conditions were being created through regeneration
harvest that would allow the stand to reestablish naturally as has
occurred throughout history in that type and condition of forest, and
this method would meet stand and landscape goals. Permanent openings
many be created for wildlife habitat improvement, vistas, recreational
uses, and similar practices, but, for the purposes of this section,
successful natural regeneration of the stand is the goal.

5\) Any determination of an allowable sale quantity must include
realistic calculations of the likely time until the stand is restocked,
given the likely method of harvest.

6\) A priority of the technical and scientific review of assessments,
strategic plans, and project implementation, discussed elsewhere in this
paper, will be to examine the analysis, and rationales underlying
regeneration guidance and decisions.

7\) Regional guidelines should be developed covering the characteristics
of natural regeneration in different forest types. These guides will
define adequate restocking within the guidelines of regulations under
6(G)(3)(E).

6 (g) (3) (F) \... insure that clearcutting, seed tree cutting,
shelterwood cutting, and other cuts designed to regenerate an even-aged
stand of timber will be used as a cutting method on the National Forest
System lands only where: (i) for clearcutting, it has been determined to
be the optimum method, and for other such cuts it is determined to be
appropriate, to meet the objectives and requirements of the relevant
management plan.

With respect to clearcutting, the intent of this clause seems fairly
obvious: clearcutting should be used only where it can be demonstrated
to be the best method for meeting the objectives for the stand and
landscape, and that it certainly should not be the default method that
it had become in the 1960s. There are many species and ecosystems for
which a convincing argument can be made for the "optimality" of
clearcutting. Such an argument could, in principle, be made for most
species that regenerate in essentially even-aged stands (e.g., red alder
in the Pacific Northwest, lodgepole pine in the Rockies, aspen in the
Lake States) after natural, catastrophic, stand-replacing disturbances.
It should be noted, though, that characteristics (size , shape,
frequency, pattern) of openings caused by these natural catastrophic
stand-replacing disturbances vary considerably among different species.

While clearcutting may be an obvious choice for the regeneration of such
pioneering species, clearcutting is not the only way that they can be
regenerated and managed. Suitable conditions for regeneration can almost
always be created with a range of alternative reproduction methods,
e.g., clearcutting-with-reserve-trees, a shelterwood, and even
large-group selection.

There is the additional requirement that cuts designed to regenerate an
even-aged stand of timber are to be used only when they, and presumably
the even-aged stand structures that result, meet explicit objectives of
the plan. This requirement provides a great deal of latitude, but seems
to suggest that even-aged stand management should not be the default
method and that alternatives should be seriously considered. It is
important to note that the requirement to explore alternatives to
even-aged stand management is not a requirement to adopt classic
uneven-aged management. Arguably, there is not a requirement to consider
classic uneven-aged management. Non-traditional reserve-tree
silvicultural systems can be used to create and maintain a broad range
of stand structures that fall between the extremes of classic even-aged
and uneven-aged silviculture. The choice of an appropriate regeneration
method and silvicultural system needs to be made within the context of
the ecology of the species involved and the management objectives at
both the stand and landscape scale. These evaluations should draw upon
the regional analysis of appropriate regeneration methods and patch
characteristics. (see discussion concerning 6 (g) (3) (F) (iv) below).

At times there have been attempts to list the situations under which
clearcutting will be considered. Such an approach is fraught with
difficulties because of the impossibility of predicting all the
different situations that might occur. With such a list, forest managers
would be forced to fit any of the circumstances under which they would
like to consider clearcutting into some category on the list, whether it
really fit or not, which would lead to the inevitable claims of
deception and fraud. We believe that cases where managers would like to
use clearcutting should be clearly justified as the best regeneration
method for that situation and that each case should be judged by that
criterion.

6(G)3(F)(iii) - cut blocks, patches, or strips are shaped and blended to
the extent practicable with the natural terrain;

In general, there are abundant patch cuts where such blending with the
natural terrain has not been done, and others where it has been done
quite well. The shaping of cut blocks has a critical visual impact and
greatly influence the social acceptability of clearcutting. Straight
lines are sometimes unavoidable, but we recommend that the intent of the
law, even with the proviso "to the extent practicable" be reemphasized
in the new regulations.

6 (g) (3) (F) (iv) \... according to geographic areas, forest types, or
other suitable classifications the maximum size limits for areas to be
cut in one harvest operation \...

At the time NFMA was passed, there was concern and controversy over the
large clearcut squares that were appearing on the national forests. Much
of this concern was from a visual perspective. This clause was one
attempt in NFMA to address the clearcutting issue and it unsightly
effects. Setting upper limits on clearcuts and other even-aged methods
seemed a useful way to address the problem at the time. In the context
of ecosystem management, though, the limits can result in detrimental,
unintended effects.

General implementation of this provision could be a prescription for
fragmentation of the forest into patterns that have not been experienced
historically though natural disturbance. As forest managers have become
interested in management (and silviculture) reflecting natural
disturbance regimes, it has become less certain that simply restricting
the size of the patch created by even-aged harvest is the best approach
for determining the size of disturbance created through harvest. To
emulate natural disturbances, it may be important to set minimum sizes
as well as maximums, and to have objectives for the overall pattern of
disturbance on the broader landscape.

Analysis of the historical characteristics of disturbances should be
undertaken in regional assessments for each major forest type and
landscape unit within the region. The assessment should consider the
types of silvicultural systems potentially useful in the recreation of
these disturbance characteristics. Out of this analysis should come
minimum and maximum sizes of disturbances in different forest types and
landscapes and also information on the historical frequency, intensity,
and pattern of disturbances.

Timber removals, sustained yield, and the desired future condition

The National Forests Management Act specifies limitations on timber
removals as follows:

Sec. 11 Limitations on Timber Removal---

\(a\) The Secretary of Agriculture shall limit the sale of timber from
each national forest to a quantity equal to or less than a quantity
which can be removed on such a forest annually in perpetuity on a
sustained yield basis; Provided, That in order to meet overall
multiple-use objectives, the Secretary may establish an allowable sale
quantity for any decade which departs from the projected long-term
average sale quantity that would otherwise be established; Provided
further, that any such planned departure must be consistent with the
multiple-use management objectives of the land management plan. \....

\(b\) Nothing in subsection (a) of this section shall prohibit the
Secretary from salvage or sanitation harvesting of timber stands which
are substantially damaged by fire, windthrow, or other catastrophe, or
which are in imminent danger from insect or disease attack. The
Secretary may either substitute such timber for timber that would
otherwise be sold under the plan or, if not feasible, sell such timber
over and above plan volume.

Because timber harvest can occur for the "protection of other multiple
use values" where the forest is not suitable for timber production, as
discussed in Section 3C, lands suitable for resource management
involving timber harvest need two sub categories: 1)timber harvest is
allowed for protection of other multiple use values, but timber
production itself is not a goal and 2) timber production is one of the
goals. As defined in Section 3c, timber production is the long-term
commitment to produce commercial timber volume.

Interpreting Section 11 in light of this classification of lands for
resource management, we draw the following conclusions:

[1) Section 11 (a) applies to lands classified as suitable for timber
production (sub category 2 above), a subset of lands classified as
suitable for timber harvest.]{.underline} We argue this for a number of
reasons:

a\) The Conference Committee Report associated with NFMA stated that
allowable harvests on National Forest System lands shall be based only
on lands available and suitable for timber production.

b\) As mentioned above, timber production means a long-term commitment
to produce timber volume for commercial uses, including investments and
stand management to produce commercial timber volume. This commitment
enables the calculation of the likely quantity of timber volume that can
be removed in perpetuity on a sustained-yield basis, i.e., it enables an
estimate of the portion of the long-term growth available for timber
harvest. Without timber production as a goal for an area, it will often
be difficult to estimate the quantity of timber that can be removed in
perpetuity. As will be discussed below, such estimates are an important
ingredient in calculation of the allowable sale quantity required in
NFMA.

c\) Once the quantity of timber volume that can be removed on a
sustained yield basis is calculated, these quantities have the "danger"
of being turned into targets. Such a transformation would undoubtedly
create public opposition as it would no longer be clear as to what was
driving timber harvest---achieving the timber target or achieving the
other goals.

[2) In the future, some, perhaps much, of the timber volume coming off
the national forests will not fall under the timber removal restrictions
of Section 11.]{.underline} It is highly likely that the Congress
expected that the overwhelming majority of timber removals from the
national forests would come from those lands where timber production was
a goal, and thus would come under Section 11, since that was the case
during the period in which the law was created. Increasingly, though, in
recent years, the timber harvest has come from lands on which timber
removal is a by-product of achieving other goals.

In addition, an increasing proportion of the timber volume from the
national forests falls under the category of "salvage", which is not
restricted to the allowable sale level. In the last few years, more than
half of the volume came from salvage. According to the NFMA, salvage can
either be substituted for the timber harvest volume that would otherwise
be cut or added to it.

[3) It will be difficult for the national forests to predict the likely
timber removals in their land and resource plans, either from the lands
where timber production is a goal or from the forest in general. It will
be also be difficult to offer a stable volume for harvest.]{.underline}
It will be hard to predict, in plans, the likely levels of removals from
lands where timber production is a goal (sub category 1 lands). Because
timber production goals will generally give way to higher-order goals
relating to ecological sustainability, and the implications of these
goals can often only be determined when actions are undertaken in the
field, our ability to predict the allowable sale quantity is limited.
Reliable estimates often must await the development of project plans.

It can also be difficult to predict the timber removals from lands where
timber harvest is a by-product of achieving other goals (sub category 2
lands). The harvest from these lands can be irregular and often can be
unpredictable, further clouding the ability of the national forests to
predict the likely level of removals or to achieve a "stable" overall
harvest volume through time. These removals are becoming an increasingly
important, sometimes dominant, portion of the harvest from particular
national forests. They are driven by the need to achieve other goals.
Achieving these goals often requires periods of action followed by
inaction for a number of decades. Often a site inspection at the time a
project is contemplated will determine the need for treatment, making
broad conclusions about the likely timber removals difficult to make.
The increasing proportion of the harvest that is "salvage" further
confounds the predictability of the overall harvest level.

4\) [Despite these difficulties, prediction of outputs will be needed in
some form.]{.underline} Without some notion of the likely offerings, it
is improbable that investment will occur in processing facilities. Then
the national forests may be faced with situation in which the operators
needed to undertake the treatments are not available. If the desired
future condition and the associated treatments needed to achieve it
drive forest management in the future, as recommended by the Committee,
one approach would be to key on the type and level of these treatments
in the 10 year plan. Even though these would be only initial estimates,
to be refined in site-specific analysis, it would enable firms to
estimate the kind and, to some degree, the amount of material that would
be likely to be forthcoming.

Recommendations

[1) In the future, planning, and budgeting, and monitoring should focus
on the kinds and amounts of expected actions and the conditions produced
on the landscape]{.underline} Under the Committee's recommendations,
forest management actions in the future will be guided by a comparison
of the existing condition to the desired future condition. Where timber
harvest is scheduled, these actions should be stated in terms of the
acres of treatment as a prescription that focuses on the elements of
structure and composition that are the goal. The volume taken is the
result of applying the prescription. While aggregating the expected
volume will also be useful, planning, budgeting, and monitoring should
focus on the kinds and amounts of expected actions that the conditions
they produce.

Budgeting by amount and type of actions needed, rather than volume
harvested, will ensure that the needed treatments occur. Currently,
there is the understandable tendency to tackle the easy treatments to
get the stated volume; accountability by type of treatment will help
reduce that.

The expected outcomes following a specific management action should
guide the design of the monitoring program. The degree to which outcomes
correspond to expectation will provide a key piece of information about
progress toward the desired future condition. This information provided
by monitoring should be gathered on an annual basis from the projects
that have occurred.

2)  [In large landscape plans, a schedule of forest management actions
    needed to reach the desired future condition should be estimated,
    along with the landscape conditions expected to be achieved through
    time.]{.underline} The correspondence between management action and
    expected outcomes should become the performance measures for
    achievement of forest plans goals. Measurement of plan performance
    would be accomplished through 1) comparing, on an annual, basis, the
    expected treatment outcomes to actual treatment results, and 2)
    comparing every 5 to 10 years, the rate and degree of movement
    towards the desired future conditions to that expected.. Either of
    those measures might have three possible outcomes: 1) concluding
    that management actions are moving the landscape towards the desired
    future conditions; 2) concluding that treatments need to be adjusted
    to more efficiently achieve this condition; (3) reevaluating the
    possibility of the desired future conditions in light of the
    potential of the landscape to achieve them.

# CHAPTER FOUR

Planning For Sustainability

4A. A Collaborative Planning Approach to Achieving SustainabilityThe
Purpose of Collaborative Planning

The primary purpose of collaborative planning is to support the
achievement of sutainability in all it dimensions\--ecological,
economic, and social. The first step toward sustainability is defining
the desired future conditions and long-term management goals for the
public lands. Working toward these desired conditions and achieving
these goals requires a planning approach that builds strategic pathways
of management actions and creates conservation strategies that can lead
to sustaining our watersheds, forests, and rangelands so they may
provide the products, uses, benefits and services we, as a people,
value. One critical link to achieving sustainability is increasing the
stewardship capacity of our society.

This report views ecological sustainability is the foundation of
national forest and grassland stewardship\--maintaining the diversity of
native species and ecological productivity. Building on the foundation
of scientifically credible conservation strategies for species and
ecosystems, management should provide a wide variety of uses, products,
values, and services to society along with the awareness in communities
and cities and among entrepreneurs of the value of these benefits, the
opportunities for investment, and necessity of effective stewardship. To
achieve these goals, planning must apply the best available scientific
information and analysis and create strong forums for public dialogue,
so that the diversity and adaptive capability of ecosystems can be
understood, maintained or restored when necessary.

A democratic process is the guiding framework for a planning process
capable of striving for ecological, economic, and social sustainability.
Democratic processes rest on the premise that citizens should
participate in deliberating public issues, developing public policies,
and assessing the implementation of these policies. A collaborative
planning process integrates the identification, analysis, and resolution
of public issues of national, regional, or local interest with the
development of scientifically credible conservation strategies for
sustaining species and ecological systems.

To build stewardship capacity to achieve these goals, a collaborative
planning process works best when it engages other agencies, governments,
businesses, organizations, communities and citizens in planning for and
contributing to the management of the national forest system, including
consideration of how other public and private lands are managed with
respect to achieving common public goals. Effective collaboration,
therefore, requires a multi-level decision process, designed for
flexible application depending on the geographic scope and complexity of
conservation strategies and public issues.

The purpose of this chapter is to propose a collaborative planning
process, multi-level decision making structure, and adaptive management
approach that first recognizes the maintenance of sustainable ecological
systems as the foundation of National Forest management, then, within
that context, attempts to contribute to the economic and social
well-being of the nation and nearby communities. This chapter builds
upon the existing legal framework for planning and management in the
Renewable Resources Planning Act (RPA) of 1974, as amended by the
National Forest Management Act (NFMA) of 1976.

Sustainability -- A Long-time Focus of Land and Resource Management

Over the last 400 years, the overriding goals of public forest
management have been to sustain the productive capacity of forests,
watersheds and associated rangelands. First in Europe and then in the
United States, forest managers have attempted to meet these goals by
managing forests to provide protection of watersheds, sustained yields
of wood products, forage for wildlife and domestic animals, and
recreation opportunities. In the United States, as previously in Europe,
the emergence of professional forestry occurred after a long period of
deforestation. Initially, trees were cut primarily to clear lands for
agriculture and settlement, or to provide fuel for households and
industries. Slowly, however, commercial lumber mills and timber
companies began to appear, harvesting trees to provide fuel to growing
industries, and lumber for building cities or trade in foreign markets.
In the vast expanses of U.S. forests, there was little control over the
methods, location or consequences of increasingly rapid rates of
harvest.

After the Civil War, the forest reserve movement sought to protect
watersheds and the productive capacity of the forests by creating public
forests as well as seeking controls over private forest harvest.
Advocates of forestry and conservation argued that a public forestry
based on principles of sustained yield would provide for both ecological
and social sustainability---overexploitation of resources would be
prevented, watersheds and water supplies would be protected, and a
continuous supply of wood could be available to help stabilize local
economies and communities.

From the very beginning, planning for the use and management of the
forest reserves, later renamed the National Forests, began with an
analysis of the sustained yield of timber, as well as regulation of
grazing, protection of water supplies, provision of recreation
opportunities, and concern for wildlife habitat. Typically, the size of
the planning area was a "working circle", or an area large enough to
provide a local mill with sufficient timber on a continuing basis. Plans
were prepared for each reserve, and later National Forest, and provided
management goals and guidelines. The concern with the contribution of
these lands to local communities and economies was especially evident in
the 1897 Organic Act which forbid public timber to be sold across state
lines; so as to ensure long term resources for construction and fuel.
Regulation of use (, grazing, mining, recreation, timber and water
diversions) and protection (from fire, insects, disease, and poor timber
harvest practices) were the primary roles of public forest managers. As
harvest levels on the National Forests rose after World War II in
response to diminished supplies on private lands, management analysis
began to focus more on timber-yield estimates, the effects of intensive
management, and later, in the 1970s, on the environmental and economic
implications of allowing short periods of higher harvest levels, than on
an "even-flow" policy.

The National Forest Management Act culminated a time of change in public
values, as expressed in the Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act (1960),
Wilderness Act (1964), Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (1964), National
Environmental Policy Act (1970), Clean Air Act (1970), Clean Water Act
(1972), and the Endangered Species Act (1973), to name only a few of the
many environmental protection laws passed in the 1960s and 1970s. The
consequences of high timber harvest levels on watersheds, wildlife
habitat, recreation, and the amenity value of the forests had led to
public outcry around the country during this period. Numerous law suits
were filed against the Forest Service claiming that the agency was
violating the provisions of the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act through
a lack of concern for the ecological values of the forest in the name of
"getting the cut out." The NFMA called for forest planning and
management to explicitly address the environmental consequences of
commercial timber harvest and to designate areas that were unsuitable
for timber harvest because of environmental considerations. Nonetheless,
in practice forest planning focused on determining the sustained-yield
level of timber harvest for each National Forest, and treated protection
of watersheds, species and ecosystems as constraints on harvest levels.

At the same time, the 1980s, scientific knowledge of ecological systems
was growing rapidly as new analysis technologies allowed complex
ecological interactions to be understood and the ecological consequences
of different management scenarios predicted. Analysis clearly
demonstrated that management strategies based on sustained yields of
timber simply did not provide adequate protection for many plant and
animal species, or for ecological system functions necessary for
long-term productivity. Public comments on draft plans, appeals of final
plans and finally lawsuits all challenged the adequacy of the forest
plans in terms of meeting legal requirements for protection of
watersheds, habitat, and amenity values. Arguments that high timber
harvest levels were necessary to support local "timber dependent"
economies were also challenged, since it was increasingly evident that a
localized emphasis on a sustained supply of commercial timber to local
or regional mills could provide neither economic nor community stability
in a dynamic global economy.

Unfortunately, plans finalized in the mid-1980s had as their heart
sustained yield of commercial timber, even though the law and
regulations focused on ecological sustainability in specific terms --
protection of social and water resources and assurance of viable
populations of wildlife species. In many parts of the country, these
plans were immediately obsolete since they were repeatedly challenged in
court for not adequately satisfying legal requirements.

Designing a forest planning process that can develop large-scale
conservation strategies for species and ecosystems calls for fundamental
changes in both the planning units as well as the substance and nature
of land and resource management plans. While allowable harvest levels
are best calculated locally, with timber-supply models based on
inventory data, conservation strategies must be developed at the scale
of the species or ecosystem of interest. This means that the planning
units must vary by geographic scale and will often overlap when species
and ecosystems have overlapping ranges. It also means that to achieve
integrated pathways of treatments and actions to implement strategic
goals, localized planning must develop projects and activities serving
multiple goals. Thus, the multi-level planning process proposed in this
chapter is a planning approach designed to strive toward sustainability
as a complex and overarching set of goals.

Democratic participation is essential to the conception of
sustainability, and includes defining the desired future conditions with
specific goals and objectives along with the means to achieve them.
Sustainability integrates the ecological, economic, and social elements
of society; thus, integration is a critical design principle for a
planning process striving towards sustainability. Before outlining our
proposed process, it is important to discuss democratic processes and
opportunities for integration --- so that these premises can guide the
design of the planning process.

Democratic Participation is an Essential Principle of Sustainability

The American public lands have a distinctive democratic tradition. This
tradition was exemplified in Yellowstone Park Act of 1872, which set the
purpose of the nation's first national park as a "pleasuring ground for
the benefit and enjoyment of the people" and a place where the
"processes of nature are unimpaired." In a nation founded on democratic
principles, the people are sovereign. In 1891 the forest reserves were
established as protection forests for water flow and watershed
protection purposes --- public purposes not to be abrogated for private
profit. In 1897 the expansion of public purposes included protection of
the ecological processes of the forest itself and a continuous supply of
timber for local use, not large-scale commercial profit. It is on this
basis that the Committee of Scientists recognize that these are "the
people's lands." As Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the Forest Service, wrote
in 1907, "National Forests are made for and owned by the people. They
should also be managed by the people. . . . \[I\]f national forests are
going to accomplish anything worthwhile, the people must know all about
them, must take an active part in their management\....."

