Dear Reader: This paper is a work in progress by the Committee of
Scientists on planning processes for the national forests. It has been
constructed by a subcommittee of the COS. While it contains some of the
ideas that have been discussed by the COS, it should not be seen as a
finished product. We wanted to distribute it in this form so that we
would receive your comments at a time when we could use them.

CHAPTER 4. A PLANNING APPROACH TO ACHIEVE SUSTAINABILITY AND DEEPEN
PUBLIC AND AGENCY ENGAGEMENT

The primary purpose of land and resource planning on the national
forests is to sustain our watersheds, forests and rangelands and provide
for multiple use of these lands.

As discussed in other sections, 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. To achieve this goal, planning must apply the best available
scientific information and analysis so that the diversity and adaptive
capability of ecosystems will be maintained and restored.

Building on the foundation of sustainable ecological systems, planning
should provide for sustainable development that contributes to our
economic and cultural systems and to our communities. To accomplish this
goal, planning should seek to provide a wide variety of uses, products,
values, and services.

The guiding framework for the planning process within these two primary
goals comes from the public issues of national, regional or local
interest regarding the management of the national forest system lands.
The identification, analysis and, hopefully, resolution of these issues
is a desired outcome of the planning process.

# SUSTAINABILITY\--THE TRADITIONAL FOCUS OF PLANNING

Over the last 400 years, an overriding goal of public forestry has been
to sustain the productive capacity of its forests. First in Europe and
then in the United States, foresters have attempted to meet this goal by
providing a sustained yield of commercial timber volume. As in Europe,
the emergence of forestry in the United States in the late nineteenth
century occurred after a long period of deforestation due to rapid
harvest to clear lands for agriculture and settlement, build cities,
provide fuel for individuals and commerce, and ship lumber to foreign
markets. The concept of sustained yield forestry stood in stark contrast
to this rapid harvest.

The forest reserve movement at the end of the nineteenth century sought
to protect watersheds and the productive capacity of the forests by
creating public forests. Advocates of forestry and conservation argued
that a public forestry based on sustained yield principles would provide
for both ecological and social sustainability\--overexploitation of
resources would be prevented and a continuous supply of wood 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. 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. Regulation of use (timber,
grazing, mining, and recreation) and protection (from fire, insects and
disease, and poor timber harvest practices) were the primary roles of
public forest managers. As harvest levels rose after World War II,
management analysis focused 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 as compared to an "even-flow" policy.

The NFMA was written at a time of change in public values as expressed
in the Wilderness Act, Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, National
Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the
Endangered Species Act, to name only a few of the many environmental
protection laws of the time. The NFMA called for public forest
management to explicitly address the environmental consequences of
commercial timber harvest and to designate areas that were unsuitable
for timber harvest as a result of environmental considerations. Thus,
"forest planning" focused on determining the sustained yield level of
timber harvest for each national forest, subject to providing at least
minimal levels of protection for species and ecosystems.

In the 1980s, scientific knowledge of ecosystems grew rapidly, and new
analysis technologies allowed complex interactions to be understood and
predicted based on different management scenarios. Management strategies
based on sustained yield of timber simply did not provide adequate
protection for many plant and animal species or for ecological system
functions necessary for long term productivity. In addition, in a
dynamic global economy, a localized emphasis on a sustained supply of
commercial timber could provide neither economic nor community
stability.

But the forest planning process was too far down the track to recall. So
the heart of the plans continued to be a sustained yield of commercial
timber volume. And, once completed, they were almost immediately made
obsolete, in many parts of the country, by the emerging emphasis on the
conservation of the diversity of plants and animals to ensure ecological
sustainability.

The purpose of this section is to suggest a planning process and
structure that first recognizes the maintenance of sustainable
ecological systems as the foundation of national forest management and
then, within that context, attempts to provide sustainable contributions
to the social and economic well-being of communities and the nation.
This chapter builds upon the existing legal framework for planning and
management in the Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974 (RPA) as
amended by the National Forest Management Act of 1976 (NFMA). We begin
with a discussion of the national assessment and program required by the
RPA. To provide a context in which to understand the current and
proposed planning structure, we describe the key elements of the current
system of plans. We then turn to a new conceptual framework for
information gathering, strategic planning and implementation planning.