Hence, one of the founding principles of the national forests is that
they be managed through democratic processes. Democratic process implies
a broad participatory approach to the many aspects of national forest
management, from policy-making through -implementation. It implies
broad-based collaboration in deliberating public purposes and making
public decisions. It requires that collaborative relationships be built
to carry out public actions. A participatory approach encompasses
deliberation of public purposes, participation in making public
decisions, and public review of performance.

Sustainability connects economic and social welfare with the maintenance
of species diversity and ecological productivity. Achieving this
integration requires democratic processes, in which people participate
in designing effective strategies and collaborate in carrying them out.
Thus, the simple premise that people participate in making decisions
about issues important to them lies at the heart of sustainability.
Indeed, working toward sustainability allows this generation to act on
behalf of future generations as well.

Planning is the process where public issues that affect the National
Forests and Grasslands are defined and deliberated. Thus, planning
processes must be based on an open, democratic participatory approach to
making and assessing public decisions and, ideally, building
collaborative relationships to carry out complex public actions.

Our proposed multi-level planning process rests on strong principles of
participation in making public decisions. This participatory approach
includes other agencies, other governments, tribes, interested
organizations, communities and citizens. Based on the various critiques
of forest planning as well as the many studies and scholarly discussions
of participation, we see three primary roles for public participation in
planning:

• [Deliberation of public issues]{.underline} means that people
contribute to developing the information needed for planning, join in
debating public purposes, and come to better understand the perspectives
of others interested in, and knowledgeable about, the lands and
resources.

• [Coming to public judgment]{.underline} can occur when sufficient
deliberation of how to achieve the goals of sustainability results in
wise and considered decisions.

• [Public review of performance]{.underline} by federal agencies
responsible for developing and implementing policies is an important
public duty and needs to become an on-going part of the planning process
through monitoring and external review.

Each of these roles applies broadly to the entire community of interests
working on developing assessments and plans. We emphasize throughout our
discussion the importance of taking an outward-looking perspective. This
perspective naturally builds bridges to others with an interest in
public lands and resources, and who may be affected by the decisions
regarding its conservation and management.

We also repeatedly point to the educational and learning aspects
inherent in different stages of these processes, as well as being an
important outcome of the planning process considered as a whole.
Understanding the ecological, economic, and social context of the lands
and resources of the National Forest System requires careful analysis
and observation, participation by scientists as well as long-term
residents living near forests and rangelands, and on-going evaluation of
new information, new events, and new influences on the area. Planning
for future conservation and use requires understanding of the limits of
ecological systems, the interdependencies among resource processes, the
limits of social and economic systems, and the institutional capacities
for adequate stewardship.

It takes a lot of time to learn enough about the land and the people to
effectively participate in planning. It takes even more time to
deliberate issues, and to join with others in developing the
collaborative capacity for carrying out desired actions. Nonetheless,
the American people today are more committed than at any other time in
history to participating in planning for the stewardship of our public
lands and to providing that stewardship capacity. The challenge of the
planning process is to activate this commitment and to develop
sufficient stewardship capacity to achieve the goals of sustainability.

1\. Deliberation of public purposes means bringing people together to
define issues of public concern and engage in extended public discussion
about the meaning of the issues related to the conservation and
management of National Forest System lands, as well as the implications
of potential strategies and pathways for sustainability.

Issues are of public concern when they have implications for the
community, region, or society at large. Public issues stand in contrast
to issues of private concern, such as contract disputes, business
decisions, or personal family situations. This is a broad category, and
it encompasses issues of scientific concern when they have implications
for management and decision making.

Public issues vary widely. In land and resource management planning,
they vary in terms of whether there is sufficient scientific and
technical information available to understand them or the implications
of their possible solutions. They also vary in terms of their
contentiousness: some issues involve multiple goals and diverse social
values, and require extended public discussion about how to achieve
those goals. Thus, different issues necessitate different approaches to
deliberation; the planning process needs to incorporate the flexibility
to treat issues differently.

The more that multiple goals and diverse social values are involved, the
more that stakeholders representing the range of values in contention
must be convened in a deliberative process aimed at developing options
that reflect those different goals and values. By "stakeholders", we
mean all affected parties including other federal agencies, state and
local governments, tribes, and the public. And the more complex and
ambiguous the scientific and technical information concerning an issue,
the more that experts must be involved to assist with and provide
credibility to the public deliberation. Constructing a table, with the
state of knowledge as one dimension, and the agreement on values as the
other, creates four assessment and planning situations that differ in
the need for and type of stakeholder and expert deliberation:

In much of land and resource planning, multiple goals and diverse social
values are at issue. There can be considerable uncertainty about what is
known about either ecological or social systems, which can result in
what are sometimes called "wicked problems"---problems for which there
is no one solution that will satisfy all stakeholders or enjoy complete
consensus among the scientific communities. In these cases, both
assessments and planning processes must include stakeholders and experts
in the deliberations. Deliberation by both scientists and the public is
necessary because strategies and actions require multi-dimensional
tradeoffs based on tentative knowledge. Such deliberation also provides
a long-term forum for public, scientific, and agency learning.

Developing conservation strategies for species and ecosystems, as well
as treatments and actions that serve as pathways to desired future
conditions are generally "wicked" problems. Thus, the assessment and
planning processes need to emphasize the intensive involvement of
stakeholders and experts in deliberations. In general, ongoing
deliberation builds familiarity with public issues, the diversity of
public viewpoints, and the complexity of the ecological and social
systems. When planning is not an "event" but a continuous activity, then
deliberation can build trust and legitimacy for public action.

2\. Coming to public judgment (i.e., decision making) is a
time-consuming process when overlapping public purposes must be
integrated within complex strategies for land and resource conservation
and management. This process cannot be rushed, but it can be expedited
by maintaining an ongoing dialogue. Ongoing processes of public
deliberation create a reservoir of public understanding that can be
drawn upon when difficult issues arise or unexpected events occur, such
as hurricanes, floods, and fires. In this way, strong civic capacity can
provide for efficient action by providing the context for considering
what to do in light of past decisions, and the capacity to organize to
take action. This is the "payoff" for building deliberative capacity.

Engaging the American public in deliberating the future of the National
Forests and Grasslands is more than just talking to people living near
the public lands. Pinchot set forth the principle that local decisions
should be made on local grounds at a time when local meant "people
living nearby." Today, people who live great distances from the forests
and rangelands feel strong attachments to them, and want to participate
in making decisions about them. Just as transportation systems have
changed the meaning of "local" in decision-making, information
technologies have transformed the abilities of people living far from
public lands to join in deliberating their future. New methods of public
dialogue need to be invented in order for planning to effectively engage
the American people.

3\. Public review of performance is more than just a cursory review of
expenditures and production of goods and services. Complex strategies
for conserving and managing the resources of the National Forests and
Grasslands necessitate careful, independent review by outside
scientists, interested parties, and knowledgeable people. Expert and
scientific review alone is essential, but not sufficient to ensure
public acceptability or simple common sense. (Bitterroot sidebar?)

Important to evaluating the strategies and treatments for achieving
desired future conditions is a monitoring process designed to measure
performance against expected outcomes. While the design of a monitoring
process may be as simple as measuring water temperature and water flow
and be carried out by school children, it can also be as complex as a
research experiment and engage the research community. Without
measurement and maintenance of good records for historical comparisons,
it is difficult to assess long-term performance.

NEPA: A Vehicle for Collaboration in order to Achieve Sustainability

Sustainability of ecological, economic, and social systems is not and
cannot be the sole responsibility of any one agency or landowner.
Rather, sustainability is a guiding star for decisions by many
government agencies and all landowners. Ideally, federal planning
processes for public lands and resources would be harmonized into an
integrated process leading to a unified plan for all federal lands in an
area. In the near term, achieving this ideal is impeded by single-agency
planning and decision processes.

Overarching this environment of inward-focused processes is the
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process under the National
Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) NEPA articulates a common set of
public goals towards which all agencies must strive in order to achieve
environmental protection and sustainability. It creates the EIS review
process to ensure that the reasons for and consequences of federal
decisions or expenditures are disclosed for public review. In other
words, it aims to make agencies think before they act, and therefore
make more intelligent decisions by considering the irretrievable and
irreversible consequences of those decisions beforehand.

To achieve this purpose, NEPA relies upon the EIS process ---

\(1\) to ensure that other federal agencies review and comment on
proposed actions and

\(2\) to ensure that other governments and the public have opportunities
to identify issues of public concern for analysis and review alternative
approaches and their consequences analyzed by the agency to achieve
desired goals.

The broad intent of NEPA is to improve federal decisions through
disclosure of the information used in making the decision, along with
the analysis of the consequences --- ecological, economic, and social
--- of alternative approaches for achieving desired goals.

In this era of multi-agency cooperation and planning, NEPA takes on new
importance --- it is a process common to all federal agencies. Even when
agency planning processes assume a single-agency decision, NEPA requires
broad review and participation in these processes from the
issue-identification (scoping) stage through the record of decision.
Thus, for all agencies, the EIS can be a useful vehicle for developing
greater collaborative capacity among agencies, other governments, and
tribes, as well as organizations, communities, and citizens.

Another key element of NEPA is that it focuses on the decision-making
processes of agencies. As a result NEPA provides an important
opportunity for improving the collaborative capacity for implementation
by engaging other agencies, other governments, and the public in the
analysis and review of public decisions. At a minimum, the Forest
Service should seek to work with other federal land managing and
regulatory agencies to develop coordinated processes for developing and
reviewing EIS, so that agency consultation occurs while decisions are
being formulated, rather than after the agency has chosen a preferred
course of action.

Initially, agencies can change how and when they work with one another.
Then, as new relationships are created, agency rules and processes can
be reviewed and changed to reflect those successful approaches. An
important first step for the Forest Service to take in moving toward a
more collaborative approach is to review the 36 CFR Part 215 and Part
217 rules regarding appeals of final decisions. Current rules provide
insufficient opportunities for federal agencies to review and comment
upon proposed courses of action prior to the final EIS and Record of
Decision. Engaging the other land management and appropriate regulatory
agencies in the early stages of the planning and decision processes can
enhance the quality of decisions as well as reduce the elevation of
inter-jurisdictional conflicts beyond the capacity of field managers to
adapt and respond. This means developing NEPA processes that encourage
adaptive management as well as collaboration.

Looking Outward -- The Essence of a Collaborative Planning Approach

We define [planning]{.underline} as the full range of processes from
assembling information, evaluation of information in the context of
goals, crafting future courses of action, choosing specific management
actions, implementing specific management actions, measuring
performance, evaluating outcomes in terms of expectations, and
revisiting decisions as necessary. Our approach shifts the emphasis from
"creating documents" to "building public decisions and adaptive
management." This means that the agency uses a participatory approach in
assembling information, building decisions, implementing them, and
monitoring the results. Rather than taking sole responsibility for the
conservation, use and management of our National Forests and Grasslands,
the Forest Service needs to engage other governments, organizations,
businesses, landowners, communities and citizens in actively providing
stewardship capacity to strive toward long-term social, economic and
ecological sustainability.

Proposed Approach: Multi-level Collaborative Planning

The Committee of Scientist's proposed approach is a multi-level planning
process that emphasizes the use of ecological boundaries, especially
those that have social meaning, separates the information gathering from
management decision making, and urges a collaborative approach with
other federal agencies, tribes, state and local governments, and the
public. It is intentionally more flexible than the current "forest
planning" process to allow for a diversity of approaches across the
country and to encourage experimentation.

The Committee's proposed approach has a set of core features that we
feel are essential for land and resource management planning to build a
set of goals and management actions that can effectively lead toward
sustainability.

1\) Develop scientifically credible strategies for the protection of
species and ecosystems, and the conservation or restoration of the
productive capacity of ecological systems.

2\) Build a set of goals and proposed actions for management of these
National Forests and Grasslands that puts them on the path to ecological
sustainability, contributes to economic and social sustainability, and
provides for the multiple uses.

3\) Deepen public engagement in planning, including development of a
sense of joint inquiry into the conditions, capabilities, and potential
of the National Forests and Grasslands, the encouragement of joint
public/agency stewardship of these lands, and the restoration of trust
in Forest Service management.

4\) Enhance agency engagement by connecting planning directly to the
decision making processes of management.

5\) Encourage learning within the organization through adaptive
management, information sharing, ongoing public dialogue, and
independent review,

6\) Address issues of common concern at the scale appropriate to the
issue and maintain the terms of public controversy so as to demonstrate
how policies and decisions respond to public issues.

For the Forest Service a collaborative approach means that they will no
longer mediate among private wants, but "sit at the table" as
representatives of our common goals of striving for sustainability,
providing for multiple uses, and creating stewardship capacity. This is
why we see the planning process itself as based on collaborative
relationships and built on public deliberation of how best to provide
for our common future. Public participation is not merely an "additional
requirement," but the mechanism for developing a collaborative planning
process. The term public needs to be used in its broadest sense to
include individuals, groups, businesses and governments in their public
role of deliberating and providing for the common good. Planning on the
public lands is one place where all parts of society join together and
strive for the good of the commonwealth, as the goal of ecological,
economic and social sustainability so eloquently expresses.

Before turning to the specifics of our new approach for land and
resource management planning, we believe it is important to highlight
the necessary contributions of the National Assessment, Program, and
Annual Report required by the RPA. While the scope of our report focuses
on the sub-national processes for National Forest System planning and
management, these national level processes contribute materially to a
complete multi-level process. Indeed, as our discussion will show, for
collaborative planning to work, these national level processes must
carry out the intent of the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources
Planning Act of 1974 to a much greater extent than they have to date.

Following this brief overview, we provide an historical context in which
to understand the proposed planning structure by describing the key
elements of the current system of planning. In the following section, we
outline the details of our new conceptual framework for planning, which
integrates information gathering, public issue identification and
deliberation, and collaborative stewardship into multi-level assessment
and decision processes designed for flexibility, learning, and adaptive
management.

The Role of the National Assessment, Program and Annual Report

The RPA Assessment was originally intended to be a vehicle by which the
status of all lands and resources in the United States would be
periodically assessed relative to current conditions and future
expectations. Indeed, the RPA grew out of efforts to develop a national
land use planning process in response to escalating demands for
resources and rapidly expanding cities and towns. While some states,
most notably Oregon, responded with State planning laws and there were
specific planning efforts, like that in the Coastal Zone Management Act,
land use planning at the national level simply did not have political
support. The RPA approach was to have the Forest Service, in
collaboration with other governments and landowners, develop a national
level assessment of current and projected land use conditions. This
information could then serve as a tool for public and private planning
at all levels to better coordinate land uses across public and private
ownerships. Given its historical context, it especially emphasized the
supply and demand for the different multiple uses, such as timber and
recreation, across the different ownerships. It paid relatively little
attention to characterizing ecological conditions, especially those that
had a strong regional flavor, such as threatened and endangered species.

Today things have changed. Sustainable forest ecosystems are now a
global priority. Criteria and indicators for nations to use in assessing
the status of their forests have broad international agreement, as
evidenced in the Santiago Agreement of 1995. The RPA assessment can
utilize these criteria and indicators for assessing national level
status of sustainability. Thus, the RPA Assessment has a new role in
providing national information to the international community, and in
addition, to providing an evaluation for the United States on the status
of our forests and rangelands. This review is directly linked to the
Government Performance and Results Act requirements. The role of RPA is
essential in providing a broad context for understanding the
contribution of the National Forest System lands to the broad goal of
sustainability. It cannot, however, be expected to provide a detailed
evaluation of ecological sustainability in the different regions of the
country. That information must be developed through regional assessments
as discussed below.

The RPA national assessment of land and resources can contribute to
national forest planning in a number of ways:

1\) It shapes our understanding of the conditions on all forests and
rangelands across the country as well as likely demand and supply
considerations. The regional analyses on forest and rangeland trends on
nonfederal ownerships are especially valuable.

2\) It provides linkage to international ecological and social issues,
such as the role of forests in addressing global climate change policy,
protecting biodiversity, recognizing customary and traditional rights of
indigenous peoples, ensuring long-term economic and social benefits from
forests, and sustaining temperate and tropical forests.

3\) It provides a forum for discussing the institutional and policy
framework for sustainability on diverse ownerships, including the
principles and mechanisms for sustainable forest management on private
forest lands.

4\) It can highlight ecological systems at risk.

The RPA Program was originally envisioned as a master plan for the
management of the National Forest System lands, and assumed that the
inputs (especially budgets) needed to provide high levels of outputs
(especially commodities) would naturally follow. It has rarely worked as
intended in the 25 years since its passage. The RPA Program, for all its
good intentions, called for input and output goals that became divorced
from the land and the dynamic management that goes on at the local
level. Its targets have forever lagged behind the changing conditions
and values expressed at each unique National Forest and Ranger District.
In addition, presidents and legislatures have largely ignored the
program, responding more directly to their own priorities for management
of the National Forests and Grasslands and the realities of limited
budgets. Similarly, regions and national forests have largely ignored
the RPA program in planning --- not a surprising result, since it is
difficult to express the goals for management of each National Forest
through a set of resource production targets set at the national level.

We believe that the RPA Program (and its successor) could provide
overall policy guidance for the National Forests and Grasslands by
recognizing their role within the context of other ownerships, as
specifically required in the law. At its best, the RPA program can be a
strategic vision of the management emphasis for the national forests in
the context of the management of all lands, including lands in other
countries, by pointing out the unique contributions of National Forests.
As an expression of a clear strategic vision, the RPA program would be a
policy guide for the large and small landscape planning processes
discussed below. The recent statement of the Chief of the Forest Service
regarding the importance of watershed protection in achieving ecological
sustainability is the beginnings of such a strategic vision. It is
critical to distinguish a strategic vision from a top-down strategic
directive that is merely to be implemented by lower-level functionaries.
Rather, a strategic vision sets the course for the agency, and, across
the country, the tremendous diversity of localities and special meanings
of places are guided by this vision in their stewardship and management.

The Annual Report to Congress called for in the RPA is the direct
connection to the Government Performance and Reporting Act. The planning
process proposed below should make it possible to track actual
improvements in land and resource conditions, actual achievements given
budget appropriations, and necessary changes to meet the primary goals
of the National Forest System. It is essential that the Annual Report
become an integral part of the overall planning process, so that when
actual performance is assessed, it is possible to identify needs for
strategic change, needs for new management approaches, needs for new
research, and needs for new partnerships to achieve common goals. The
Annual Report would provide the "big picture" for the units of the
National Forest System as they engage in their own annual performance
review and evaluation processes

Overview of the Existing Approach to "Forest Planning"

Before turning to the details of our new approach to planning, we sketch
the current framework for planning and decision making. The planning
regulations now in effect were proposed in 1979, and revised and
approved in final form in 1982. The current regulations resulted in
three sub-national planning and decision making levels in addition to
the National Assessment and Program. Each planning level is considered a
NEPA action because it makes decisions guiding the commitments of land,
resources and money, and thus has an Environmental Assessment (EA) or an
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) associated with it (TABLE 1). NFMA
specifically required that planning "form one integrated plan for each
unit of the National Forest System" (Sec. 6(f)1).

While we provide this outline based on the existing regulations, it is
critical to note that the process has not worked in practice as
designed. Indeed, recent critiques of forest planning are all based on
the difference between what was expected of the planning process and the
actual outcomes. Nonetheless, we provide this overview both for
comparison to our proposed approach and to remind our readers that the
general concept of a hierarchical policy and management framework is
familiar concept.

At all levels, the forest planning process is "inwardly-focused" on
National Forest System lands and resources to the exclusion of
consideration of other federal or public lands, much less current or
expected conditions on private lands. Public participation is generally
limited to "notice and comment" wherein the public is involved in the
initial "issue identification" stage and then reviews the proposed
alternatives during the comment period on the EIS. While the 1979 draft
regulations required the agency to demonstrate how the alternatives
responded to public issues, this requirement was dropped in the 1982
final regulations. As a result, the nexus between public issues and
alternative management plans are difficult to trace.

The current planning process has ten steps, to be followed in order,
because they mirror the process requirements for developing an EIS. The
initial steps identify public issues and management concerns, define
planning criteria and develop an assessment of the current conditions
and management of the national forest or grassland. This assessment is
called the "analysis of the management situation", and it includes
demand and supply conditions for resource commodities as well as their
production potentials on the National Forest System lands. To date these
analyses are production-oriented, calling for benchmark analysis of the
minimum and maximum physical and biological production capabilities of
significant goods and services, along with their associated costs and
benefits. These are monetary benchmarks that maximize present net value
of major commodity resources, estimate current production of these goods
and services, and develop projections of demand. Although the current
regulations require protection of soil and water resources as well as
assurance that viable wildlife populations will persist across their
usual range, these aspects are usually considered only after meeting
timber harvest targets in most plans.

Although the RPA expected that "the new knowledge derived from
coordinated public and private research programs will promote a sound
technical and ecological base for effective management, use and
protection of the Nation's renewable resources" (RPA Sec. 2(4)), the
1982 Regulations reflected the commodity-production orientation of the
time. As a result, the information developed for and used in forest
planning did not sufficiently address the ecological issues of
increasing concern for scientists and the public, and therefore led to
underestimated or downplayed environmental effects of commodity
production in EIS analyses. Repeated appeals of forest plans and
projects as well as lawsuits continue to raise this inconsistency with
legal requirements.

Collaborative Planning: A Participatory Approach to Achieve
Sustainability

Collaborative planning works best when all those with jurisdiction,
interest, or a stake in the decision are engaged throughout the planning
process. As defined earlier, planning is the full range of processes
from assembling information, evaluation of information in the context of
goals, crafting future courses of action, choosing specific management
actions, implementing specific management actions, measuring
performance, evaluating outcomes in terms of expectations, and
revisiting decisions as necessary.

Our conceptual approach redirects efforts from creating documents to
building implementable strategies and decisions. This means that we
divide the planning process into four major components: assembling
information, building decisions, implementation and monitoring of
outcomes. The following schematic presents these three areas of
responsibility in a multi-level framework. (Table xx)

Notable in our new framework is that the Integrated Land and Resource
Management Plan for each unit of the National Forest System is a
compilation of decisions made at different geographic scales and
governance levels. For decision makers this means that effective
management creates the capacity to integrate decisions at larger scales
with site-specific management actions implementing them. Thus, an
adaptive management approach requires managers to demonstrate this
connection through careful monitoring and evaluation processes, which
include external scientific and field review. It is also where the
necessary budget and staffing resources are clearly connected to
implementation activities and monitoring protocols include review of
their adequacy in meeting desired goals.

In the following presentation of our proposed process, we begin with a
discussion of the assessments, turn to planning and the decision-making
processes, and conclude with an overview of the administrative
responsibilities and Integrated Land and Resource Management Plan. We
envision that the move from assessments to decision process begins by
defining desired future conditions at each level of decision making with
clear linkages across levels. We also envision that monitoring is the
link between implementation of actions and the necessary on-going review
of performance and outcomes. It is important to reiterate a key feature
of our process: planning and assessment areas do not conform to
administrative boundaries. This means that managers need to join
together in decision making teams related to the planning areas and to
create new capacities for joint-decision making within the agency and
with other federal agencies or other governments as needed.

A. Assessments: Assembling an Independent Foundation of Information

Within a collaborative planning process, independent information that is
considered an objective and realistic portrayal of conditions is a
necessary basis for public deliberation and decisions with public trust
in the validity of their scientific credibility. We believe that it is
important to recognize "assessment" -- or, the assembling of information
--- as a distinct task organized as a joint inquiry undertaken by
scientists and other knowledgeable people and involving the federal
agencies, other governments, and the public. It should meet the
expectations of RPA for creating "coordinated public and private
research" relationships to "promote a sound technical and ecological
base" of information.

In the past, the analysis of ecological and social conditions and trends
was done, to one degree or another, as part of regional guidance and
"forest" planning. We believe that assessments have such an important
role in providing a credible information base for policy planning and
decision making that they should be organized as a separate task.
Assessments are not decisions and should not be made to function under
the NEPA processes associated with planning. By recognizing assessment
as a separate task, everyone in the assessment process will more easily
focus on conditions, trends, problems, and risks instead of on the
development of planning alternatives.

In our approach, the way information is developed and synthesized and by
whom, is as important as the content. Based on our analysis of various
current assessment processes, we think that assessments can have a
number of functions: identifying issues of special importance; creating
forums for joint learning between scientists, managers, and the public;
improving inventories; encouraging landscape-level thinking that
transcends national forest and agency boundaries; building cohesion
among different levels of the Forest Service and between the Forest
Service and other agencies; and providing a context for planning. For
participants, assessments also help develop leadership abilities and
provide a crash course in adaptive management.

Another lesson from our analysis of current assessment processes is that
just producing information is not enough. Assessments provide the
context for proposing ways to achieve long-term goals of sustainability.
Thus, our proposal includes an additional element at the bioregional
level --- identification of the elements of needed conservation
strategies and scientifically credible procedures for evaluating
ecological sustainability. The analysis of ecological sustainability
will require a critical mass of scientists, working independently, but
reporting periodically to a broader group to enable critique,
discussion, and joint learning. An example of this approach is the
recent work on aquatic ecosystems in the Interior Columbia Basin
Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP sidebar).

Without the development of these scientifically credible approaches to
assessing the effect of planning alternatives on ecological
sustainability, it is difficult to see how planning the management of
the National Forests and Grasslands can be successful. With the
development of elements to construct conservation strategies and
methodologies to evaluate ecological sustainability, we believe that
assessments will quickly prove their worth to managers and planners.
Thus, planners and resource specialists will often need to participate
in these assessments in order to contribute their knowledge, better
understand the body of information that is produced, get experience with
integrative, bioregional processes, and prepare to use the information
in planning and management.

We envision two primary scales of assessments, and an optional
intermediate scale depending on the size and heterogeneity of the area
(see Table 2).

Assessments provide the foundation of information from which policies,
strategies and decisions can be built, evaluated and changed.
Bioregional assessments are essential for developing decisions and
watershed assessments are necessary for choosing treatments and
activities to achieve desired goals.

For nearly half of the National Forest System lands, some form of a
bioregional assessment has been undertaken over the past few years. In
these cases, the information needed for decision making is largely in
place, but may need to be augmented. In places where such bioregional
assessments have not been carried out to date, the process of gathering
information needs to begin immediately based on current scientific and
public issues related to the region. However, initial development of
assessments is only the first step in the continuous process of
maintaining this base of information through monitoring activities.
Where information is insufficient to meet the needs of the assessment as
described here, the monitoring and research efforts should be undertaken
both within the agency and among the broader research community to
improve existing knowledge of these ecological, social and economic
systems.

Watershed assessments provide the site-specific information needed to
design effective management activities that fit the history and
conditions of the place as well as the social and cultural
characteristics of the area. Since watershed assessments are linked both
to the bioregional assessment and the strategic goals of the large
landscape planning, these assessments can follow the development of
strategic plans so as to provide for implementation. Once again,
monitoring and research can be designed to both maintain this body of
information and to fill in gaps in the near term.

Defining the Desired Future Condition

The link between developing assessments and building decisions is
defining the desired future condition. Defining a desired future
condition requires extended public dialogue, as it is a social choice
for current and future generations.

As a future-oriented choice, a desired future condition seeks to protect
a broad range of choices for future generations, avoid irretrievable
losses, and guide current management and conservation strategies and
actions. Nonetheless, given the dynamic nature of ecological and social
systems, a desired future condition is also dynamic over time, and thus
is always revisited in the decision making process during monitoring,
external review, and evaluation of performance.

An Ecological View

From an ecological perspective, desired future conditions are those that
will sustain ecological integrity over the long term. Understanding how
natural disturbance events have influenced the distribution of
terrestrial and aquatic habitats provides a basis for representing
possible conditions for landscapes given potential management
strategies. Assessment procedures that address the dynamic aspects of
ecological processes in the context of spatial and temporal disturbance
history can provide a framework for establishing target ranges for
desired future conditions.

The concept of desired future condition is less meaningful at small
spatial scales because it explicitly considers the mix of habitats (type
and seral stage) generated by natural processes that are only observable
at the large landscape scale. To sustain ecosystems and preserve
ecological integrity, management must allow for the dynamic processes
that accompany disturbance-recovery cycles, and protect essential energy
and material transfers that take place during disturbance events. When
these ecological processes are operative, we observe, at a landscape
scale, a mosaic of habitat patches in various stages of post-disturbance
recovery. Given the non-equilibrium nature of ecosystems, the
distribution of terrestrial and aquatic habitats is dynamic. As a
consequence, desired future conditions must include variability as an
integral and essential component of habitat and population objectives.

The management challenge is to ensure that human activities do not
increase the frequency or severity of disturbance events to such an
extent that they surpass the capacity of the ecosystems to recover. To
ensure resilience, management practices must not disrupt those energy
and material transfers that promote habitat recovery. An appropriate
goal for management activities would be to mimic, to the extent
possible, natural disturbance events in terms of their severity (i.e.,
spatial extent and character) and recurrence interval. Attainment of
desired future conditions could be assessed by comparing the
distribution of terrestrial and aquatic habitats following management to
that expected under natural disturbance regimes.

A Social View

From a social perspective, desired future conditions are those that will
sustain the capacity for future generations to maintain cultural
patterns of life and adapt to evolving societal and ecological
conditions. Understanding how past patterns of social life and economic
use have responded to societal pressures and resource possibilities can
provide a historical context for understanding current conditions.
However, different parts of society and different stakeholders will
offer different interpretations of both the past and possible futures.

The assessment can offer independent information about social, economic
and cultural conditions against which differing perspectives can be
compared. This process will provide a mosaic of explanations and
perspectives all of which need to be engaged in the deliberation of
desired future conditions and the implications for future choices of
different ecological conditions. However, while choosing a particular
desired future condition is a social choice, this choice is bounded by
the necessity of ensuring ecological sustainability and its inextricable
linkage to social and economic sustainability. Thus, the desired future
condition represents our common goals and aspirations, not our private
wants and needs.

[3. Choosing a Desired Future Condition]{.underline}

The information generated in the assessments can contribute to our
understanding of the processes of the natural and social worlds, but it
cannot determine what choice is right. Rather, informed public dialogue
is essential to glean from what we know opportunities for what we should
do. The first step for decision making is to develop the public forum
for defining the desired future condition. From this step, decisions can
flow that seek to create pathways for achieving our hopes, dreams and
expectations for our children.

A Multi-level Planning and Decision Making Process

To repeat again for reference, planning encompasses the full range of
processes from assembling information, evaluating information in the
context of goals, crafting future courses of action, choosing specific
management actions, implementing management actions, measuring
performance, evaluating outcomes in terms of expectations, and revising
decisions as necessary. While this conception of planning is familiar to
the planning profession, in practice, the current "forest planning"
process has separated "planning what to do and why" from the management
activities of implementation. Interestingly, the steps of monitoring and
evaluation are part of the "10 planning steps," but in practice have
seldom been integrated into a continuous cycle of adaptive management.
In general, the reason for this lack of fluidity and integration of the
entire range of processes is a result of treating "the Plan" as a fixed
document, not a dynamic set of policy guidelines and anticipated actions
undertaken after on-the-ground implementation planning.

In our view, after listening to people around the country and based on
our experience with forest planning, separating "planning" from the
processes of management and monitoring led the agency to set-up special
planning teams, often left to work on their own and sometimes with
little connection to the work of management on the National Forest. One
of the unfortunate contradictions of the "forest planning" process was
that while it was to be grounded on a strong analytical base, the
results of the analysis were sometimes modified to conform to existing
resource output targets (from the disaggregation of the RPA targets) or
current management goals -- for example, the five and ten year timber
harvest plans already in place. This separation of "management" and
"planning" is untenable when the legal directive is for plans to provide
the guiding framework for management and for monitoring to be a
integrated part of the planning process.

This inclusive definition of planning is a critical change that
underpins the logic and structure of our proposed process. The obvious
question is -- what is the distinction between "planning" and
"management"? In our proposed framework, the distinction is one of
timing and the work of undertaking actions that require the dedication
of people, money, and time. After future courses of action have been
crafted at multiple scales, then a specific suite of management actions
is selected for implementation. The critical connection is that after
undertaking the implementation of management actions, the next steps are
to measure performance and evaluate results in the context of goals and
expectations. Thus, monitoring and evaluation are necessarily part of
the planning process and lead to revisiting decisions when performance
does not meet expectations, or when unanticipated and undesirable
outcomes result from action. Recognizing either of these two situations
requires independent field review of selected management activities.
Setting the questions and methodologies for monitoring requires
independent scientific review before making final decisions, especially
for the large-scale strategic planning and decision processes.

Taking an inclusive understanding of planning focuses attention on the
importance of integrating the assessments -- assembling information --
with monitoring and evaluation. The monitoring protocols and
methodologies need to be designed so as to both evaluate whether
management actions are achieving the desired goals and maintain the base
of information necessary for decision making. This linkage will require
organizational strategies to ensure that long-term information
development and maintenance are naturally a part of the work of the
agency and its many partners. The payoff will be that when evaluations
reveal a need for change or when public issues arise that necessitate
revisiting goals and decisions, there will be a solid foundation of
information available to work with and update as needed. Thus, a focus
on maintaining a solid and useful foundation of information will not
only tie the assessment and monitoring processes directly to management
decisions, but it will also provide an integrative mechanism for
different parts of the agency and its partners to work together
collaboratively.

Planning is not merely process, however. The purpose of planning is to
develop scientifically credible strategies for ecological
sustainability, options for multiple use management that respond to
public interests and issues, and pathways of treatments and actions to
achieve these goals, along with the organizational capacity to implement
and monitor them. The concept of collaborative planning as used here
recognizes that while the Forest Service can plan for its contribution
to these goals, it usually cannot achieve them by itself. Thus, several
federal agencies, as well as state and local governments and others must
work with the Forest Service for it to achieve common goals. In our
view, the more that the planning process across federal agencies can be
coordinated and harmonized, the greater the capacity for consistent
conservation strategies and policies to be formed and implemented. This
is why stewardship capacity is such an important aspect of the planning
process --- it is a means that makes implementation possible.

A clear logic of decision-making requires that the strategic vision of
the agency is interpreted through strategic planning, which then leads
to site-specific implementation decisions. Thus, our approach proposes a
landscape-scale, strategic planning level complemented by a
smaller-scale integrated-implementation planning level. In our view,
however, strategic planning and decision making could be done through
either two or three levels, depending on whether strategies for ensuring
ecological sustainability are developed at the bioregional level,
separate from large landscape planning, or within it. We explain the
planning and decision making framework in terms of a three-level
approach and then also illustrate its structure when two levels are
sufficient (see Table 3).

In a general sense, this approach retains the three-tiered planning
framework that has developed over time, based on the existing (1982)
regulations, but the planning areas are seldom administrative
boundaries. Nonetheless, an effective policy framework provides:

1\) overall guidance at the "regional" level;

2\) a second level, smaller in geographic scope although still perhaps
covering millions of acres, at which the long-term strategic policies
and decisions are developed that consider the full range of goals,
multiple uses, and public issues of concern in the area;

3\) a site-specific level, where pathways of actions needed to carry out
the long-term strategic goals and policies are developed within the
context of the particular place.

Several key weaknesses of the past planning process led the Committee of
Scientists to suggest a number of changes and refinements to better
address the provision of ecological and social sustainability. Many of
these suggested changes are already being tried in different regions
across the country; in fact we learned of many of them from the
critiques of planning performed by the Forest Service and others, and
from our meetings across the country with Forest Service employees and
the public:

• Focus bioregional guidance on the development of scientifically
credible strategies for ecologically sustainable use. In the past,
regional plans often fell short in their guidance on ecological
sustainability. National Forests, as a result, were left without a firm
policy foundation on which to build their plans. Significant effort in
the future in bioregional planning must be placed on constructing
scientifically based strategies for the conservation of species and
ecosystems.

• Focus large landscape planning on desired future conditions and
outcomes and on the pathway to achieve these desired states. In the
past, forest planning often focused on the relatively short-term issues
of land allocation and timber harvest levels. Although these are still
important issues, we believe that, consistent with the emphasis on
ecological and social sustainability, strategic planning should
emphasize the development of desired long-term landscape conditions and
outcomes that will provide this sustainability. We believe that
establishing these long-term goals is the most constructive place to
start in the collaborative planning for the future, and provides an
essential guide for management. Visualization of the future landscape
through pictures and computer simulations will be a crucial element in
this work. Using information on current conditions, from the bioregional
assessments and elsewhere, the large landscape strategies should build a
pathway from the current state to the desired future state that includes
an estimate of actions and budgets that will be needed.

• Focus small landscape planning on the mix of activities and projects
needed to meet the goals and policies from the strategic planning
process. Projects should be developed in combination, to the degree
possible, with attention to cumulative effects, and should include
implementation schedules, measurable performance standards, budget
plans, and staffing plans. New activities can be added to the overall
plan with consideration of cumulative impacts and in consistency with
the general strategic intent of the plan. This is the planning level
that is based upon Adaptive Management, meaning that it has a continuous
cycle of activity, evaluation and review, adaptation and change.

The need to consider connected actions and cumulative effects, and to
enable the public to see the geographic context within which the actions
will occur, argues for an approach to project planning that considers a
larger geographic area than is usually covered by a single project.
These areas of interest will rarely follow National Forest boundaries.
Current examples are sometimes called "site-specific" landscape plans,
and following this experience, we anticipate that small-landscape plans
will cover from 10,000 to 150,000 acres. There may be individual
projects that are highly controversial and that require a longer time
for public discussion prior to reaching a decision. In such cases, it
would be appropriate to evaluate them separately, but the cumulative
effects of the project must be analyzed in the context of the small
landscape management plan before integrating them.

Describing a Flexible, Multi-level Planning and Decision Making Process

The following schematic represents our vision of the overall decision
making process when bioregional policy guidance is necessary to provide
for ecological sustainability given the scale at which scientifically
credible conservation strategies for species and ecosystems need to be
developed. Bioregional policy provides clear guidance for conserving
species and ecosystems covering wide geographic ranges, crossing many
administrative and political boundaries. The variation, as shown next,
is when these conservation strategies are developed as part of the large
landscape strategic planning process.

1\. A Three Level Process

\[Norm -- I think we need to add monitoring process here to emphasize
how it is integral to our inclusive planning process. Somehow we should
show the information link back to the assessments as the "maintenance"
of information process flowing from the information gathering aspect of
monitoring. I was going to do it here, but it will be a lot easier in a
"real" schematic which you probably already have. NOTE: the name changes
to fit our new discussion.\]

2\. A Two Level Process

An alternative process for decision making would combine the bioregional
guidance for ecological sustainability with the large landscape
strategic planning process. The following schematic represents our
vision of the overall planning process when conservation strategies for
species and ecosystems are developed as a policy decision within the
large landscape planning process.

ach of the two planning and decision making approaches has advantages
and disadvantages. Developing strategies for ecological sustainability
at the bioregional level ensures that a coherent conservation strategy
for species and ecosystems is available for use as the foundation for
large landscape plans. We expect that many ecosystems and the ranges of
many species cover the area of multiple large landscape planning areas.
Therefore, attempting to develop conservation strategies as part of the
large-landscape planning process puts significant pressure on the
decision making teams to work together across large-landscape planning
areas, as they craft their strategic policies. In this circumstance, an
independent "science-consistency" review of proposed decisions before
they are finalized is an important mechanism to ensure both the
technical adequacy of the decision and to build public trust in the
decision.

Monitoring and Evaluation

Just as defining the desired future condition is the link between
information and decision making, so monitoring and evaluation are the
link between decisions and implementation. The general purposes of
monitoring are to evaluate the effectiveness of management approaches
(Are expected outcomes resulting from management activities?), ensure
the reliability of implementation (Have the policy standards and
guidelines adequately controlled management actions?), and validate the
assumptions used in predicting the consequences of different management
approaches. An adequate strategic plan contains both the methods and
proposed measurements for monitoring.

While monitoring the extent to which actions achieve expected goals is
important, equally important is monitoring whether expected social,
economic, ecological, budget, staff and political conditions persist.
Indeed, monitoring "external environmental conditions" is an essential
management role. Thus, monitoring is anticipatory in that it focuses
attention on factors which may stress or change the system and it seeks
explanations for the cause and effect relationships between these
"stressors" and expected ecosystem responses.

We think of a strategy or decision as a hypothesis about how we expect
the ecological, social and economic systems to respond to planned
management actions. The administrative role is not only to undertake
monitoring activities, but also undertake the analysis to respond to
findings. On an annual basis, this means evaluating whether
implementation activities are working as expected and whether management
standards and guidelines are being applied. It also means reviewing the
key assumptions made about the external forces and stressors affecting
management. At times, it will be important to have independent field
reviews of management activities both as a check on the adequacy of
monitoring approaches and as a means of enhancing public trust in
management. The key challenge for managers is to identify when changes
in management activities are needed. The concept of adaptive management
begins with this kind of learning -- is what we are doing achieving the
goals we think it is, and, if not, what changes need to be made?

At a strategic level, monitoring needs to allow managers to assess the
effectiveness of strategies and complex pathways of treatments and
actions in achieving desired future conditions. A regular cycle of
review needs to be established by managers and protocols for measuring
whether goals are being achieved developed as part of the strategic
plan. These reviews should include those who participated in developing
the strategy and should involve public participation. Critical
assessments should be encouraged so as to enhance the possibility of
seeing beyond expected results. Reviewing the effectiveness of strategic
plans requires a longer term perspective and also greater attention to
the assumptions made about the external environment.

Monitoring and evaluation are the keys to creating a learning process
whereby changes in how goals are met as well as what goals are desired
naturally occur. Taking a questioning stance is an important ingredient
of an effective monitoring process and supporting critical evaluation is
an important management role. Adaptive management is a general process
for treating management actions as experiments. Learning from such
"management experiments" may occur by "trial and error," incremental
improvement as activities are changed in response to findings, or a
rigorous "scientific adaptive management" wherein a range of activities
are undertaken and actively compared. Depending on the uncertainty
related to whether a suite of activities are likely to achieve desired
goals, managers need to explicitly set forth their plans for adaptive
management, analysis and learning as part of the land and resource
management plan.