# THE ROLE OF THE NATIONAL ASSESSMENT AND PROGRAM

The RPA assessment was intended to be a vehicle by which the status of
all lands and resources in the United States can be periodically
assessed relative to current conditions and future expectations. It has
especially emphasized the supply and demand for the different multiple
uses such as timber and recreation across the different ownerships. It
has been less successful in characterizing ecological conditions,
especially those that have a strong regional flavor such as threatened
and endangered species. In reality, the RPA assessment cannot be
expected to provide a detailed evaluation of ecological sustainability
in the different regions of the country. Providing that information, the
basis of planning for sustainability, needs to be done through
bioregional assessments as discussed below.

Still, the RPA assessment can contribute to national forest planning in
a number of ways: 1) It shapes our understanding of the conditions on
all forest and range lands 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 like the role of
forests in addressing global climate change policy, protecting
biodiversity, 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
envisioned as a master plan for the management of the national forests,
given the inputs (especially budgets) that would be needed to provide
high levels of outputs (especially commodities). 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 become 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, both Presidents and Congress have largely ignored the
Program, responding more directly to their own priorities for management
of the National Forests and the realities of limited budgets. Similarly,
both 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 as a set of functional
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 by recognizing their
role in 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, pointing
out the unique contributions of the National Forests. With this vision
the RPA program would be a policy guide when developing the large and
small landscape plans discussed below. As an example, 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.

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.

# A COMPARISON OF PLANNING STRUCTURES: EXISTING AND PROPOSED

## EXISTING APPROACH

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 levels in addition to the national
Assessment and Program. Each planning level is considered a NEPA action,
and thus has an EA or an EIS associated with it:

Type of plan/ Geographic Purpose

responsible boundary

official

Regional guide/ Forest Service Reflect RPA goals and objectives;

Chief Region Display tentative RPA resource objectives

(targets) for each planning area; cover

standards and guidelines for addressing the

major issues which need to be considered at

the regional level to facilitate planning (maximum clearcut sizes,
approp. silvic. method, management strategies for wide-

ranging species, etc.)

Forest plan/ National Develop multiple use goals and objectives,
Regional forester Forest identify the quantities of goods and services

> to be produced, subject to minimum management requirements for
> protection of wildlife habitat, soil and water quality.
>
> Ensure viability of vertebrate species.
>
> Address local issues and develop alternatives showing minimum resource
> development and maximum biological potential, with costs and benefits.
> Toward these purposes, allocate land among different management
> emphases, set standards and guidelines for mgt. within each emphasis,
> calculate the land suitable for timber production, calculate an upper
> limit on timber removals, estimate ecological, economic, and social
> effects on a
>
> programmatic basis; set project goals and aggregate budget and human
> resource requests for projects. Develop monitoring and evaluation
> requirements. At least one alternative was to be directed toward
> meeting the RPA targets stated in Regional Guidance.

Project/ Depends on Propose actions to achieve goals of

?? objective of plan, assess site-specific effects;

project estimate budget needed and outputs that will result. Mitigate
adverse environ. effects

Developing information for the planning process was an initial step in
the planning process at both the Regional and National Forest levels.
Called the "analysis of the management situation", it included: demand
and supply conditions for resource commodities, services as well as
their production potentials. These analyses were production oriented
calling for benchmark analysis of the minimum and maximum physical and
biological production capabilities of significant goods and services
with associated costs and benefits, monetary benchmarks that maximize
present net value of major commodity resources, estimates of current
production of goods and services, and projections of demand.

Thus, 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 generally 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.

# PROPOSED APPROACH

Our proposed approach retains a hierarchical planning structure,
emphases the use of ecological boundaries, especially those that have
social meaning, separates the information gathering from planning 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 design to allow for a diversity of approaches
across the country and to encourage experimentation. The process,
though, has a set of core design characteristics that we feel are
essential for effective planning, and by which any planning process and
structure should be judged:

1\) the development and use of scientifically credible strategies for
the protection of species and ecosystems,

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

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

4\) a deepened agency engagement in planning by connecting planning more
centrally to the issues faced by national forest managers,

5\) the encouragement of organizational learning through adaptive
management, information sharing, ongoing public dialogue, and
independent review

**Assessments**

We believe that it is important to recognize assessment as a distinct
task organized as a joint inquiry 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
national forest planning. We believe that assessments have such an
important role in providing the information base for national forest
planning 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.