In addition to evaluating the effectiveness of actions in meeting goals,
performance reviews of individuals, organizational capacity, adequacy of
budgets and staffing, and stewardship capacity are also critical
components of a monitoring plan. Performance evaluation needs to focus
on whether the agency and administrative unit are effectively organized
to carry out management activities, learn through adaptive management,
as well as build and maintain stewardship capacity.

An Integrated Land and Resource Management Plan

The NFMA calls for development of an integrated land and resource plan
for each unit of the National Forest System. How does that fit with this
proposal? In our approach the integrated land and resource plan for each
administrative unit of the National Forest System is the repository of
the policies, strategic directions, implementing decisions, adaptive
management plans made at all levels of the planning and decision
process. As the foundation of administrative policy and guidance, it
includes the budget and staffing needs for implementation as well as the
procedures and timing of monitoring and review. It includes monitoring
processes, as well as ongoing results and subsequent changes in both
implementing and strategic decisions.

As critiques of past "forest planning" acknowledge and our analysis
confirms, when the administrative units were also the planning units, as
under the 1982 regulations for planning, then cross-boundary and
multi-jurisdictional issues related to large-scale ecological processes
were neglected. Partly this was due to a lack of information, a
situation fostered by limiting the scope of information to the
administrative unit by having the "analysis of the management situation"
one of the steps of "forest planning." Partly, however, this was the
result of competitiveness among line officers and an "inward looking"
approach to information, analysis and planning. Nonetheless, the result
were "forest plans" which took little account of neighboring National
Forests and seldom considered management issues that crossed
administrative lines, unless mandated to do so as in the case of
wilderness planning.

The crux of our new approach is the separation of the information
gathering (assessment) processes from the policy and decision making
processes. By creating a multi-level planning process for developing
policies, strategic direction and implementation decisions, the focus is
on the scope of the decision and the planning and decision-making team
consist of all those with jurisdictional responsibilities in the area.
The physical location of these decisions rests at the administrative
unit, because an integrated land and resource management plan must also
include the budgetary and staffing plans for carrying out the proposed
policies and activities.

Thus, the Plan is a "loose leaf notebook" that contains all of the
policy direction, strategies and implementation proposals from decisions
made at all levels of the planning process. It must also contain the
monitoring methodologies and the evaluation results. The process of
"amendment" of the plan is simply a way of incorporating the dynamic
nature of decisions in an adaptive management approach.

Clearly, land and resource management plans are the lynchpin in
connecting large-landscape policies and strategies to specific actions,
i.e., small landscape planning. These plans are the necessary focal
point for summarizing budgets and staffing needs for proposed
activities, measuring performance, and monitoring results. These plans
provide a framework for the administration of a National Forest within a
context of federal agencies and jurisdictions, state and local
governments, tribes, local associations, and other landowners. In
addition, we must always remember that they are important sources of
identity for many of the participants in forest planning.

We envision the "Forest Plan" as a "living document" holding in its
covers the current agreements and strategies affecting a particular
National Forest or Grassland. The boundaries of National Forests may not
be appropriate as planning units, but they are the primary
administrative unit for carrying out management of these lands.

We would predict that each of the three levels in the planning and
decision making process described above would need a NEPA document---an
EIS or EA associated with it. We believe that, as described here, the
"Forest Plan" would not be part of a NEPA process as it serves as a
mechanism for compiling the results of a set of large-landscape
strategic policies and small-landscape proposed actions.

Integrating Budgets into Planning

Past "forest plans" developed both the goals for forest management and a
set of actions (such as timber harvest, road construction, trail
building, wildlife habitat improvement, campground maintenance) for the
decade to achieve those goals. These actions were generally developed
without limiting budget needs to current experience. Rather the plans
were developed to help define the budget that would be needed, based on
conclusions reached by the Forest Service, after much analysis and
public involvement. This approach often led to disappointment during
plan implementation, as Congress appropriated less money than envisioned
and targeted the funds it did allocate to a different mix of actions and
outputs than called for in the plans.

For planning to be meaningful, it needs to bear a relationship to the
current and likely future situation. To achieve this there must be some
relationship between the plan and the budget available to undertake the
plan as discussed at length in Chapter 5. As outlined above, strategic
planning should concentrate on setting the long-term goals and the
associated desired future conditions and make a first estimate of the
pathway (set of actions needed/conditions expected along the way) over
time to achieve these desired future conditions. The estimated rate of
attainment of desired conditions should be keyed to expected budgets,
along with analysis of how increased or decreased budgets will affect
the rate of progress. The details of actions to achieve progress toward
these goals, however, should be left to implementation planning. As part
of strategic planning, the budget needs of maintaining the desired
future condition should be examined; if they appear unrealistic, less
expensive desired future conditions should be considered.

The actions outlined in the small landscape management decisions,
updated on a yearly-basis, should be the basis for the budget requests.
Budget shortfalls will affect the actions taken and the rate of progress
toward goals; they do not automatically trigger a revision in the
strategic plan. If it becomes clear over time that Congress is unlikely
to fund accomplishment of the management goals, then the large
landscape, strategies and policies may need revision. During revision, a
comparison should be made between the expected and actual budgets in the
past so that future strategies are based on realistic budget
expectations.

We envision the relationship between large landscape strategic
decisions, small landscape implementation decisions, the integrated land
and resource management plans, and budgeting as follows:

When planning is understood to encompass the full range of processes
from information gathering, through decision making and action, and
connecting the monitoring and evaluation of actions, then the focus of
the organization shifts. Rather than viewing the planning process as an
impediment to management action, the planning process becomes the locus
of decision making efforts and fully engages managers at all levels in
guiding and directing management. The role of developing independent
information has long been argued as a mechanism for giving managers an
"independent" understanding of the physical, biological and social
environment to compare to experience or current policy. Once managers
understand the value of independent information for decision making, the
scientific assessments and monitoring as a mechanism for maintaining a
solid foundation of information will prove their worth. When the purpose
of planning is to develop strategic direction and policies and then
propose a suite of actions to implement them, the focus is on making
good decisions and engaging all who need to be involved in a
collaborative process.

Thus, our multi-level planning and decision-making process focuses on
the substance of the decisions at each level. The crucial challenge for
the agency is to ensure that all who need to participate in making
decisions at each level are fully engaged in the collaborative planning
process. In an adaptive management framework, the monitoring and
evaluation processes naturally lead to revisiting decisions based on
performance. This means that a decision is made within some levels of
certainty, but that all policies and actions are viewed as
"experimental" in that they need to be monitored for performance under
site-specific conditions. Setting the range of certainty associated with
strategies, policies and implementing actions will be an important role
for decision-makers and provides a link to the scientific teams
conducting the assessments.

Key Elements in our Proposal for a Collaborative Planning Process

Make the "desired future conditions", and the outcomes associated with
them, the central reference points for planning and management

Planning should organize around a collective vision of the desired
future considering the larger landscape in which the national forests
sit.

Developing a collective vision of future landscape conditions, and the
uses, products, values, and services that will be provided by these
conditions, is our best hope for a "coming together" of the people and
groups that care about the National Forests and Grasslands. Pictures,
maps, and computer imagery of future conditions will help people
visualize what the future landscapes look like.

Planning should establish the pathways to the desired future conditions,
and orient performance measures, monitoring and budgeting to making
progress along those pathways.

Planning should estimate a schedule of forest management actions needed
to reach each desired future condition along with the landscape
conditions expected to be achieved through time. The correspondence
between management action and expected outcomes should become the
performance measures for achievement of strategic goals. Measurement of
performance would be accomplished through 1) comparing, on an annual,
basis, the expected treatment outcomes to actual treatment results, and
2) comparing every five to ten years, the rate and degree of movement
towards the desired future conditions to that expected. Either of those
measures might have three possible outcomes: 1) concluding that
management actions are moving the landscape toward the desired future
conditions; 2) concluding that treatments must be adjusted to more
efficiently achieve those conditions; (3) reevaluating the possibility
of the desired future conditions in light of the potential of the
landscape to achieve them.

Planning should be a public process that is collaborative, deliberative,
generates stewardship capacity, and is educational for both the public
and agency

Use participatory approach.

We believe that planning will be more successful if it takes a
"participatory" approach, in which people, communities, tribes,
businesses, interest groups, and governments are full partners engaged
in defining issues and, most important, in developing and evaluating
options that specifically address issues of public concern.

It is important to recognize that common concerns provide the agenda and
context for all parts of the planning process. The national strategic
vision, as exemplified in current statements regarding the importance of
watershed restoration, is a response to issues of national concern. The
bioregional assessments address issues of regional, as well as national
concern, and provide a context for understanding local issues. The
large-landscape planning process is founded on the identification and
deliberation of issues of public concern with the expectation of
creating collaborative stewardship, as strategies and approaches for
addressing these issues emerge. (Huron-Manistee example)

One approach to developing a participatory approach that should be given
serious consideration is the formation of a "public planning group."
(see sidebar on White Mountain/Green Mountain/Finger Lakes process.)
This group would work with the planning team to identify common issues
as an agenda for the planning process to address. This task would entail
reviewing issues raised by public comments; developing a list of "public
issues" for the planning process to address; identifying issues that
require scientific assessment; developing short descriptions of each
issue to identify additional analysis needs; ensuring that the planning
process addresses those issues; reviewing proposed decisions based upon
the public issue analysis; and working with the Forest Service planning
team to identify alternative approaches to addressing public issues.
This is one way to convene the community of interests so as to ensure
public deliberation and build collaborative capacity. It is important to
remember that the "public issues" are focused on striving toward
sustainability, while providing multiple uses, services, benefits, and
products.

To further facilitate communication and participation, important
information about the National Forests and Grasslands should be
available on the Internet. The planning process should include a
participation strategy designed for the Internet so that interested
parties living away from the region can participate in planning for it.
Working analyses and discussion papers should be continuously available
and contributions invited. Minutes from the public planning group
discussions should also be available on the Internet. The National
Forests and Grasslands should make every effort to invite public
participation from people living too far from the area to participate in
frequent meetings. Tentative alternatives should be placed on the
Forests Home Page on the World Wide Web.

[b) Maintain the terms of the public controversy.]{.underline} The
planning process should create an open forum for public and
organizational inquiry, in which issues of key public concern are
deliberated and analyzed, and questions defined, so that all can
actively work on developing solutions to them. For this to occur, the
public must define the issues, and those definitions must illuminate the
terms of the controversy. A critical feature of the issue-definition
process is for everyone to understand the reasons for controversy among
the diverse set of interests and perspectives.

Conflict can be a source of creativity rather than division, when
diverse perspectives are welcomed and deliberated in open, accessible
forums. Creating open forums for discussion of important public issues
is the essence of public planning. Reaching agreement on decision
criteria and evaluation criteria has to be a key part of the discussion
before debate begins. Having the information from the assessments will
greatly facilitate the ability of individuals to understand the
implications of their ideas and those of others.

[c) Build stewardship capacity]{.underline} At all stages and levels,
the planning process must enable citizens, as well as other agencies and
organizations, to become stewards of the land, not merely its clients
and customers. Collaboration links individuals and organizations into
new relationships that can both contribute to defining and integrating
goals for the National Forest System and provide some of the capacity to
carry them out. By building collaborative relationships, the planning
process will build implementation capacity by defining problems in ways
that make them everyone's responsibility.

Planning should engage the agency by organizing for effective action

Keep decisions close to the planning areaby designating as the
responsible officials managers whose responsibilities cover the area of
the planning level.

Currently, the Chief is responsible for regional plans and the Regional
Forester is responsible for National Forest plans. This approach
inhibits change and adaptation both in regional and national forest
plans. We believe that the Regional Foresters should be responsible for
bioregional policy guidance and that the Forest Supervisors should be
responsible for strategic, large-landscape planning. Forest Supervisors
should work closely with District Rangers in developing the
small-landscape, implementation plans. Forest Supervisors are
responsible for ensuring that an integrated land and resource management
plan is up-to-date and reflects what has happened in the area as well as
what actions are anticipated over the planning horizon.

Emphasize ecological boundaries for assessment and planning, but also
consider their social meaning.

In the past, planning boundaries were generally based on
political/social boundaries---states, national forests or grasslands,
timber sale boundaries. Over the last 20 years, it has been increasingly
recognized that assessing and planning for ecological sustainability
must use ecological boundaries, for example, the areas used by
wide-ranging or key wildlife species, defined by major watersheds,
mountain ranges, or vegetative types. Using ecologically meaningful
planning boundaries will enable not only the development of
comprehensive plans for the conservation of species and ecosystems, but
also the ability to measure the cumulative effects of current and future
management actions. This is especially true for the bioregional
assessment and guidance for ecological sustainability: the logical
species range or other ecologically meaningful area should be used as
the assessment boundary. Examples are the bioregions defined by the
range of the northern spotted owl, the watershed formed by the Columbia
River, and the vegetative/watershed boundary for the Southern
Appalachian Assessment.

Rarely, however, will a single boundary be sufficient for the assessment
of ecological sustainability---rather different boundaries will be
needed for different species and ecosystems in the assessment. In our
discussion below, "bioregion" refers to the area formed by the union of
all the different species' ranges and ecosystem boundaries. This is a
crucial concept in that within a bioregion, there will be several
boundaries, depending on the issue, species, or ecological process. Some
aspects, like the atmospheric component in the Southern Appalachian
Assessment, will extend well beyond the boundaries of terrestrial
processes. Similarly, aquatic ecological systems will often link a
bioregion with its surrounding area. In this way, a bioregion will form
an integrative ecological area for purposes of organizing ecological and
social information.

Planning at the large- and small-landscape levels should use ecological
boundaries, but these boundaries should also have social meaning.
Large-landscape planning might be focus on a geographic area that
includes a single National Forest, a cluster of National Forests, or
pieces of one or more National Forests. Examples would be the Grande
Ronde drainage within the Columbia River drainage, the Lake Tahoe
watershed in California, the collection of watersheds containing the
three southern Idaho National Forests, or the northern, central, and
southern parts of the Sierra Nevada. Small-landscape implementation
plans would cover areas large enough to provide a context for action and
to measure cumulative effects, but small enough to enable site-specific
analysis of proposed actions. They also should have some meaning to
people as a whole. Examples are the Little Applegate River on the Rogue
River National Forest, the Seven Buttes area of the Deschutes National
Forest, and the Chattooga Watershed Conservation Plan in the Southeast.

Consider the larger landscape in which the National Forests and
Grasslands are located in order to understand the role of the National
Forests in ensuring ecological sustainability and contributing to human
use.

Past planning tended to look inward at what the forests can produce
rather than outward at the larger landscape and the special contribution
that the National Forests and Grasslands can make. Ideally, land and
resource planning integrates the broader geographic, political, and
social landscape with the potential contributions of the forests,
rangelands, watersheds, and grasslands. Maintaining the diversity of
native plant and animal communities and the productive capacity of
ecological systems usually depends, in part, upon the activities on
other public, tribal, state and private lands. Thus, the planning
process must be outward looking with the goal of understanding the
broader landscape in which the national forests and grasslands are
located. The assessment of social, cultural and economic conditions and
trends should provide a useful synthesis of current information
regarding demographic changes and migration patterns, economic patterns
and relationships, social organization, current institutional
arrangements, and relevant historical context. This assessment will
allow planners to have an independent "picture" of the social
environment, which can be refined and become more "place-based" in the
planning process.

[d) Address all federal lands and work with all affected federal
agencies in a coordinated fashion.]{.underline} In the past, "forest
planning" tended to go its own way. We have realized that effective
assessment and planning for our federal lands requires a coordinated
approach across affected federal agencies. Federal agencies have made
great strides in improving their coordination in recent years, such as
the interagency development of the Northwest Forest Plan. Still much
work needs to be done. The Committee of Scientists has repeatedly heard
that state, tribal, and private groups are becoming overwhelmed by the
multitude and complexity of federal land and resource planning
processes.

Federal agencies should coordinate their planning processes, especially
where there are adjacent federal managers within a regional landscape
(Applegate sidebar).

Harmonizing and coordinating the different statutory priorities,
geographic areas of consideration, and implementation time frames of the
various federal agencies is no small task, but the potential benefits
are enormous. Integrating and coordinating these separate planning
processes is essential to developing integrated strategies for
ecological and social sustainability and for adapting these strategies
to changed conditions over time.

Despite differences among agency programs, the principles and
recommendations set out in this report have broad application among the
various federal agencies responsible for management or regulation of
natural resources. Integrated federal planning will not magically solve
difficult scientific and social issues, but it should enhance public
understanding and confidence in the various federal planning and
regulatory programs. It should also provide the public with a clearer
picture of desired future conditions for entire landscapes, from
watersheds to river basins (Sidebar with a check list for the public to
judge whether coordinated planning is occurring, including whether
agencies jointly plan and map their activities, whether they have
synchronized their strategic planning, etc.). With the federal "shop" in
order, collaboration with state and tribal governments, groups, and the
public can become more efficient and effective.

[e) Utilize the NEPA review process as an opportunity to coordinate
across agencies and jurisdictional responsibilities in the review and
analysis of proposed decisions.]{.underline} Agency processes for
planning, decision-making, and appeals all assume a single-agency
approach. As a result, agency processes are generally inwardly focused
and offer little up-front opportunity for broader involvement in the
assessment, planning, and decisional processes. NEPA is intended as a
process to disclose the evidence and reasoning used in making
commitments of federal resources or budgets. Because it is a process
that applies to all federal agencies, it is an opportunity for
integrating and coordinating single-agency processes. There have been
some attempts at such coordination in the past, such as using a "lead
agency" when several agencies are implicated.

At the level of bioregional guidance and large-landscape planning levels
the decisions are strategic and largely programmatic, and thus provide
natural opportunities for multi-agency coordination. Ideally, a more
unified federal approach to planning and assessment will evolve over
time, given the likelihood that the need for coordination will increase
with greater attention to sustainability. In the meantime, however, the
NEPA process was intended as mechanism to enhance working relationships
across agencies in the process of developing their plans and activities.

At the level of small-landscape plans and project decisions, NEPA
processes are opportunities for integrating the information from the
different assessment levels with the strategic direction from the
large-landscape planning. The rationale for decisions should naturally
flow from these sources, along with the processes of public engagement.

There are several aspects of current law and regulation that pose
significant barriers to an effective NEPA process at the small-landscape
planning level, however. First, the current analysis requirements for
individual projects or activities are substantial. Generally, a fairly
complex and complete EA is prepared for each project, in anticipation of
post-decisional appeals, or even lawsuits. From the perspective of
current planners and managers, these analysis and documentation
requirements are significant impediments to the integrated,
multi-project/activity planning we envision for the small-landscape
plan.

Second, the real challenge at the small-landscape planning level is
two-fold: the statutory requirement for post-decisional project-level
appeals currently inhibits planners and managers from "bundling"
projects out of concern that one highly controversial project can delay
or derail several projects. Again, this is a real problem. We have posed
a solution of developing more complex public discussions of
controversial projects and integrating the decisions about these
projects into the small-landscape plan at a later date. This solution
does not grapple with the second, more fundamental problem: by law the
agency must settle post-decisional project appeals within forty-five
days. This means that the EA must have sufficient analysis and
documentation to serve as an appeal document, and even as evidence for a
lawsuit, should that occur.

Third, and perhaps the more difficult problem, is that the current
EA/EIS process assumes a "one-time" decision. The very essence of
small-landscape planning is an adaptive management approach, based upon
monitoring and learning. Although small-landscape planning can more
readily do "real-time" cumulative-effects analysis --- meaning that
actual activities in the area and the relative contribution of new
activities can be assessed, not just vague forecasts based on historical
conditions --- this kind of analysis is difficult to integrate with a
one-time decision approach. Developing a decision disclosure and review
process that is on-going and uses monitoring information to adjust or
change treatments and activities will need to be a high priority for
realizing the potential of the small-landscape plans.

Thus, NEPA provides a real opportunity for working toward greater
harmonization among agency planning and decision processes. At the same
time, its emphasis on one-time decisions is inconsistent with an
adaptive management approach. This problem may require that a new
process for disclosure and review emerge, either through changes in
administrative rules or changes in law (e.g., the project level appeals
process) through legislative processes.

Planning, plans, and management should be efficient.

Be efficient in achievement of multiple goals.

The National Forests should be efficient in their management, within the
context of meeting their other goals. This mandate does not require the
Forest Service to manage the public lands to maximize monetary return.
Rather, it requires that planning methodologies do two things: 1) reduce
the trade-offs in achieving different goals, and 2) demonstrate
economical use of public funds by attempting to provide each alternative
combination of conditions and outputs they consider, at least cost.

Some people may recoil from pursuit of "efficiency" in resource
analysis, in part, because they feel that it serves only to justify
commodity production from forests. We would argue that efficiency
analysis, broadly interpreted to address non-market as well as market
outputs, serves an important function in planning the management of
forests. Whenever multiple goals are sought, efficiency analysis can
reduce the conflicts that may arise or exist. Also, with the greater
scrutiny that budgets for forest management will receive in the future,
it will become increasingly important that mangers be able to
demonstrate that they are not "wasting" resources. Efficiency analysis
enables managers to make this demonstration.

Be efficient in administration, including moving toward more integrated
administration of jurisdictionally divided areas.

National Forests have an important role to play in organizing budgets
and staffing needs for proposed activities, measuring performance, and
monitoring results. Their plans provide a framework for integrative
administration of a National Forest, within the context of other federal
agencies and jurisdictions, state and local governments, tribes, local
associations and other landowners. Even when the National Forests are
not the unit of planning, they are the administrative location for
staff, budgets, and coordination necessary for developing large- and
small-landscape planning processes and for implementing the resulting
policy direction and the projects.

We rely upon this administrative capacity of the National Forest System,
but suggest a move toward an organizational structure keyed to the
boundaries of the large-landscape planning processes in some places.
Without such a change, the potential for inconsistent, wasteful actions
within the large-landscape areas is high. In addition, designating a
large-landscape area, drawn on ecological boundaries, as the
administrative unit should make it easier to communicate the goals of
management to the public. A current example of such a unit is the Lake
Tahoe Basin, which is the watershed of Lake Tahoe. It was previously
administered by four National Forests in two bioregions. An example of a
unit that should be established is the Applegate Watershed, which is
currently administered by two National Forests and two Bureau of Land
Management districts (sidebar).

Planning should improve performance by developing credible strategies
and providing independent review.

Make science-based planning a reality.

In the first round of "forest plans" under NFMA, scientists, by and
large, sat on the sidelines, as managers and inter-disciplinary teams
developed "forest plans." A series of lawsuits, and a growing
realization of the central role of science in planning, led the Forest
Service and other federal agencies to call for "scientifically credible
conservation strategies" for species and ecosystems. Throughout the
country, in recent years, the Forest Service has embraced the notion of
planning based on science as one of the tenets of forest management.

Science-based planning incorporates current scientific thought into the
planning process and the policies and decisions that result, with the
understanding that this knowledge is a set of working hypotheses
informed by experiments, demonstrations, argument, and reflection, and
that over time, these hypotheses may be retained, revised, and discarded
as needed. Under our proposal, scientists will be asked to assist in a
wide variety of ways, including: creating knowledge of relevance to
forest planning; working on the integrative science of bioregional
assessments; helping managers understand the application of this
scientific and technical knowledge to management problems; and helping
to design effective monitoring procedures and the experiments needed
under adaptive management. Managers will need to work with people from
another culture (science) and learn to treat management actions as
"experiments" with varying levels of certainty.

Measure plan performance through the achievement of actions and
outcomes.

Traditionally, plan performance has been measured through attainment of
output targets. However, as discussed earlier, evaluating performance of
federal agencies is a public duty. Thus, the performance review
processes should also be open, involving interested and affected
parties, and be aimed toward change when change is needed. In planning,
a schedule of forest management actions needed to reach the desired
future condition should be estimated, along with the landscape
conditions expected to be achieved through time[.]{.underline} The
correspondence between management action and expected outcomes should
become the performance measures for achievement of forest plans goals.
Measurement of plan performance would be accomplished through 1)
comparing, on an annual, basis, the expected treatment outcomes to
actual treatment results, and 2) comparing every 5 to 10 years, the rate
and degree of movement towards the desired future conditions to that
expected.. Either of those measures might have three possible
outcomes: 1) concluding that management actions are moving the landscape
towards the desired future conditions; 2) concluding that treatements
need to be adjusted to more efficiently achieve this condition; (3)
reevaluating the possibility of the desired future conditions in light
of the potential of the landscape to achieve them.

Establish independent reviews on the use of technical and scientific
information in planning and the consistency of management proposals with
current knowledge.

The credibility of the planning process rests in part on the routine
application of an "outside check" on the use of technical and scientific
information. These reviews can provide independent verification that
plans and their implementation are science-based. They can highlight and
reward creative approaches to the challenging issues faced in the
management of the national forests and rangelands. The knowledge of an
evaluation at the end of the planning process should, by its very
presence, encourage collaboration between managers, specialists, and
scientists as the plans are developed. There should be an evaluation of
the use of scientific and technical information in large-landscape
planning, i.e., an evaluation of the consistency of strategic planning
and plans with scientific and technical understanding. A potential role
model for this effort is the "science consistency" check recently
pioneered in the Tongass National Forest Land Management Plan (Everest
et al., 1997) ---a technique that evaluates whether the information
transferred from scientists to policy makers and planners was understood
and used appropriately.

Conduct independent field review of projects to ascertain whether
implementation would meet the goals of the plans from a scientific and
technical viewpoint. The interagency PACFISH reviews could serve as a
model for this effort, assuming that the interagency committee was
broadened to consider all the values recognized in the plans.

Independent review is a critical element of adaptive management and
planning. In addition to the scientific and technical role of
independent review, the review should also evaluate the process itself
to identify information bottlenecks and evaluate whether there is
adequate interdisciplinary representation, coordination of planning and
management across administrative boundaries, and opportunities for
discussions with scientists.

Use of Criteria and Indicators

The Santiago Agreement for the Conservation and Sustainable Management
of Temperate and Boreal Forests, signed on February 3, 1995 is an
important step forward in conserving forest resources. The criteria and
indicators, as stated in the Declaration, "provide a common framework
for describing, assessing, and evaluating a country's progress toward
sustainability at the national level. They are not intended to assess
directly sustainability at the forest management unit level. As such,
the criteria and indicators should help provide an international
reference for policymakers in the formulation of national policies and a
basis for international cooperation aimed at supporting sustainable
forest management. Journal of Forestry, 1995, 93(4):18)"

The Santiago agreement includes criteria and indicators for conservation
and sustainable management of temperate and boreal forests. Seven
criteria were developed:

1\) Conservation of biological diversity

2\) Maintenance of productive capacity of forest ecosystems

3\) Maintenance of forest ecosystem health and vitality

4\) Conservation and maintenance of soil and water resources

5\) Maintenance of forest contribution to global carbon cycles

6\) Maintenance and enhancement of long-term multiple socioeconomic
benefits to meet the needs of society

7\) Legal, institutional, and economic framework for forest conservation
and sustainable management.

A number of indicators are listed under each criterion (see the Journal
of Forestry article for the complete list). For example, the first
criterion (conservation of biological diversity) is subdivided into
ecosystem diversity, species diversity, and genetic diversity; two
criteria are listed under species diversity: a. Number of
forest-dependent species and b. Status (rare, threatened, endangered,
extinct) of forest-dependent species at risk of not maintaining viable
breeding populations, as determined by legislation or scientific
assessment.

We have a number of observations about the criteria and indicators:

1\) The criteria and indicators are explicitly established with national
and international perspectives. The National RPA Assessment would
logically be the vehicle for aggregating and reporting the state of the
lands of the United States relative to the criteria and indicators and
the regional assessments recommended in this chapter can assist in
gathering the needed data.

2\) In addition, the criteria and indicators can provide a set of
considerations for examining regional conditions as well. While
acknowledging their potential usefulness, we have a number of
qualifications about the use of these indicators for gauging
sustainability at the regional level:

a\) They may not be sufficient, by themselves, to gauge ecological
sustainability. As an example, the "maintenance of productive capacity
of forest ecosystems" does not appear to include the amount of dead
trees for wildlife habitat as an indicator. Undoubtedly these indicators
will be improved through time.

b\) They are generally non-spatial and seem to lack a landscape view.
They focus on measuring acres in certain condition, without the
aggregation needed for judgements about areas. The lack of integrative
concepts on the use of the indicators may make it difficult to use them
to make overall judgements.

c\) They could consume much of the agency's resources for inventory and
monitoring, leaving little to other important measures of
sustainability.

Appendix: Characteristics and Tasks of Assessments and Planning

We have tried to summarize below the characteristics of the different
assessments and plans and the tasks they should undertake.

Assessments

These assessments should have the characteristics described earlier:

The purpose of assessments is to understand the current conditions and
trends regarding the land, resources and people in an area in light of
their history and the forces of change.

To accomplish this goal, assessments address all lands within the
geographic area being studied, on which they report conditions, trends,
risks, and other issues of interest.

The Forest Service and other federal agencies with responsibilities
within the bioregion help coordinate assessments so that they cover all
federal lands and issues.

The federal agencies work on joint fact-finding with collaborative
groups formed by relevant federal, state, and local agencies as well as
tribes, various organizations, local associations, and citizens as they
attempt to develop a shared base of information. Assessments are guided,
in part, by questions posed by the people living in the area, managing
land and resources in the area, and using the area for economic or
recreational purposes. These questions help shape the scientific
contribution to understanding the ecological, economic and social
processes and forces for change. At their best, these assessments should
create forums in which scientists, managers, and the public can
collectively understand the questions to be answered and the findings
that are devleoped.

Critical to an adequate assessment is an integrated analysis of these
questions so that scientific contributions to understanding one part of
the system are not isolated from those focused on another.
Sustainability demands an integrated understanding of the ecological,
economic and social conditions and prospective changes, and thus future
planning based on this assessment information will require this
integrated information.

The assessments are completed in a relatively short period of
time---within a year for a bioregional assessment and within six months
for a watershed assessment.

The trust of participants and non-participants alike is enhanced when
the assessment process includes independent review as a normal part of
the process. For example, in the case of the Southern Appalachian
Assessment, a multi-stakeholder group reviewed the scientific and
technical adequacy of the assessment. This group included professionals
from local and national non-government organizations, which greatly
contributed to the perception of independence and openness.

Summary information produced by assessments should be widely available.

Bioregional assessments

Bioregional assessments are driven by our need to understand the current
state and trends on forests, rangelands, and watersheds, relative to
ecological, economic, and social sustainability. Bioregional assessments
are the foundation of independent information necessary for planning,
decision-making and implementation. Bioregional assessments are a
necessary first step in the planning process. These assessments provide
inventory information on which to build a foundation for addressing the
conservation of species and ecosystems as well as other regional issues.

The Southern Appalachian Assessment is an example of an assessment
designed to inform the planning processes on five national forests, so
that each of them could address issues of regional concern in context,
as well as more clearly understand their unique and important
contributions to the larger region (sidebar). The science assessment of
the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Plan (ICBEMP) provides
an assessment of species and ecosystems in the Columbia Basin as the
foundation of bioregional guidance and planning (sidebar). Thus,
bioregional assessments are directly linked to bioregional guidance and
to large-landscape planning processes.

These assessments are collaborative problem-based analyses of issues of
public and scientific concern regarding what is known about the lands
and resources within a large geographic area. Areas of interest seldom
follow National Forest boundaries. Given the large area often covered by
bioregional assessments, they will require the participation of other
federal agencies, tribes, state and local government, and the public.

Bioregional assessments should be designed to build adequate inventory
information to serve as a foundation for conservation strategies and
sustainable use of the land and resources. In particular, they should
synthesize and develop an integrated analysis of the best scientific and
technical information about the diversity of native plant and animal
communities, the productive capacity of ecological systems in the
bioregion, the social and economic context and existing institutional
arrangements and their stewardship capacity. To achieve this goal,
assessments should at least:

1\) Define the focal species for use in the analysis of species
diversity in planning and develop procedures for estimating the
viability of focal species, threatened and endangered species, and
sensitive species. Apply these procedures to estimate viability of these
species under likely management in the region while allowing, to some
degree, for uncertainties that may develop (e.g., changing levels of
funding, natural disturbances, competition from exotic species) . As a
result of this analysis, highlight risks to species viability.

2\) Define measures of ecological integrity and develop procedures for
estimating the level of integrity in different ecosystems in the
bioregion. Apply these procedures to estimating ecological integrity
under likely management in the region. As a result of this analysis,
highlight risks to ecological integrity.

3\) Suggest elements necessary for developing conservation strategies
for species and ecosystems during the policy and decision-making
processes.

4\) Do an historical analysis of forest, rangeland, and watershed
conditions. Suggest major issues and problems arising from the current
condition of these resources. Make estimates of the range of historical
variability for a number of resources, including the composition and
structure of the different vegetative types in the region and the size,
intensity, and frequency of natural disturbances..

5\) Develop an analysis of the demographic changes and migration trends
of human populations, economic patterns and trends, social organization,
and assess the stewardship capacity of existing institutional
arrangements.

6\) Compile or develop information on the contribution of the National
Forests to the economic and social well-being in the bioregion,
identifying those uses, products, values, and services of special
significance to the communities and economies of the region and the
nation.

7\) Respond to questions developed through public participation
processes so as to ensure that the assessment is relevant to people's
concerns.

Watershed Assessments

"Watershed assessment" is the common name for information development
processes for relatively small, ecologically identifiable geographic
areas that interpret and further develop the findings of bioregional
assessments and strategic policies and decisions. Boundaries for these
assessments range from small river basins, mountain ranges, or other
landscape units that nest within area of the relevant bioregional
assessments and large landscape planning areas. In some parts of the
country, most notably the southeastern part of the United States,
small-scale assessment boundaries do not follow watershed boundaries,
and other terms are commonly used. We have adopted the watershed name
for its easy recognition, but encourage other, regionally specific,
names to be adopted so as to provide that same sense of identification
with scale.

These assessments share common characteristics with bioregional
assessments: federal agencies with responsibilities within the regions
use a coordinated effort to address all lands within the geographic area
being studied, on which they report conditions, trends, risks, and other
issues of interest.

As with bioregional assessments, watershed assessments need a
collaborative approach to create a mutually understood base of
information regarding a specific area, involving relevant federal, state
and local agencies as well as tribes, various organizations, local
associations, and citizens. People often both think and care about lands
and resources at the scale of watersheds. This "sense of place" makes it
easier to meaningfully engage people in watershed assessments. A
participatory process should be used whereby communities and groups
assess their social and economic well being using the larger regional
social and economic assessment as a base of information for comparative
analysis. When successful, these assessments will also have a collection
of stories and reflections from the people of the area, in addition to
quantitative and qualitative analyses of resources and conditions.

Watershed assessments generally come after the development of a
strategic direction for a larger landscape. They interpret the
implications of the large landscape strategies for specific watersheds
(small landscapes):

1\) They develop a "place-based" analysis that provides context for
small-landscape planning and the actions to implement decisions.

2\) They refine the estimates of desired future conditions and current
conditions for the watershed that were developed during large-landscape
planning, using detailed information for the watershed. Fitting the
desired future conditions from large-landscape planning to the
uniqueness of individual watersheds is an important first step in
bringing the landscape strategic direction home to the local area.
Developing improved estimates of the current conditions of important
ecological, social, economic relationships sets the stage for
identifying the management necessary to move toward the desired future
conditions.

3\) They refine the estimates of management opportunities made during
large-landscape planning to move the current conditions in the watershed
toward the desired future condition.

Policy, Strategic Direction and Implementation Decisions

Bioregional Guidance

Bioregional guidance is necessary when the development of scientifically
credible conservation strategies for species and ecosystems is necessary
at the same scale as the bioregional assessment. Whereas the bioregional
assessment provides the foundational information, key elements, and
methodology for developing such conservation strategies, the bioregional
guidance is the policy making process for defining strategies along with
the policy framework necessary to guide large landscape and small
landscape planning.

Strategies for conserving species and ecosystems: The primary purpose of
the bioregional guidance is two-fold. First, to develop strategies for
conserving focal species as well as threatened, endangered and sensitive
species. These strategies apply the procedures for estimating species
viability developed in the bioregional assessment. Second, to develop
strategies for conserving ecosystem integrity, again relying on
procedures for estimating the level of ecosystem integrity in different
ecosystems in the bioregion developed in the assessment. The bioregional
assessments also identify elements for developing these strategies.

Stewardship capacity: Recognizing that strategies to ensure ecological
integrity depend upon adequate stewardship capacity, bioregional
guidance is ideally jointly developed by the relevant federal agencies
along with state and local government partners, tribes and others with
jurisdiction over the area's land and resources. Bioregional guidance
can build upon the assessment of stewardship capacity by developing
strategies for increasing the stewardship capacity of current
institutional arrangements, government programs, and community-based
conservation organizations. Over time, by focusing upon the stewardship
capacity for a region, the capacity of the National Forest System to
achieve its goals will be greatly enhanced

Policy guidance: Issues of regional concern require consistent regional
policy, ideally across federal land managing and regulating agencies. In
order to achieve this goal, opportunities for harmonizing policy across
federal lands, as well as with state and local governments when
necessary, need to be created in order to develop effective bioregional
guidance.

Large and Small Landscape Planning and Decision Processes

Defining the "desired future condition" is the first step towards
building a set of goals and proposed actions that puts the National
Forest System lands on a path to ecological sustainability, contributes
to economic and social sustainability, and provides for multiple uses.
At the large landscape level, planning develops goals for different
parts of the landscape and crafts strategies to ensure the
sustainability of species and ecosystems, along with proposed pathways
of activities to achieve these goals. At the small landscape level,
planning determines the mix of activities and projects likely to met the
goals of the strategic plan.

Both large and small landscape planning processes address all lands
within the geographic area. Whenever possible, they should build on the
plans of others, including current "forest plans," as well as responding
to issues and problems with these plans as identified in the assessment
process. The likely management of non-federal lands must be considered
to estimate the context and likely cumulative effects of federal land
management. A coordinated plan affecting all federal land within the
planning area would ideally be the result at both levels. Ideally, these
planning and decision processes are done in partnership with other
federal agencies, states, and local governments, and tribes. In this
way, the federal land management plans are coordinated with plans or
anticipated activities that states, localities, or tribes have for some
or all of the area.

From the perspective of public participation, these planning and
decision processes utilize a knowledge base on which there is at best
tentative agreement among the interested parties and consider values
that are often ambiguous and conflicting. Thus, they require extended
stakeholder and expert deliberation and cannot be reduced to "routine"
decisions.

Large Landscape Planning---Setting a Strategic Framework

The purpose of strategic planning is to set a clear course of action for
a specified period of time. A strategic plan answers the question: "What
are conditions and outcomes (desired future conditions) that we should
seek on the National Forests and Grasslands to provide for ecological
sustainability and to contribute to economic and social sustainability,
how will their accomplishment be measured, what kinds of actions do we
need to take to achieve them, and what will it cost?

Large Landscape planning focuses on developing an integrated set of
conservation strategies to achieve ecological sustainability along with
opportunities for resource use and management to contribute to economic
and social sustainability. Of critical importance is that the management
of the National Forest System is placed within a regional context based
upon the bioregional assessments as well as other information.

We have named the strategic planning level the "large landscape
planning" because the ecological scale of the resource issues generally
extends beyond the boundaries of a single national forest. Measuring the
ability of management activities to conserve the species and ecosystems
of interest can occur only when the implications of decisions at
different levels for these species and ecosystems can be "added up". The
decisions must logically "fit together" in this aspect. If bioregional
guidance is available, that will be used to make sure these decisions,
in aggregate, provide the needed protection for species and ecosystems.
If conservation strategies are developed within the framework of large
landscape planning, coordination among multiple decision-makers will be
critically important.

In large landscape planning, an analysis of the management situation is
part of the process of defining the desired future conditions, and thus
is done early in the process. It should cover the historical development
of landscape conditions and outcomes along with current problems. This
analysis should realistically portray likely landscape conditions and
outcomes over time without active management, including the effect of
natural disturbance. This analysis then becomes the basis for discussing
the need for, and type of, actions that may be needed to move landscape
conditions and outcomes toward the desired states.

One of the primary purposes of having these planning processes involve
all federal agencies and producing a coordinated set of decisions and
policies is to enable cooperation across arbitrary administrative
boundaries in an effort to significantly strengthen their joint
stewardship capacity. This planning process needs to create a policy
dialogue that involves the public as participants and employs a
technical review process to assess the use of available knowledge in
developing the strategic plans. Ideally, coordinated,
cross-jurisdictional strategic direction can enable joint decision
making at the implementation level across Ranger Districts, across
National Forests or Grasslands, between National Forest System lands and
other federal land managing agencies, and with regulatory agencies
sharing jurisdictional responsibility. Thus, at their best, these
planning processes should be anticipatory and future-oriented so as to
reduce the need for "after the fact" consultation. While consultation
will no doubt continue to be a part of the implementation process at the
small landscape level, we would expect that it would be related to the
specific issues posed by a specific set of conditions.

Strategic planning for large landscapes should:

1\) Set goals for different parts of the landscape expressed in terms of
the desired future landscape conditions necessary to achieve ecological
sustainability, along with expected uses, benefits, services and
products available to contribute to economic and social sustainability.
Given the likely conditions that will occur on non-federal land in the
future, the federal agencies need to develop a vision of the future
condition of forests, rangelands, and watersheds to ensure ecological
sustainability and to ensure the goods, values, uses, and services to
contribute to economic and social sustainability.