These assessments 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 national forest planning. Also, they can help develop
leadership and provide a crash course in adaptive management.

Our proposal includes an additional element at the bioregional
level\--the development and application of 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 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 can be successful. With the
development of these strategies, assessments should be able to prove
their worth to managers and planners.

In this process, it will still be important to retain the linkage
between assessment and planning: the primary purposes of assessments are
to develop information on ecological and social sustainability and to
develop the organizational and social capacity for planning so that
planning can proceed. This linkage will help define not only the
boundaries of the assesssments, but their organization and staffing.
Planners and resource specialists need to participate in these
assessments in order to contribute their knowledge, better understand
the body of information that is produced, get experience with adaptive
management processes, and be better prepared to use the information in
planning and management.

We envision two types of assessments:

Type Geographic Purpose

boundary

Bioregional Ecological Assess ecological sustainability (species

viability and ecosystem integrity) under

current polices across all ownerships.

> Suggest strategies for sustaining ecological systems where problems
> are detected. Assess the current and potential
>
> contributions of the national forests to economic and social
> well-being. Assess the social context and history of the region,
> including demographic changes, economic patterns and trends, and
> institutional arrangements. Address a variety scientific and technical
> issues as suggested by public issue groups.

Watershed Landform Use information from bioregional assessments
assessments and large landscape plans to

(landscape refine desired future condition and pathways assessments) to
that condition; address local issues of ecological sustainability and

multiple use, including those defined by local issue groups. Use a
participatory social

> analysis approach so that communities can assess their current
> economic and social conditions and long term well-being.

**Planning**

Planning 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 the large landscape plans or as a
part of them. We explain the planning hierarchy in terms of a
three-level approach and then also illustrate its structure when two
levels are recognized.

Type of plan/ Geographic Purpose

responsible boundary

official

Bioregional Ecological Provide strategies to ensure sustainable

guidance/Regional ecological systems (species viability and

Forester ecosystem integrity) and sustainable

> development across large areas.

Large landscape Ecological/ Interpret strategies for ecological

plans/ social sustainability and provide for multiple use;

Forest address issues defined by collaborative Supervisor (s) groups;
set desired future conditions for

different parts of the landscape

and actions permitted within them, choose

strategic pathways to move toward desired conditions, set input and
outcome measures for judging progress toward desired

> conditions, set land suitable for resource management, estimate
> ecological, economic, and social contributions on a programmatic
> basis. Develop monitoring and evaluation process, including
> independent review.

Small Ecological/ Propose actions that move toward desired

landscape social future conditions; consider all projects in

combination to the degree possible within

the planning area; estimate site-specific

effects; estimate budgets needed for action,

estimate outcomes that will result, estimate cumulative effects, provide
context for action. Specify monitoring criteria and

> expected outcomes, including experimental efforts and areas of
> uncertainty.

This approach retains the three-tiered planning framework that has
developed over time based on the existing (1982) regulations: 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 plan is developed considering the multitude of
issues that surface during the planning process, and 3) a site-specific
level to develop the actions needed to carry out the long-term plan.
Based on the experience of the last 20 years, we would suggest a number
of changes and refinements in this overall approach 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 that
the Forest Service and others have done about planning 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.]{.underline} In
the past regional plans often fell short in their guidance on ecological
sustainability. National forests, as a result, were left without a firm
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.]{.underline} In the past, national forest planning often focused
on the short-term issues of land allocation and timber harvest levels.
While these are still important issues, we believe that, consistent with
the emphasis on ecological and social sustainability, national forest
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 of the future and provides
an essential guide for management. Visualization of the future landscape
through pictures and computer simualations will be a crucial element in
this work. Using information on current conditions, from the bioregional
assessments and elsewhere, the large landscape plans should also 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 in the strategic plan\--to implement the
strategic plans.]{.underline} Projects should be developed in
combination, to the degree possible, with attention to cumulative
effects, and 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
consistency with the general strategic intent of the plan. This is the
planning level that is based upon Adaptive Management, meaning that it
is 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 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 may be individual
projects that are highly controversial and that require a longer time
for public discussion prior to reaching a decision on their outcome. In
such cases, it would be appropriate to evaluate them seperately, but the
cumulative effects of the project must be analyzed with the others
before including them in the small landscape plans.