2\) Compare the current condition of the landscape, derived from the
bioregional assessment and other information, to the desired condition,
and

3\) Develop a strategy for moving to the desired condition. Make an
estimate of the suite of actions (type, amount, budget) needed to move
from existing conditions to a desired future conditions in the context
of likely unplanned disturbances, ie., propose a pathway from the
current conditions to the desired future conditions in terms of the
suite of proposed actions (type, amount, budget) and resulting
conditions through time.

4\) Estimate likely affects on species and ecosystems and on economies
and communities over time. This work would estimate the viability of
focal, threatened and endangered, and sensitive species and of the level
of ecosystem integrity.

5\) Generally, these decision processes should be completed within one
year and policies and decisions should be revisited as issues arise or
conditions demand.

6)In the large-landscape planning, an analysis of the management
situation should be done early in the process. It should cover the
historical development of landscape condition and outcomes and current
problems. This analysis should realistically portray likely landscape
conditions and outcomes over time without active management, including
the effect of natural disturbance. This analysis then becomes the basis
for discussing the need for, and type of, actions that may be needed to
move landscape conditions and outcomes toward the desired states.

Small-Landscape Planning ---Integrated Implementation

The purpose of the small landscape planning is to determine the mix of
activities and projects needed to meet the goals found in the strategic
plan. A key information component will be the watershed assessments that
facilitate the development of management options within a participatory
framework that works best when it involves the collaborative partners
identified in the strategic planning process.

The distinctive quality of the small landscape planning is the
development of projects and activities in combination so as to clearly
consider cumulative effects, propose implementation schedules, specify
measurable performance standards, and prepare budget plans and staffing
plans. Proposed suites of activities and projects are developed within 6
months and remain in effect for the duration of the activities. New
activities can be added at any time with consideration of cumulative
impacts and consistency with the general strategic intent. A technical
field review process helps evaluate effectiveness of the projects in
meeting the goals. This is the planning level that is the lynchpin of
adaptive management, in that it is a continuous cycle of implementation,
monitoring, evaluation, adaptation and change.

From the process of defining activities to meet clear goals, planning
teams will be able to estimate the kinds of staff needed to accomplish
these activities, the budgets necessary to carry them out, and the kinds
of cooperative actions necessary to build sufficient implementation
capacity. Once there is a relatively clear set of proposed activities at
the field level of the organization, the planning analysis then "backs
up" through the structure of the agency, always focused on how the next
level up in the organizational hierarchy can best help achieve the
proposed activities. In this way, the resource planning process is
integrated with the management planning that includes the staff and
budget resources required to carry out the specified projects and
activities. It is difficult to estimate the budgets, resources, and
outputs that will be forthcoming at the strategic planning level. Only
in the proximate activities of a site specific implementation plan can
accurate estimates of inputs and outputs be established, clear
accountability measures applied, and links to budgets for multiple
purpose projects be clearly defined.

The need to consider connected actions and cumulative effects and to
enable the public to see the geographic context within which the actions
will occur argues for an approach to project planning that considers a
larger geographic area than that usually covered by a single project.
These areas of interest will rarely follow national forest boundaries.
Current examples are sometimes called "site-specific" landscape plans,
and following this experience, we anticipate that small landscape plans
will cover from 10,000 to 150,000 acres.

There are times when individual controversial projects or decisions may
threaten to derail a small landscape planning process; in such cases
experience suggests that they need to be "worked on some more" before
they can be incorporated into the small landscape plans. Sometimes these
issues are controversial because of their immediate effects, for example
a decision to close part of a campground because of the presence of bald
eagle nesting sites. Other times, the controversy stems from strongly
different perspectives on the issue or resource. And other times, there
are extremely important, but very site-specific issues, as in the case
of a rock sacred to several Indian tribes but also of important local
interest. In all such cases, it is reasonable to allow for highly
contextualized planning processes to emerge from the nature of the
problem. Decisions made in these cases can be added to the small
landscape plans when ready. In such cases, it would be appropriate to
evaluate them separately, but the cumulative effects of the project must
be analyzed with others before including them in the small landscape
plan.

Since planning is a creative, educative and learning process, effective
problem solving at the level of the "site-specific" small landscape
depends on allowing flexibility to local managers to recognize and work
within local conditions in achieving the desired conditions of the
landscape. This approach rests on utilizing the creative powers of
national forest managers and the collaborative group assisting the
mangers in planning for the management of these complex systems. It
relies on this discretion to improve the reliability and effectiveness
of the policies at the local level.

Part and parcel with this discretion is the need for independent
evaluation of how well these site-specific implementation plans achieve
the strategic goals, including highlighting creative solutions and
innovative approaches. Without the independent evaluation of the
specific projects and their implementation, it is difficult to justify
flexibility at the local level. Issues of trust, the ability of local
managers to develop local actions to address strategic goals and the
success of implementation all increase as the amount of discretion
increase. Yet the key to successful implementation is to harness the
creative talents of national forest managers and interested members of
businesses, communities, tribes, state and local governments and the
public. Thus, there is a need for an evaluation of the site-specific
landscape plans and their implementation. The difficulty for
organizations to engage in self-critique argues for an independent
assessment. The recent review of implementation of PACFISH offers an
example of how an independent team can assess and improve implementation
of a strategic plan.

Specifically, the small-landscape planning should:

1\) Identify the management activities that will be undertaken to
achieve the desired future conditions, based on management opportunities
suggested in the watershed assessment.

2\) Estimate the effects of these activities, including the conditions
that will develop over time on the path to the desired future condition.

3\) Determine how management activities will be monitored, or whether
special monitoring will be needed (e.g., whether large- landscape
monitoring questions are sufficient)

4\) Project budget and staffing needs, and ensure that both are adequate
before undertaking activities.

5\) Provide for independent field review as part of the monitoring
process.

6\) Utilize an adaptive management approach of continuous planning,
action, monitoring and change.

4B. The Challenge of Science-based Planning

As a general principle, the Committee of Scientists believes that forest
plans and planning should be based upon knowledge of the world, although
we recognize the uncertainties surrounding that knowledge. A major part
of that knowledge comes from science and scientists.

Over the last decade, the notion of "science-based" planning for natural
resource management has taken hold inside and outside of the Forest
Service. Managers seek it, interest groups call for it, and the public
expects it. For planning and plans to be credible in the 21st century,
they must reflect our latest findings and thinking about how the world
works.

Many people in our hearings have called for the plans to be
"science-based". By that, we believe they mean the land and resource
plans and planning should incorporate and reflect the cumulative
knowledge from science about the portrayal of relationships and
processes. In addition, others have called for the use of indigenous
ecological knowledge.

This section attempts to answer two questions: What is "science-based"
planning? And how can the scientific community and the Forest Service
help make it work?

Background

In the first round of forest plans under NFMA, managers and
inter-disciplinary teams sorted though the available information to
design strategies that would allow the maximum sustain yield of
commodities and amenities subject to "minimum management requirements"
for protection of species and ecosystems. Scientists, by-and-large, sat
on the sidelines. A series of lawsuits in the Pacific Northwest about
the adequacy of protection in the plans for old-growth species and
salmon stocks revealed that the strategies for conserving these species
on federal land would not hold up to scientific scrutiny. This led the
Forest Service and other federal agencies to call for "scientifically
credible conservation strategies", first, specifically for the northern
spotted owl, and then for old-growth species and salmon stocks in
general.

Scientists, under the leadership of Jack Ward Thomas, moved immediately
from the sidelines to center stage to construct scientifically credible
strategies for management of the federal forests of the Northwest. Their
efforts through four studies resulted in a set of alternatives for
management of these lands, along with estimates of the ecological,
economic, and social effects of the alternatives. One of these options,
with some modification, became the President's plan for Northwest
forests; finally, the federal forests had a plan that could withstand
legal challenge. Rumblings about the adequacy of protection of species
and ecosystems in the forest plans also occurred in the early to mid
1990s in the Southwest, South, and most other regions in the country
through protests, lawsuits, and attempts at Congressional action. Many
of these dustups resulted in a call for science and scientists to help
sort out the competing arguments.

The work in the Northwest created ripples far beyond that region in
terms of the role of science in forest planning and management. In both
the Interior Columbia Basin and the Tongass National Forest, as an
example, the heavy involvement of scientists has continued, although now
in a slightly different form. In these efforts, scientists are deeply
involved in assessing current conditions and trends, while managers
craft conservation strategies and make initial estimates of effects.
Both are working at identifying the issues to be analyzed and setting up
the conceptual framework for analysis. Scientists then review the
consistency of these estimates with scientific understandings and
publish a report.

In sum, the Forest Service has embraced the notion of planning based on
science as one of the tenants of forest management. Now we must develop
the institutions and procedures to make science-based planning a
reality.

What Is Science-Based Planning?

Science-based planning is planning that incorporates current scientific
thought into the planning process and the plans that result. The
relevant scientific results and informed judgment of scientists are
known, critically evaluated, used, and relied upon. Issues in planning
that have a significant scientific content include whether the temporal
and spatial scales being considered are appropriate for the questions
being asked; whether all relevant information is considered; whether it
interpreted in a manner consistent with current scientific
understanding; whether the level of risk to species and ecosystems
associated with the alternatives is acknowledged; and whether the
uncertainty of our knowledge is recognized.

In the application of science to managing large landscapes, we generally
are not talking about classic application of the scientific method.
Hypothesis testing at the landscape scale though controlled experiments
is difficult. Rather, we are talking about scientific knowledge as a set
of working hypotheses that are informed by experiments, demonstrations,
argument, and reflection. Over time those hypotheses are retained,
revised, and discarded as needed. Scientists expect them to
change---eternal truths are hard to find. Often their revision occurs at
the most inopportune time for managers.

To further complicate matters, there is rarely complete unanimity among
scientists. On some issues, there are a variety of hypotheses having
near equal support among different groups of scientists. On other
issues, strong support exists for a particular working hypothesis,
although a dissenting opinion will almost always exist.

In science-based planning, the scientific community can expect to be
asked to help with at least five different tasks:

1\) Creating knowledge of relevance to forest planning. Scientists are
often asked to research specific problems encountered in planning and
summarize the state of knowledge about them. Science traditionally
proceeds by breaking problems into smaller pieces and redefining them to
enable the formation and testing of hypotheses about the way the world
works. Forest planning certainly uncovers many of the type of problems
that need scientific analysis, whether it be determining the habitat
requirements of owls, the effectiveness of fuel breaks in stopping
wildfires, or whether increasing the natural look of clearcuts makes
them more acceptable to the public. Scientists also are often asked to
prepare "white papers" that summarize the state of knowledge about
different problems or issues such as the owl, fuel breaks, and clearcut
design problems mentioned above.

2\) Working on the "integrative science" of regional assessment and
planning. Many of the scientific problems of regional assessment and
strategic planning, however, address the whole rather than the pieces.
As an example, recent issues tackled by scientists included how to
assess the state of different fish stocks in the 160-million-acre
Columbia Basin, the state of forest health in the northern Rockies, and
approaches to analyze the implications of placing roads in roadless
areas. What to measure and on what scale to provide a scientific
foundation for conservation strategies? Answering these questions
requires integration of different types of information, and at scales
not usually encountered in traditional science.

3\) Helping managers understand the application of this scientific and
technical knowledge to management problems. As new planning requirements
are issued from Congress, the Administration or the courts, scientists
are often called to help interpret them from a scientific standpoint and
ensure that the resulting instructions to the field have scientific
credibility. As an example, our proposed regulation on biological
sustainability uses the concepts of "ecosystem integrity" and "species
viability" as central concepts. Scientists will be involved in
interpreting the meaning of these concepts.

As specialists, planners, and managers proceed with strategic planning,
they have a multitude of questions about the scientific credibility of
their proposals, including their conservation strategies for different
species and ecosystems. Answering these questions, as vital as they are
to the planning effort, is not the traditional domain of research
scientists.

As specialists and managers begin to implement science-based strategic
plans, they want the assistance of scientists to help craft creative
ways to accomplish the plans' objectives. Strategic plans usually
contain default prescriptions to implement the conservation strategy
without much further analysis. As might be expected, they often do not
fit field conditions very well. Yet managers are understandably
reluctant to vary the standard prescription without assistance and field
review by scientists.

4\) Helping to design effectiveness-monitoring procedures and the
experiments needed under adaptive management. Monitoring is a key
component of science-based planning. Yet, there are few standard
procedures to draw on for designing effectiveness-monitoring procedures
for the millions of acres in a strategic plan. This deficiency
especially holds true with the limited funds available for such work.
Selecting an efficient, yet dependable, set of measures will require
scientific involvement.

5\) Evaluating the use of scientific thought in planning and
implementation. Once strategic plans or sets of projects are proposed,
along with estimates of their effects, policy-makers, interest groups,
and the public often ask or challenge their scientific basis. These
"science consistency checks" and field project reviews are just
beginning, but could become an important new role for scientists under
science-based planning.

How Do We Organize to Support Science-Based Planning?

For science-based planning and management to succeed on the National
Forests and Grasslands, we make four major recommendations:

1\) Forest Service Research must shoulder major responsibilities for
science-based planning. Forest Service Research must provide the
day-to-day delivery of results, evaluation, and advice needed to address
the seven tasks listed above. Although this effort may be assisted by
scientists in other federal agencies and outside the federal government,
Forest Service Research must form its core. This effort will call for an
expanded mission for this branch of the Forest Service and will require
allocating a portion of the energies of this organization to supporting
national forest planning and management.

The Forest Service is blessed with its own research organizations---one
of the finest natural resource research organizations in the world.
Forest Service Research has fought for and achieved a mission that
emphasizes scholarly work publishable in peer-reviewed journals and
allows considerable independence from the immediate needs of the
National Forest System. Although making science-based planning work will
require efforts both inside and outside the federal government, we have
reached one inescapable conclusion about the key to its success:
science-based planning can succeed only if there is a strong, deep, and
sustained commitment to it from Forest Service Research.

Of the suite of tasks mentioned above, only the first one has been the
traditional domain of Forest Service Research on a regular basis.
Requests for help on the other six have been very occasional and are
seen as a "special assignment" --- an extraordinary activity not related
to the "real work" of the research unit. All this must change if
science-based planning is to have a reasonable chance of success.

2\) National Forest System (NSF) technical staff must also shoulder
major responsibilities to facilitate science-based planning and
scientifically sound management activities. While relying on FSR and
non-agency scientific committees is important to ensuring the scientific
credibility of management decisions, and providing incentives for
managers to keep up-to-date on scientific understandings relevant to
their management activity, a key step in promoting sound decisions that
will withstand external review is a stronger commitment and base of
support with the NFS. There is a major need for an increased capacity on
the part of NFS to effectively develop, implement, and evaluate
scientifically-based plans and management strategies and actions. A
diverse and effective cadre of professionals grounded in science is
needed in NFS. They must have support to develop and maintain technical
skills to allow them to operate effectively between scientists and
policymakers. To be credible, their efforts should be subject to open
technical review.

NFS scientists and technical staff are one step closer to management
issues and problems and develop relationships with land managers that
can provide more rapid attention to pressing issues and more direct
links between managers and scientists and scientific information. NFS
technical staff can provide one important link between science and
policy-makers, but at the same time may lack the external credibility of
FSR. Clearly, both FSR and NFS have an important contribution to make to
ensuring sound and credible science-based planning and these new roles
and responsibilities need to be articulated in an expanded mission for
both, one supplemented with the budgets necessary to fulfill this
critical new task.

While FSR has an important and central role to fulfill in enhancing
science-based planning, it cannot and should not shoulder this
responsibility alone. Care must be taken to ensure the ongoing
credibility of FSR and maintain its solid foundation of basic research.
NFS technical staff must adopt a more central role, as interface between
policy-makers and the research community, and between policy-makers and
managers, on issues bearing on the scientific basis for decision-making.
While FSR can, for example, help create and evaluate science-based
protocols for monitoring or assessments, help develop the scientific
basis for creating, evaluating, and modifying standards and guides,
develop science-based frameworks, and provide or secure independent
review of the scientific foundation of plans, NFS technical staff should
bear responsibility for assisting, enabling and ensuring managers'
ability to apply this guidance to their day-to-day management decisions.
Additionally, NFS technical staff are in a position to more directly
involve and benefit from the insights and knowledge that managers
possess about trends, impacts and on-the-ground realities.

3\) Institutions and procedures must be established to evaluate, on a
regular basis, the use of scientific thought in planning and
implementation. These reviews serve both to provide independent
verification of the science-basis of plans and their implementation, and
to highlight and reward creative approaches to the challenging issues
faced in the management of the national forests. The knowledge of an
evaluation at the end of the planning process should, by its very
presence, encourage collaboration among managers, specialists, and
scientists as the plans are developed.

There should be an evaluation of the use of scientific and technical
information in strategic planning, i.e., an evaluation of the
consistency of strategic planning and plans with scientific and
technical understanding. A potential role model for this effort is the
"science consistency" check, recently pioneered in the Tongass National
Forest land management plan (Everest et al., 1997) --- a technique for
evaluating whether the information transferred from scientists to policy
makers and planners was understood by them. The science consistency
check can be used to achieve consistency through iterative application
that involves successive improvements in how scientists state their
findings, and in how the framers of management policy interpret the
implications of those findings. In the case of the Tongass National
Forest planning effort, the science consistency check was itself
subjected to scientific peer review.

Because a finding of a lack of consistency can be a point of appeal or
legal challenge, a thoughtful, thorough check can help sidestep that
problem. Questions that would be asked in a science consistency check
include the following: Are the temporal and spatial scales being
considered useful for the resource conservation issues being addressed?
Was all relevant information considered? Was this information
interpreted in a manner consistent with current scientific
understanding? Has the level of risk to species and ecosystems
associated with the alternatives been acknowledged and reported? Has the
uncertainty of our knowledge been recognized?

Field reviews of projects should also be conducted. These reviews should
address two basic questions: Are the proposed actions a credible attempt
to meet the goals of the plans from a scientific and technical
viewpoint? Were the actions taken in the field consistent with what was
proposed.? The interagency PACFISH reviews could serve as a model for
this effort, assuming that the interagency committee was broadened to
consider all the values recognized in the plans.

4\) The Chief of the Forest Service should establish a science and
technology advisory board with a primary goal of helping science-based
planning become a reality on the national forests. This board would
provide highly qualified and independent advice to the Forest Service to
assure that the most current and complete scientific and technical
knowledge is used as the basis of land and resource management. The
Board would help the Forest Service effectively accomplish the suite of
tasks, such as those listed above, important to successful
implementation of science-based planning. They would be especially
useful in advising the Forest Service on how to accomplish the many
tasks that will require new directions and energies from Forest Service
Research and the scientific community in general.

The Board's members would include scientists and other specialists from
a broad range of disciplines --- biology, ecology, economics, sociology,
and other fields. The members should come from a wide variety of
organizations doing scientific work, including academia, industry,
independent laboratories, and Native communities. There will be a
variety of backgrounds represented in the diverse and well-qualified
group to help ensure a broad range of outside perspectives.

The membership shall consist of an interdisciplinary group of nationally
known scientists and planning experts from outside the National Forest
System. The variety of scientific and technical specialties represented
on the Committee should span the range of resources, issues, values, and
geographic regions encountered in national forest management. In
addition to members, the activities of the Board may be enhanced by
consultants invited by a committee chair to serve on an "as needed"
basis on various issues where their expertise is relevant. The number of
consultants is flexible, and their one-year term can be extended
indefinitely. Consultants would be expected to meet the same standards
of technical expertise as the members.

The 20-year history of the Science Advisory Board (SAB) of the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could serve as a role model for
some elements of the Forest Service Board. Because the requests for
projects now exceed the number that the Boards can address, the EPA SAB
has adopted the following criteria for prioritizing requests:

• Impact overall environmental protection

• Address novel scientific problems or principles

• Integrate science into Agency actions in new ways

• Influence long-term technology development

• Deal with problems that transcend organizational boundaries

• Strengthen the Agency's overall capabilities

• Serve leadership interests

• Deal with controversial issues

These criteria may useful for the Forest Service to consider in
establishing this Board.

4C. Monitoring and Adaptive Mangement

Monitoring

Monitoring is the measurement of environmental characteristics over an
extended period of time to determine status or trends in some aspect of
environmental integrity. The challenge of monitoring is to decide what
characteristics of the environment to measure, to determine what their
values indicate about environmental integrity, and to use that
information to make better management decisions. The Forest Service
recognizes three types of monitoring:

\(1\) Implementation --- Have the management standards and guidelines
been employed?

\(2\) Effectiveness --- Are the standards and guidelines producing the
desired outcomes?

\(3\) Validation --- Are the basic assumptions about cause and effect
relationships use to predict the management response valid?

Our discussion here focuses primarily on effectiveness monitoring,
though it has a very close relationship to validation monitoring.

We broadly define environmental attributes to include any biotic or
abiotic features of the environment that can be measured. The convention
has been to refer to the measured attributes as "indicator variables"
under the assumption that their values are indicative of the integrity
of the larger ecosystem to which they belong. We adopt this definition,
and extend it to include the concept of focal species. These are species
that fulfill the indicator criterion, but in addition, provide specific
insights to the biological diversity of the ecological system.
Monitoring can occur at a variety of spatial scales, and is justified
for a variety of purposes. For example, monitoring is an essential
component of the adaptive management process.

Particularly relevant to the Forest Service planning process, however,
is the value of monitoring as a tool to assess attainment of the
sustainability goal. In a sense, a plan is a hypothesis of how we expect
an ecological system to respond to planned management actions. The only
way we can determine the truth of our hypothesis is to observe and
measure the system. A lack of concordance between expectation and
observation could lead to a revision of the plan, and changes in
management standards and guidelines. Thus monitoring is much more than
just measurement --- it must include analysis and assessment.

Because it is impossible to monitor and manage every aspect of
ecological sustainability, shortcuts to monitoring are needed. Elsewhere
in this report we discuss the value of focal species as surrogate
measures to the integrity of the larger ecosystem and to biological
diversity in general. In addition, it is also prudent to measure
attributes that act as early warning signals to loss of ecological
sustainability before unacceptable loss has occurred. One way to narrow
the list of candidate indicators is to first list those factors ---
human-induced or natural stressors --- that may compromise the
sustainability goal. Given this list of stressors, the aspects of the
environment that will be most indicative of stressor action can be
selected and monitored. This form of monitoring is anticipatory, and it
also provides insights into cause-and-effect relationships between
stressors and expected ecosystem responses.

In the following, we summarize the key components of an effective
monitoring program for those lands dependent upon Forest Service
stewardship.

1\. Specify the goals of ecological sustainability in measurable terms.

2\. Characterize the threats and stressors that may compromise
ecological sustainability.

3\. Develop conceptual models that outline the pathways from stressor
action to ecological effects.

4\. Select the indicators of sustainability that are responsive to
anticipated stressors.

5\. Determine the necessary detection limits for the indicator
variables.

6\. Establish critical values (or distributions) for the indicator
variables that will trigger management intervention to prevent a loss of
sustainability.

7\. Establish how the monitoring results will inform the management
decision-making process.

Adaptive Management

Most public land management agencies assert that they are managing the
nation's resources according to an adaptive management paradigm. In
general, this suggests a structured process of reducing uncertainty
about environmental responses to management by viewing management
actions as experiments. The term "experiment" is important here as it
suggests a kind of scientific rigor based on explicit principles of
experimental design. It is our opinion that this rigor is, in fact,
absent from most management practices, and these actions are incorrectly
portrayed as "adaptive management". This requires a clarification of
various ways of "learning by doing".

Three primary ways of accumulating knowledge are possible if management
actions are viewed as experiments. These include (1) "trial-and-error"
learning, in which initial management choices are made haphazardly, and
subsequent choices are based on the subset that was successful; (2)
"passive adaptive" management, in which existing data are thoroughly
reviewed prior to each management decision, and the decision selected is
based on the current, best understanding of how "nature works"; and (3)
"active adaptive" management, where all existing data are thoroughly
reviewed prior to each decision, but a range of alternative-response
models are developed. A decision (selection of an alternative) is made
on the basis of an analysis of expected short-term gains versus the
long-term benefits of learning which model of "how nature works" is most
correct. That is, there is some long-term utility in reducing the
uncertainty that accompanies our management decisions. What
distinguishes these modes of learning is that in adaptive management a
major effort is made to synthesize existing information into dynamic
models that make predictions about the impacts of alternative management
practices. No such synthesis or model construction occurs in
trial-and-error learning.

All these modes of learning require monitoring the results of the
management action. That is, the only way in which learning is possible
is to observe whether the environment responded as envisioned. A lack of
concordance between observation and expectation would lead to a revised
model of how an ecosystem functions and is likely to response to
management action. For the foreseeable future, we will be uncertain
about the short and long-term environmental consequences of our
management decisions. Thus, the manager is responsible for conducting
management that incrementally reduce this uncertainty. These methods of
acquiring knowledge are all assumed responsive to the public trust
because uncertainty about an ecosystem is reduced by the results of the
management experiment. However, the rate at which uncertainty is reduced
is greatest for the active-adaptive management paradigm, and least for
trial-and-error learning.

Active adaptive management is difficult, time-consuming, and often
expensive. The challenge of managing adaptively arises from the
requirements of experimentation, including (1) replication and
randomization of management treatments, and the need for control areas;
(2) the formulation of competing models (or hypotheses) of how the
system will respond to management; (3) an initial assessment of belief
in the "truth" of the different models (model likelihoods); (4) a
statement of each hypotheses (model) in terms of measurable variables;
(5) monitoring the results of the "experiment" to determine which model
is most parsimonious with the results; and (6) updating model
likelihoods based on the results of the experiment. The next round of
management decisions is then based on the results of the previous
experiment, with greater weight given to the model best supported by the
existing data. The process is iterative, continuing until uncertainty
about system response has been reduced to an acceptable level.

Given the stringent requirements for adaptive management, it is clear
that few management actions will be correctly characterized as adaptive.
Also, requiring all management actions to be cast in the context of
adaptive is unrealistic. This begs the questions, "when do the benefits
of adaptive management outweigh its costs?", and "when should it be
chosen as the appropriate paradigm for management?" We suggest that the
following guideline, the adaptive management paradigm, should be adopted
when the environmental consequences of the action are highly uncertain,
and to the degree the management action may result in irreversible loss.
When these conditions are met, then an adaptive management design should
be adopted. This linkage between science and management presents an
obvious opportunity for collaboration between the management and
research branches of the Forest Service.

4D. Protests and Appeals of Federal Decisions

Federal agencies differ greatly as to if, when, and how their decisions
can be appealed or protested by the public. A potential impediment to
multi-agency planning and decision processes is the differences in
timing and approach to resolving protests and appeals. In the case of
federal land management, both the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land
Management allow the public to protest or appeal their decisions,
whereas neither the Fish and Wildlife Service nor the National Marine
Fisheries Service allow appeals. These agencies, like the Environmental
Protection Agency, do not allow administrative appeals after decisions
are final, only judicial review.

Several times we have heard reference to the differences between the
Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service appeals processes. At the
level of the Forest Plan, the primary difference is that for the Bureau
of Land Management, the appeals are pre-decisional and for the Forests
Service, they are post-decisional.

For the Bureau of Land Management, this means that after the final EIS
is published, but before the Record of Decision is signed, "protest
appeals" can be filed. The issues these appeals can raise are limited to
those issues raised for the record in the planning process. The record
of decision is the final agency action. The next step is a lawsuit.

There are several issues that these observations raise regarding our
process.

1\. Should the large-landscape plans have an appeals process that is
pre-decisional instead of, or in addition to, the existing
post-decisional appeal process?

2\. In the context of multiple-agency planning and decision-making, what
is the effect of appeals processes that assume single-agency planning
and decision-making?

3\. How can the small-landscape plan best address the requirements for
project-level, post-decisional appeals?

Should The Large-Landscape Decisions Have A Pre-Decisional Appeals
Process?

For the Forest Service, the appeals process (36 CFR 217) follows the
publication of the Record of Decision. The issues raised do not have to
have been raised in the planning process. Appeals on Forest Plan
approvals and revisions must be filed within 90 days of the decision and
the Forest Service has 160 days to respond to the appeal; however, given
the size, complexity, and numbers of appeals on Forest Plans, it is not
always able to meet this deadline.

The first Committee of Scientists recommended that the Forest Plans
should not be subject to appeals, with appeals only at the
project-decision level. However, the array of interest groups all
protested this and the result was an appeals process with broad access
to nearly all decisions of the Forest Service. In 1989, the Forest
Service narrowed the type of decisions that could be appealed, and split
out certain contract and business decisions into a different appeals
process.

In 1992, the Forest Service proposed to limit appeals to Forest Plans
only, and replace project appeals with a pre-decisional notice and
public-involvement system. In the fall of 1992, Congress responded. It
created a mandatory project-level notice, comment, and appeals process
and directed the Forest Service to "establish a notice and comment
process for proposed actions of the Forest Service concerning projects
and activities implementing Land and Resource Plans" and "to modify
procedures for appeal concerning such project." Appeals can be brought
by people who provided comments during the 30-day comment period or who
otherwise expressed interest.

The Act was not limited as to which decisions were affected, so it
applies to mining, as well as all other activities. The law made no
express provisions for exemptions; however, Forest Service regulations
(36 CFR 215) interpreted the act and legislative history as allowing
limited exceptions, including actions that are categorically excluded
under Forest Service NEPA procedures, such as small timber sales, small
wildlife openings in a timber sale, and others. The Act also provides
for an automatic "stay" on the project once an appeal is filed, which in
some cases can be overridden by an "emergency finding" by the Chief. In
these regulations, a decision on the appeal must be rendered by the
agency in 45 days. If a formal decision is not issued, a formal response
will be given to the appellants on the disposition of their appeal.

The crux of the difference then is when the appeals process occurs and
how the agency needs to respond. In the case of the Bureau of Land
Management, the agency can respond to "pre-decisional protests" by
acknowledging them and explaining the rationale of its decisions. In the
case of the Forest Service, the appeals process follows the decision of
field officers (Regional Forester for Forest Plans), and the Chief is
the reviewing officer (with the Assistant Secretary as a discretionary
reviewing officer).

Several important issues arise with the Forest Service post-decisional
approach.

1\. Because the Chief is the reviewing officer, it is important for him
to maintain independence and objectivity in reviewing the evidence
presented. For this reason, it appears that the Chief might be
criticized for getting very involved in the earlier stages of
controversy or to work closely with Regional Foresters when they are
writing the Record of Decision or reviewing appeals. As a result the
"the agency works against itself" by isolating the decision-makers from
one another, just at the time that some internal discussion might be
useful.

2\. USDA post-decisional appeals process can inhibit multi-agency
collaboration. Bureau of Land Management appeals are pre-decisional. For
both the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Fish and Wildlife,
there is no administrative appeals process, so controversial issues are
elevated to the Washington level fairly quickly. The Forest Service
Chief is the reviewing officer when the body of evidence is put forward
in Forest Service post-decisional appeals.

3\. From the standpoint of the interest groups, there are mixed and
inconsistent incentives. On the one hand, they want to be involved in
the planning process to influence the outcome. In addition, they must to
be involved to show sufficient participation, so that the courts
recognize their credibility in seeking judicial review later, should
they decide to do so. On the other hand, because the appeals process is
post-decisional, appeals have the effect of providing an opportunity for
some groups to gain a little more of what they want after the agreements
are reached by the larger public constituency. Because of this problem
of creating privileged access, the Forest Service Chief often sends
plans back to the particular national forest for reworking of specific
problems raised in the appeal, rather than independently negotiating
with the set of the public that brought the appeal outside of open,
participatory processes.

The large-landscape plans will normally involve a wide variety of
agencies, governments, organizations, groups, and citizens. Because
their purpose is to develop broad conservation strategies based upon a
set of regional-level issues, it seems that the ideal approach would be
for the agreements reached in the public-participation processes to
stand, except in instances where there were omissions based on legal
obligations or other actionable reasons. Thus, the pre-decisional
appeals process, wherein minority views could be expressed to the
decision-makers before the decision, would provide this incentive to
stay at the table and work out differences substantively, rather than
watching for procedural errors that could be the basis of a lawsuit
later.

Recommendation: Evaluate whether the administrative rules under 36 CFR
217 should be revised to provide for pre-decisional protest instead of ,
or in addition to, post-decisional appeals.

Does the Current Appeals Process need Modification to Recognize the
Multi-agency Planning Processes of the Future?

The current appeals processes in the Forest Service and other federal
agencies assume single-agency planning processes and single-agency
decisions. In one of the only instances of multiple-agency planning and
decision making, the Northwest Forest Plan, the decisions were made at
the Secretary level, in order to avoid the problem of inconsistent
appeals rules, among other reasons. In the case of the Columbia Basin
project, the expectation is that Regional Foresters and the Bureau of
Land Management State Directors will make the decisions. In that case,
the decisions of the Bureau of Land Management would be open to
pre-decisional protest, but the Forest Service decisions could be
appealed after the ROD. This makes coordinated planning for large-scale
policy decisions very difficult.

Recommendation: The Forest Service should join with the other agencies
and develop appeals processes that are consistent for all agencies. Most
likely, a study should be commissioned by the heads of the relevant
agencies to identify the specific impediments to coordinated planning
and decision making, as well as opportunities for developing a more
harmonized approach. Given the importance of this problem in the context
of the new planning rules under development, it should receive high
priority.

How Can Small-Landscape Planning Best Address The Requirements For
Project-Level, Post-Decisional Appeals?

The idea of small-landscape plans, with integrated sets of projects and
activities implementing the strategic direction from the large-landscape
plans, may be the most difficult to achieve in the near term. Current
statutory requirements for post-decisional project-level appeals
increase the level of information, analysis, and evidence necessary for
making individual project decisions sufficient to withstand a legal
challenge. As a result, combining projects into multi-project EAs or
EISs increases the information and analysis demands such that they
quickly become infeasible.

Given statutory requirements for appeals on projects, this issue is not
easily resolved through internal administrative changes. The idea of
treating this level of planning as more of an assessment may provide an
interim approach in this evolutionary process, but is likely to be
inadequate, in that it may create "pseudo-decisions" that are not
sufficiently vetted through the NEPA process. In addition to the
difficulties of developing multi-project EAs, there is an added problem
when this level of planning is treated as an ongoing process of adaptive
management based on monitoring and external review.

Getting other agencies, governments, organizations, communities, and
individuals actively engaged and committed to the planning process is a
necessary condition in developing a socially acceptable, economically
feasible, and environmentally sound implementation plan at the
small-landscape scale. It is difficult to build this commitment to "stay
at the table and work out differences" when the post-decisional appeals
process offers an opportunity for either "privately" negotiating a
better outcome for one's position or simply obstructing the
implementation of a collective decision. In addition, as discussed
above, in an environment of multi-agency, multi-government-planning
processes, only the decisions of the Forest Service decisions can be
appealed after they are made. In all other cases, a lawsuit would be the
next step.

Recommendation: Addressing the issue of project-level appeals in a
multi-project, integrated-planning process should be an important
priority, as the new planning process is developed in regulations and
evolves in practice. The ideal of an integrated small-landscape plan
based on adaptive-management practices will no doubt take some time to
be fully realized, but its evolution will be greatly enhanced as
planning, decision, and appeals processes are harmonized across
agencies.

# CHAPTER FIVE

External Influences on Forest Service Planning

In this chapter, the Committee of Scientists addresses two issues that
are sometimes perceived as beyond the scope of land and resource
planning, yet have the potential to undercut its effectiveness. These
are the budgeting process and the requirements of other laws and
regulations.

The Budget Process and Planning

For planning to be meaningful it must correspond to the current and
likely future situation. To achieve this, there must be some
relationship between the plan and the budget available to undertake the
plan.

Independence of the Planning and Budgeting Processes

One of the common criticisms of the current Forest Service planning
process is its failure in implementing plans. This problem originates
with the weak link between the planning process and the budget. In our
public meetings across the country, we heard a repeated complaint: plans
often are not accompanied by budgets that match. Thus, the budget
available does not provide sufficient funding to allow the plan to be
implemented as developed.

The discrepancies between budgets and plans come from two sources.
First, the total budget provided by the Congress is typically less than
that required for the planning. Second, the Congressional budget is
allocated by "programs" and bears little relationship to the
configurations of individual forest plans. For example, the budget
passed by the Congress may allow funding of 110 percent of the total
timber called for in the plan, but only 30 percent of the planned
recreation.

Although some have argued that budgeting is an internal problem, which
the Forest Service can circumvent, it appears to be driven more by
Congressional prerogatives than by agency decisions. The Forest Service
has some discretion in developing the initial budget request and in
reallocating funds among budget categories after Congressional action;
however, the ability to obtain funding for the plans as approved is
typically beyond the control of the Forest Service.

This problem was exacerbated in the first round of plans developed under
the NFMA where fiscal realities often received little consideration.
Those plans developed both the goals for forest management and also a
set of actions for the plan decade to achieve these goals. The activity
set was generally developed without restricting the budget needs to
current experience. Instead, the plans were developed to help define the
budget that would be needed, based on conclusions reached by the Forest
Service after much analysis and public involvement.

The current budgeting process is approximately as follows:

1\) The Forest Supervisors estimate the budget required to carry out the
Forest Plan on an annual basis;

2\) These budgets are totaled by the Forest Service and submitted to the
Department of Agriculture;

3\) The Department of Agriculture provides a budget ceiling, typically
less than requested by the Forest Service;

4\) This budget goes to Office of Management and Budgets (C--CHECK, OMB)
and is negotiated, with the Forest Service included in the negotiations;

5\) the budget proposed by the Administration is presented to the
Congress;

6\) Congress then produces a budget based on its priorities that is
signed by the President.

The operation of the budgeting process as described above is largely
independent of the planning process and the plans for the National
Forests and Grasslands, except that Congress generally accepts upper
limits on commodity outputs, such as the allowable timber sale levels,
defined in the plans. Furthermore, since the final allocations in the
Congressional budget are on the basis of programs, not plans, the
budgeted items typically are poorly related to the various plan items.
Finally, the total budget appropriated by the Congress is usually less
than what is required to finance the forest plans.

This disconnect between budgets and plans leads has a number of
unfortunate consequences. First, the Forest Service has to patch
together budget provisions for the different programs to undertake the
integrated management increasingly mandated by the plans and courts.
Second, the unequal budgeting for different resources and outputs means
that goals for each plan are unequally met. Finally, the disconnect
undermines public confidence in the Forest Service planning process, as
people find that the hard-earned compromises they fought for in the
forest plans cannot be fully implemented.

Improving the Relationship Between Land and Resource Planning and
Budgets

In concept, the RPA/NFMA envisioned that Congress would craft thoughtful
and deliberate budgets to complement widely accepted forest plans. If
Congress paid close heed to the plans and their components, funding
presumably would reflect the size and priorities of the plans.

Some have argued that alternative approaches to budgeting are likely to
be more efficient. For example, the National Park Service receives
Congressional funding by individual park. Such an approach has been
suggested for the Forest Service, and in fact, the Quincy Library
legislation provides for separate funding for the National Forests of
Northern Sierra Nevada in California. If Congress were to use a
line-item, forest-by-forest funding approach to provide the total Forest
Service budget, the correspondence between forest plans and budgets
might improve.

Within the current budgeting process, however, some changes could be
undertaken to enhance the connection between likely budgets and plan
assumptions about them The Committee of Scientists recognizes that for
plans developed under the NFMA to have any credibility, there must be
some reasonable expectation that it can be implemented. In general, the
recommendations below recognize that planning must adhere to the likely
the budget, rather than assuming that the budget will adhere to the
plan. At the same time, the suggestions below allow for the role of
planning in describing possibilities -- the "wish list" for the National
Forests and Grasslands that might be achieved with sufficient funds.

The Central Role of Budgets: Affecting the Rate of Achievement of the
Desired Future Condition

In general, as discussed in Chapter 4, strategic (large landscape) plans
should focus on long-term goals for management of the National Forests
and Grasslands and different areas within them, leaving the details of
achievement of these goals to the tactical, year-to-year implementation
(small landscape) plans. In our model, strategic plans focus on setting
the goals for different areas of the public lands and the desired future
conditions and outcomes associated with these goals. The plans also
estimate the pathway (mix of actions over time and expected conditions
along the way) to achieve the desired future condition considering
likely budgets.

It would be useful for the strategic plans to outline progress toward
achieving desired future conditions and outcomes under a number of
budget levels, in addition to expected budgets, and estimate how these
budgets would affect progress. As an example, it could be that hazard
reduction needed to achieve the desired future condition would take a
long time under current budgets, but could be expedited under a higher
budget level. This type of information will be useful in formulating
budget requests and in alerting the public to the implications of
different budget levels.

In each year, analysis of the actions needed to move toward the
long-term goals would provide the basis of the budget request. Resulting
budgets would determine the mix of actions actually used to move toward
the goals and how rapidly progress would be made.

Under this scheme, year-to-year budget variations would not necessitate
changes in the choice of the desired future condition of the forest.
However, reduced or increased budgets would likely change the time it
would take to achieve those conditions.

It would be useful to all those interested in management of the National
Forests and Grasslands to understand how the annual budget level and
distribution among programs are affecting progress toward long-term
goals. Therefore, an annual report should be published that outlines the
budget for the year for each forest and its impact on progress toward
long-term goals. Also, as plans are revised, they should compare actual
budgets for the plan period to those that were expected.

The Role of Budgeting in Setting the Desired Future Condition Itself

In setting the desired future condition---the long-term goals for
management of the national forests--two aspects of budgeting must be
considered. First, it would be important to understand whether the
budgets required to maintain the desired future condition, once it is
achieved, are at all reasonable. As an example, some strategies for
maintaining forest structures in fire-prone landscapes rely on
prescribed fire every few years. It may be that the total budgets for
these activities on a given forest would add up to an amount much higher
then would likely be funded. Although it is improbable that the desired
future condition would stay constant over the time necessary to achieve
it, it would nevertheless be instructive to evaluate the feasibility of
the budget projected to maintain it. If the budget levels so calculated
seem out of line with likely budgets in the long-term, planning would
need to investigate other future conditions that were more compatible
with likely budgets.