[An Overall Planning Structure]{.underline}

The following schematic represents our vision of the overall planning
process when a strategy for ecological sustainability is developed as a
decision separate from the large landscape plans:

Bioregional Bioregional guidance

assessment \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--\> for ecological
sustainability

l D

l D

l V

l\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--\>Large
landscape plans

l D D D D D D D D D "Strategic plans"

l D D

l D D

l D D

l D D

V V V

Watershed\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--\>Small landscape
plans

(landscape) "Implementation plans"

assessment D

D

V

Actions

Information flows: \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--\> or l or \^

l l

V l

Decision flows: D

D

V

where V or \> indicates the end of an arrow.

(In the interest of simplicity, some of the feed back loops on the
diagram have been omitted.)

[An Alternative Planning Structure]{.underline}

An alternative planning structure would combine the bioregional guidance
for ecological sustainability with the development of the large
landscape plans. The following schematic represents our vision of the
overall planning process when a strategy for ecological sustainability
is developed as a decision separate from the large landscape plans:

Bioregional

assessment

l

l

l

l\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--\>Large
landscape plans

l D D D D D D D D D "Strategic plans" including the development

l D of guidance for ecological sustainability

l D D

l D D

l D D

l D D

V V V

Watershed\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--\>Small landscape
plans

(landscape) "Implementation plans"

assessment D

D

V

Actions

Each of these planning structures has advantages and disadvantages.
Developing strategies for ecological sustainability at the bioregional
level ensures that that a coherent conservation strategy for species and
ecosystems is available for use as the foundation for forest planning in
the large landscape plans. We expect that the range of many species and
ecosystems cover the area of multiple large landscape plans. Therefore,
attempting to develop conservation strategies as part of the large
landscape planning process puts pressure on the planning teams to work
together across large landscape planning areas as they craft their
plans. It will undoubtedly require something close to simultaneous
development of large landscape plans and raises the importance of an
independent "science-consistency" check on the proposed plans.

[The Role of the "Traditional" Land and Resource Plan for a National
Forest.]{.underline}

The NFMA calls for development of an integrated land and resource plan
for each National Forest. Where does that fit here? In some cases, the
area of a large landscape plan will be identical to that covered by an
individual national forest or a cluster of national forests. In those
cases the land and resource plan called for under NFMA would be
equivalent to the large landscape plan. In many cases, though, different
areas on a national forest will be part of different large landscape
plans.

Regardless of the boundary used for planning, it is important to
integrate all planning direction into a single document at the
appropriate scale. One problem created by varying the scales and
boundaries of planning is the creation of multiple overlapping planning
direction for a single national forest unit. This is confusing not only
to the public, but also to the field personnel charged with implementing
the plan who must refer to the planning direction and resolve
differences in that direction among multiple planning documents.

Thus, individual national forest plans still have an important role in
compiling the results of large landscape plans and connecting them with
specific actions, ie., with small landscape plans. These plans are a
logical 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 NF in a
context of federal agencies and jurisdictions, state and local
governments, tribes, local associations and other landowners. 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 can be the primary
administrative unit for carrying out management of these lands.

We would predict that each of the three levels in the planning hierarchy
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 when it served as a vehicle for compiling the
results of a set of large landscape plans and small landscape plans.

[Integrating Budgets into Planning]{.underline}

Past plans developed both the goals for forest management and also a set
of actions for the decade expected to achieve these goals. The activity
set was 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 outcomes 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 above, the strategic plan should concentrate on
setting the long-term goals and the associated desired future condition,
and make a first estimate of the pathway (mix of actions) over time to
achieve these 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 budget-intensive
desired future conditions should be considered and options for building
partnerships to increase stewardship capacity actively sought.

The actions outlined in the small landscape plans, updated on a
yearly-basis, should be the basis for the budget requests. Budget
short-falls 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 strategic plan
itself may need revision. During plan revision, a comparison should be
made between the expected and actual budget during the plan period.

An annual report should be published that outlines how the budget for
the year is affecting progress toward long-term goals. This is also an
opportunity for identifying areas where goals are not being met and
require a broader approach than just the planning process.

We envision the relationship between large landscape plans, small
landscape plans, the national forest plans, and budgeting as follows:

Large landscape plans D D D D D D

"Strategic plans" D

D V

D National B B B B B B B \> Budgeting

D forest B

D plans \< B B B B B B B B B B

V \^

Small landscape plans B

"Implementation plans" B B B B B B B

D

D

V

Actions

Information flows: \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--\> or l or \^

l l

V l

Decision flows: D

D

V

where V or \> indicates the end of an arrow.

Budgeting (requests flow up; money flows down): B B B B

[Some Key Elements in our Proposal]{.underline}

We have listed 11 key elements of our proposal below:

[1) Designate as the responsible official, a manager whose
responsibilities cover the area]{.underline} [being
planned.]{.underline} Currently, the Chief is responsible for regional
plans and the Regional Forester is responsible for national forest
plans. This approach inhibits change and adaptation in regional plans
and national forest plans. We believe that the Regional Foresters should
be responsible for bioregional plans and that the Forest Supervisors
should be responsible for large and small landscape plans and the
integrated "forest plan."

[2) Emphasize ecological boundaries for assessment and planning but also
consider their social meaning in choosing them.]{.underline} In the
past, planning boundaries were generally based on political/social
boundaries\--states, national forests, timber sale boundaries. Over the
last 20 years, it has become increasingly recognized that assessment and
planning to ensure ecological sustainability needs to use ecological
boundaries\-- such as range boundaries or key species, major watersheds,
mountain ranges, vegetative types\-\--to enable the development of
comprehensive plans for the conservation of species and ecosystems and
to measure the cumulative effects of proposed 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. 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 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.

Planning at the large and small landscape level should use ecological
boundaries that also have social meaning. "Large landscape plans" might
be based 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,
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
plans" for implementation would cover areas large enough to provide a
context for action, and to measure cumulative effects, and 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 NF, the Seven Buttes area of the
Deschutes NF, and the Chattooga Watershed Conservation Plan in the
Southeast.

[3) Consider the larger landscape in which the national forests sit to
understand the role of the national forests in ensuring ecological
sustainability and contributing to human use.]{.underline} Past national
forest 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 can make. Ideally, land and resource planning
integrates the broader geographic, political, and social landscape with
the potential contributions of the national 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 asssessment 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.

[4) Address all federal lands and work with all affected federal
agencies in a coordinated fashion.]{.underline} Past national 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 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
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. And it should 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 will be made more efficient and effective.

[5) Use a collaborative approach to developing large landscape and small
landscape plans]{.underline} In the past, the Forest Service has taken
the approach of proposing the choices for management of the national
forests and the measures of their success in addressing issues and then
asking other governments and the public how much they liked them. We
believe that planning will be more successful if it takes a
"collaborative" approach in which people, communities, tribes,
businesses and governments are full partners in defining issues and
developing options for addressing them.

Collaboration, quite simply, is based on the "old adage that 'two heads
are better than one' and that 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, but 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, flexible,
but at the same time, linked to existing law and procedures, and having
clear decision rules and authorities. They build on current scientific
understandings and knowledge and seek out relevant expertise as needed.
They are not democracy run amok.