Second, the long-term management goals may need adjustment if it becomes
clear that Congress is unlikely to fund accomplishment of those goals.
Although we would not want the strategic plan to react to each year's
budget level and distribution, five or ten years of budgets that
systematically do not fund achievement of some goals in the strategic
plan would send a signal about the realism of the plan. As an example,
if Congress does not fund monitoring year after year, then strategic
plans should be adjusted to reflect that reality, which may include
limiting activities whose performance is dependent on monitoring their
effects.

The Importance of Self-funding Activities

Strategic planning and implementation planning should consider
activities to accomplish their goals that at least partially pay for
themselves. Some of these activities, such as timber harvest, may not
turn out to be appropriate; nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that
activities that can pay for themselves are often more likely to occur
than those that do not.

Recommendations for Improving the Relationship Between Land and Resource
Planning and Budgeting

a\) The strategic plan should concentrate on setting long-term goals and
the associated desired future condition and make a first estimate of the
pathway (mix of actions over time and conditions along the way) to
achieve these future conditions. The estimated rate of accomplishment of
the desired conditions should be keyed to expected budgets, along with
analysis of how increased or decreased budgets will affect the rate of
progress. The details of actions necessary to achieve progress toward
these goals, however, should be left to implementation planning.

b\) As part of strategic planning, the budgets necessary to maintain the
desired future condition should be examined; if they appear unrealistic,
less budget-intensive desired future conditions should be considered.

c\) Implementation plans, updated annually, should be the basis for the
budget requests.

d\) Budget shortfalls will affect implementation plans and the rate of
progress toward goals; they do not automatically trigger a revision in
the strategic plan

e\) If it becomes clear over time that Congress is unlikely to fund
achievement of the long-term goals, and associated desired future
conditions, then the strategic plan itself may need revision. During
plan revision, a comparison should be made between the expected and
actual budget during the plan period.

f\) An annual report should be published that outlines how the budget
for the year is affecting progress toward long-term goals.

g\) Both strategic planning and implementation planning should consider
activities that have the potential to pay for themselves, in addition to
activities that rely solely on appropriated funds.

h\) The National Forests and Grasslands should continue experiments to
fund entire programs for individual national forests and should report
on the experience with this approach so far.

Requirements of Other Laws and Regulations

Numerous observers, including the General Accounting Office and a former
Forest Service Chief, have maintained that the overlapping of various
environmental laws, e.g., the National Environmental Policy Act,
Endangered Species Act, National Forest Management Act, Clean Water Act
, generates substantial planning difficulties. Given Congress's apparent
reluctance to "harmonize" the environmental laws though legislation, it
appears that administrative reform is the best route to overcoming these
problems. Toward that end, the Committee of Scientists has made a number
of suggestions throughout this report which we summarize here:

1\) that representatives from agencies responsible for implementing
these other laws be included on the teams doing land and resource
planning.

2\) that project review of implementation of these plans be conducted by
a team including representatives of these agencies.

3\) that a coordinated strategic plan (large landscape plan) be
developed across federal ownerships within a region.

4\) that the planning processes associated with the other laws,
including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act, be
examined and integrated with the planning process mandated under
National Forest Management Act.

We realize that the regulatory agencies, especially the US Fish and
Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, and Environmental
Protection Agency, are part of the check-and-balance system for land
management to ensure that these agencies do not neglect legal mandates
for protection of species and ecosystems. While we fully expect the
continuation of that role by these agencies, we feel that the changes
suggested here will improve planning by getting the concerns of other
agencies addressed early in the process and coordinating the planning of
large landscapes across agencies.

# CHAPTER SIX

# 

Proposed Purpose, Goals, and Principles for Inclusion in the Federal
Regulations

36 Code of Federal Regulations § 219.1

Purpose, Goals, and Principles

\(a\) Purpose. The National Forest System constitutes an extraordinary
national legacy created by people of vision and preserved for future
generations by diligent and far-sighted public servants and citizens.
They are the people's lands, emblems of our democratic traditions.

The national forests and grasslands can provide many and diverse
benefits to the American people. These include clean air and water,
productive soils, biological diversity, goods and services, employment
opportunities, community benefits, recreation, and naturalness. They
also give us intangible qualities such as beauty, inspiration, and
wonder.

Yet, these benefits depend upon the long-term sustainability of the
watersheds, forests, and rangelands. Accordingly, the first priority for
stewardship in the national forests and grasslands must be to maintain
and restore the sustainability of watersheds, forests, and rangelands
for present and future generations. Building on this foundation of
sustainability, the national forests and grasslands should provide a
wide variety of uses, values, products, and services that are important
to so many Americans, including outdoor recreation, forage, timber,
wildlife and fish, water use, and minerals.

The objective of planning for the National Forest System is to guide
stewardship so as to fulfill the purposes of the national forests and
grasslands and to honor their unique place in American life. The
regulations in this subpart set forth a process for developing,
adopting, implementing, and revising land and resource management plans
for the National Forest System as required by the National Forest
Management Act of 1976 (hereafter, "NFMA"), the Forest and Rangeland
Renewable Resources Act of 1974, the Organic Act of 1897, the
Multiple-Use, Sustained-Yield Act of 1960, the Endangered Species Act of
1973, the Clean Water Act of 1977, and other applicable statutes.

(b)Major Goals and Principles. Land and resource planning shall strive
to achieve the following major goals and embody the following
principles. The terms "planning" and "management" encompass the full
range of processes from assembling information, evaluating information
in the context of goals, crafting future courses of action, choosing
specific actions, implementing actions, measuring performance,
evaluating outcomes in terms of expectations, and revising decisions
when necessary.

Goal One. PLANNING STRIVES TO ASSURE THE ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY OF
OUR WATERSHEDS, FORESTS, AND RANGELANDS.

The guiding star for planning is sustainability. Like other overarching
national objectives, sustainability is broadly aspirational and can be
difficult to define in concrete terms. Yet, especially considering the
increased human pressures on the national forests and grasslands, it
becomes ever more essential that planners focus on the heart of the idea
of sustainability, that our use today does not impair the functioning of
ecological processes and the ability of these natural resources to
contribute economically and socially in the future.

While one function of the pursuit of sustainability is to chart a broad
and idealistic objective, important aspects of sustainability can also
be defined and measured with some precision in the planning process.
First, species viability, which is essential to ecological
sustainability, is a powerful metric. Second, useful measurements can be
made of ecological productivity, through such indicators as water
purity, air quality, soil fertility, fire and flow regimes, plant
growth, and the variety and distribution of forests and rangelands. By
seeking to sustain biological diversity and ecological productivity ---
by first emphasizing what we leave, before we consider what we take ---
forest planning can play a crucial role in laying the necessary
foundation for the economic and social components of sustainability:
making contributions to strong, productive economies and creating
opportunities for enduring human communities. Ecological, economic and
social sustainability are inextricably linked, and thus impairing the
sustainability of any one aspect affects the entirety.

Principles

\(a\) [Planning first provides for the diversity of plant and animal
communities and the productive capacity of ecological systems---the core
elements of ecological sustainability]{.underline}. Biological diversity
and ecological productivity in turn, depends on the viability of
individual species---diversity is sustained only when species persist.
In addition, they depend on maintaining the characteristic composition,
structure, and processes of ecosystems in the presence of human and
natural disturbances ---on maintaining the ecological integrity of these
systems. The obligation of planners and managers to provide for
biological diversity and ecological productivity is at the center ---
legally, scientifically, and morally --- of stewardship of the national
forests and grasslands.

\(b\) [Planning must be based upon science and other knowledge of the
world, including the use of scientifically based strategies for
sustainability]{.underline}. The best available ecological, economic,
and social information and analysis must be the foundation of land and
resource planning. Planning should consider information from a wide
range of sources, including scientists in public and private
organizations, as well as other knowledgeable people in tribes and local
communities.

\(c\) [Planning requires independent scientific review of assessments
and plans before their publication]{.underline}. Regional assessments
should suggest methods and strategies for providing for species
viability and ecological integrity. Using that information, planning
should construct conservation strategies and have them reviewed for
accuracy and sufficiency by Forest Service and other scientists before a
plan becomes final.

\(d\) [Plans include measures for evaluating whether stewardship goals
have been achieved.]{.underline} Because one of the core functions of
planning is to foster informed management decisions through ongoing
assessment and evaluation, effective monitoring is a crucial aspect of
planning and management. Additionally, independent field review by
Forest Service and outside technical and scientific experts plays an
important role in monitoring the contribution of plans to ecological,
economic, and social sustainability. When appropriate, the results of
monitoring and these independent reviews should be utilized in updating
plans.

Goal Two. PLANNING PROMOTES ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY BY
PROVIDING FOR A WIDE VARIETY OF USES, VALUES, PRODUCTS, AND SERVICES AND
BY ENHANCING SOCIETY'S CAPABILITY TO MAKE SUSTAINABLE CHOICES.

The national forests and grasslands have been a grand experiment in
providing for the multiple uses --- outdoor recreation, forage, timber,
wildlife and fish, water use, and minerals --- of these lands on a
permanent basis, following Gifford Pinchot's dictates that the lands be
devoted to "their most productive use for the permanent good of the
whole people . . . always bearing in mind that the conservative use of
these resources in no way conflicts with their permanent value." The
planning and management of these lands should be a shining example for
the entire world of stewardship that provides a wide variety of uses,
values, products, and services in ways that are compatible with
long-term ecological, economic and social sustainability.

Planning needs to recognize the interdependence of forests, rangelands,
and watersheds with economies and communities. Many communities depend
on the national forests and grasslands for much of their economic,
social, and cultural sustenance. Although the Forest Service cannot and
should not be expected to single-handedly sustain existing economies and
communities, the National Forests and Grasslands nonetheless contribute
many values, services, outputs, and uses that allow economies and
communities to persist, prosper, and evolve according to their own
wills. This charge --- contributing to the well-being of people today
and tomorrow --- is at the heart of the Forest Service's role in
economic and social sustainability.

Principles

\(a\) [Within the framework of ecological sustainability, planning
considers the needs, resilience, and vulnerability of economies and
communities in selecting long-term plans.]{.underline} In this role,
planning takes generous account of compelling local circumstances. This
includes the needs of ranching, farming, timber, and Indian communities,
and the many Hispanic communities in the Southwest who depend on the
resources in former Spanish and Mexican land grants.

\(b\) [Planning fosters a broad-based understanding of the vital
interrelationship between communities and sustainably managed forests
and grasslands.]{.underline} It provides mechanisms through which
communities can organize their energies and enterprises in a manner that
promotes economic and social sustainability. By building upon a
foundation grounded in ecological sustainability, planning provides
realistic expectations about long-term uses, values, outputs and
services contributed by the National Forests to economies and
communities.

\(c\) [Planning enhances community capacity to respond to unforeseen
disruptive influences, such as fires, floods and hurricanes, as well as
changes in federal policy affecting contributions from national forest
system lands.]{.underline} The agency is well-positioned with its
skills, expertise and familiarity and contacts with other government
programs to help ease disruptions and assist communities in times of
transition.

\(d\) [Planning searches for strategies and actions that provide for
human use in ways that contribute to long-term
sustainability.]{.underline} The national forests and grasslands should
direct much of their planning and implementation energies toward
developing, applying, and rewarding strategies and actions that enable
the multiple uses to occur in ways that promote long-term ecological,
economic, and social sustainability. Finding strategies and actions that
contribute to long-term sustainability, rather than working against it,
is the surest way to increase the predictability of these uses. As part
of this effort, planning searches for strategies that produce revenue
from human use.

[(e) Planning recognizes the regional, national and global implications
of management.]{.underline} Planning should acknowledge how management
of the national forests can contribute to ecological, economic, and
social sustainability on a regional, national and international scale.
As an example, federal lands generally will need to anchor regional and
national conservation strategies for species and ecosystems so that
other landowers can continue production of goods and services without
undue restriction. Also, with the concern over climate change, the
national forests and grasslands should consider the effect that their
management will have on carbon sequestration and consider alternatives
that increase the amount of carbon stored. *(Note, I am adding a section
on this topic. KNJ)*

\(f\) [Planning recognizes the rights of American Indian
Tribes]{.underline}. Indian tribes possess unique and important rights
recognized by federal treaties, statutes, and executive orders. The
agency has a general trust responsibility to federally recognized tribes
and a duty to acknowledge them as sovereign governments and to work with
them on a government-to-government basis. Depending on the circumstances
of particular tribes and national forests, such lands also may provide
for tribal hunting, fishing, and gathering rights, access to sacred
sites, protection of graves and other archaeological sites, and
watershed protection for downstream Indian reservations, and fishing
sites.

Goal Three. PLANNING RECOGNIZES, AND IS EFFICIENTLY INTEGRATED INTO, THE
BROADER GEOGRAPHIC, LEGAL, POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL LANDSCAPE WITHIN WHICH
NATIONAL FORESTS AND GRASSLANDS EXIST.

In every sector of the country, the Forest Service and the national
forests and grasslands are just one important agency and one important
land system among many important governmental and private entities and
land ownerships. Some of these agencies have statutory authority over
the national forests. Other agencies, governments, corporations, and
citizens manage land in and around the national forests. Still others
have a keen interest in the national forests and can affect the way the
political process views Forest Service action.

Sustainability of watersheds and other natural areas in which national
forests and grasslands are located will inevitably depend upon
activities on nearby federal lands, tribal, and state lands, and private
lands and on the actions and attitudes of a wide variety of agencies,
governments and citizens. These landowners will vary in their abilities
as well as their interest in providing the mix of uses, products,
values, and services that people seek from forests and rangelands.
Planning, therefore, must be outward-looking with the goals of
understanding the broader landscape in which the national forests and
grasslands lie and achieving the highest values for management of these
lands within the context of how people, businesses, and governments will
conserve, regulate, and use the lands within and around the national
forests and grasslands.

Principles

\(a\) [Assessment and planning requires a coordinated approach by all
affected federal agencies]{.underline}. Cooperation from the beginning
with all federal agencies with statutory authority over the national
forests and grasslands is essential. Obtaining early participation of,
and joint planning with, all federal land management agencies in the
area is another key to successful planning. While the Forest Service
cannot require participation and joint planning with other federal
agencies, the agency should seek and actively encourage it.

\(b\) [Planning proceeds from start to finish in close cooperation with
state, tribal, and local governments]{.underline}. Success in achieving
goals for the national forests and grasslands may depend upon decisions
made by other jurisdictions. Similarly, the Forest Service often can
help other jurisdictions achieve their objectives through cooperation.

\(c\) [Planning is interdisciplinary]{.underline}. Planning must respond
to a broad range of scientific, economic, and social concerns.
Therefore, planning teams must represent diverse disciplines and work
together collectively and collegially to develop information and
alternatives. Consultants can be employed to tap other relevant sources
of knowledge.

\(d\) [Planning must be based on the spatial and temporal scales
necessary to assure sustainability and provide for multiple
use]{.underline}. Ecological boundaries that also have social meaning,
such as river basins, mountain ranges will be useful for planning in the
future. These planning boundaries often do not follow the boundaries of
the national forests and grasslands. In order to achieve long-term
sustainability, planning must often take account of cumulative effects
on resources, within and beyond the boundaries of the national forests
and grasslands, well beyond the life of a plan.

\(e\) [Planning acknowledges the limits and variability of likely
budgets]{.underline}. Plans that are unrealistic in budget terms can
seldom be implemented, and hence fail to provide proper management
guidance, lead to public frustration and anger, and undermine
high-quality stewardship. Plans should be resilient in the face of
erratic budgets.

Goal Four. PLANNING MEANINGFULLY ENGAGES THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN THE
STEWARDSHIP OF THEIR NATIONAL FORESTS AND GRASSLANDS.

The national forests and grasslands belong to the American people. For
these truly to be the "people's lands," the people must understand the
lands' condition, potential, limitations, and niche in resource
conservation in this country. Just as the Forest Service can help the
American people learn about the limits and capabilities of the national
forests and grasslands, so too must the managers be educated by the
unique knowledge, advice, and values of the American people. Citizens
can provide a wide array of services, ranging from volunteer work on
trail crews to participating in collaborative efforts aimed at resolving
disputes over specific projects. The national forests should draw on
this knowledge, wisdom, and energy by building relationships, dialogues,
and partnerships with the groups and individuals who wish to have a role
in setting the future course for the national forests and in
implementing these decisions.

Principles

\(a\) [Planning encourages extensive collaborative citizen
participation]{.underline}. Land and resource planning must provide
mechanisms for broad-based, vigorous, and ongoing opportunities for open
public dialogue. These dialogues must be open to any person at any time,
conducted in non-technical terms readily understandable to the general
public, and structured in a manner that recognizes and accommodates
differing schedules, capabilities, and interests. The participation of
citizens should be encouraged from the beginning and be maintained
throughout the planning process. The public should have a role in
assessments, issue-identification, implementation and monitoring.

\(b\) [Planning builds upon the human resources in local
communities]{.underline}. Just as local communities depend on the
national forests and grasslands, so too does the health of many forests,
rangelands, and watersheds depend, in turn, on healthy communities. Many
restoration actions are needed on these lands, including programs to
improve riparian conditions, reduce fuel loads, and rebuild and
decommission roads. These efforts will require entrepreneurs and a
trained workforce. The surrounding communities, assuming that they
continue to exist and prosper, can help provide these services. Planning
and management must realize the full potential of these human resources
to further the stewardship of the national forests and grasslands.

\(c\) [Planning and plans are understandable to the American
people]{.underline}. A central purpose of planning is to speak directly
to the public. The language of planning must be clear and
straight-forward. These are the people's lands, and planning must be
welcoming to the public.

\(d\) [Planning restores and maintains the trust of the American people
in the management of the national forests]{.underline}. Planning is a
principal setting in which the Forest Service relates to the public. It
can be a valuable forum in which to reestablish the public's confidence.
Planners need to work on the premise that effective planning and
management cannot be achieved without the public's respect and trust.
Therefore, planning should integrate the public into the process, give
the public accurate and complete information in a way that can be
understood, make extensive use of public input, and meet public
expectations by adopting realistic plans and fulfilling their objectives
until amended. The Forest Service should welcome independent field
review of its plans and actions.

Goal Five. PLANNING, WHICH MUST BE AT ONCE VISIONARY AND PRAGMATIC,
GUIDES DECISION-MAKING.

Planning has long been viewed as a burdensome exercise with little
connection to management. In fact, planning must be an organic part of
stewardship of the national forests and grasslands: plans must be
working guides that Forest Service employees find useful and motivating.
Given the frequency with which new issues arise, new information becomes
available, and unforeseen events occur, planning should be viewed as an
ongoing process, where guidance and directions are adapted as necessary
to new understandings.

Principles

\(a\) [Planning organizes around a collective vision of the desired
future]{.underline}. Developing a collective vision of future landscape
conditions, and the uses, products, values, and services that will be
provided by these conditions, is our best hope for a "coming together"
of the people and groups that care about the national forests. Pictures,
maps, and computer imagery of future conditions, including consideration
of the larger landscape within which a planning area is located, will
help people visualize alternatives and reach agreement on a shared
vision. A plan document should begin with a short mission statement that
captures this vision---a mission statement that is broad but vivid and
evocative, a dream rooted in reality. The "desired future condition,"
and the outcomes associated with it, should serve as the central
reference point for planning and management of the national forests.
Performance measures, monitoring, and budgets should be directed toward
achievement of the actions and conditions needed to move toward the
desired future.

(b)[Planners must actively seek out and address key issues, especially
the toughest ones.]{.underline} Planning cannot avoid controversy by
trying to bury it. The best guidelines will emerge from an open, candid,
and collaborative process that tackles key issues.

\(c\) [Planning should be efficient in achievement of
goals]{.underline}. Strategies that simultaneously address multiple
goals and find the least-cost method for achieving these goals are
essential guides to efficient stewardship.

(d)[Planning must be at once practical and innovative]{.underline}.
Planning is not an end in itself but rather must be a useful endeavor
that furthers real-world objectives, including serving as a working
guide for stewardship. At the same time, planning must encourage
risk-taking and creativity. Valuable innovations have been developed
during Forest Service planning, ranging from successful collaborative
efforts to multi-agency watershed and large-landscape assessments.
Planners should be ever alert to new and exciting opportunities that may
arise from the unique circumstances surrounding a particular plan.

\(e\) [Planning must be done expeditiously]{.underline}. Lengthy
planning efforts frustrate public participants, strain Forest Service
resources, and can result in plans that are outdated when adopted.
Planners should aim to complete the planning phases from assessment
through formal adoption of small landscape plans, within three years and
preferably less than two. To accommodate this goal, analytical
requirements should be kept to a minimum consistent with achieving the
purposes of planning. In the future, when plans are regularly kept
current through the amendment process, plan revisions should be
completed in an even shorter time.

(f)[Plans are dynamic and adaptable]{.underline}. There is no such thing
as a "final plan." While a plan should strive to attain a reasonable
degree of predictability in its implementation, everyone also must
recognize that unpredicted events, ranging from natural disturbances to
changed market conditions, will occur. Forest Service officials must
respond adaptively to new circumstances through plan amendments, small
and large, so the plans will remain fully current. Plans must be living
documents.