There is no magic to collaboration. And, there are only two key
ingredients that must be present and that *all* successful collaborative
efforts share in common. Effective collaborative efforts involve
individuals who, first, share a concern about a place, an issue or a
problem and, second, are committed to working together on its behalf.
Shared concerns and commitment are the essential ingredients. It is
worth noting that one element in many of the promising approaches that
COS heard about was that those individuals involved \-- Forest Service
and non-Forest Service alike \-- viewed what they were doing to be an
experiment and learned and adapted accordingly. They were "in it
together" and consequently expectations and behaviors within the process
were very different than they were in the traditional planning process;
views of responsibilities differed; the Forest Service planner's role
was more flexible and adaptive; hence, 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.

In sum, sustainability can be better achieved by taking an integrative
approach that works with people, communities, tribes, businesses and
governments to conserve the lands within and around the national forests
and grasslands. Policies and projects will need to be developed and
implemented through collaborative relationships within clusters of
organizations -- other public agencies, non-governmental organizations,
businesses, community associations, and interested citizens -- based on
shifting alliances centered around the accomplishment of specific
programs or policies. No longer can agencies acting alone carry out
conservation strategies that involve large areas, numerous resources,
and multiple interested parties. Rather, effective planning and
implementation entails building strong relationships with other
organizations whose programs can contribute to achieve a common goal.

One approach to collaboration that should be given serious consideration
is the formation of a public planning group. This group would work with
the planning team to review public issues and comments, develop a list
of public issues for the planning process to address, identify issues
which require scientific assessment, develop short descriptions of each
issue to identify additional analysis needs, ensure the planning process
addresses these issues, review proposed decisions based upon the public
issue analysis, and work with the FS planning team to identify
alternative approaches to resolving public issues. When large landscape
plans include portions of several NFs, the group could identify several
of its members to work on them. For small landscape plans, it could
develop sub-committees which can add additional members from the
locality.

The NF should develop a process for identifying people to become part of
a public planning group, including advertising in the local and regional
media for applicants. While this group would form a core citizens group,
anyone could participate, as they wish, at any time. This group would
probably need to function as a FACA Committee and would serve the role
outlined in NFMA for "Forest Advisory Committees". From time-to-time,
this group might need technical and scientific assistance; identifying
knowledgeable people that could help them would be an important part of
the process.

The public planning group would help characterize the planning
alternatives. Alternatives are intended to identify different,
integrated approaches for achieving the goals of the NFs within the
ecological and social context of the area. Alternatives should reflect
different future visions of the NFs so that scientific and technical
analysis can further public understanding of the implications of
different courses of action. Alternatives would also be presented in
tentative form on the Forest Home Page so that all interested parties
can contribute to their definition, analysis and review.

To further facilitate communication and collaboration, all information
about the NF 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 NF can participate in it.
Working analyses and discussion papers should be continuously available
and contributions invited. Minutes from the PPG discussions should also
be available on the internet. The NF should make every effort to invite
public participation from people living too far from the NF to
participate in frequent meetings.

[6) Encourage citizens, as well as governments and groups, to become
stewards of the land.]{.underline} At all stages and levels, the
planning process needs to enable citizens as well as other agencies and
organizations to become stewards of the land, not merely its clients and
customers. Thus, the planning process can build implementation capacity
by defining problems in ways that they are everyone's responsibility.

7\) [Maintain the terms of the public controversy.]{.underline} The
planning process needs to be issue-based and not eliminate the
controversy in the issues. The planning process should create an open
forum for public and organizational inquiry in which issues of key
public concern are deliberated, analyzed and questions defined so that
all can actively work on developing solutions to them.

[8) In the long run, consider organizing administration (budgeting,
performance standards, monitoring) around the landscape units associated
with the large landscape plans.]{.underline}

Individual national forests have an important role to play in organizing
budgets and staffing needs for proposed activities, measuring
performance, and monitoring results. Their plans have provided a
framework for integrative administration of a NF in a context of 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 both large and
small landscape plans, and implementing the resulting policy direction
and project activities.

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 plans in some places. Without such a
change, the potential for inconsistent, wasteful actions within the
large landscape units is high. In addition, making the large landscape
unit, drawn on ecological boundaries, as the administrative unit, should
make it easier to communicate to the goals of management to the public.
An example of such a unit that currently exists is the Lake Tahoe Basin,
which is the watershed of Lake Tahoe and which previously, was
administered by four national forests in two bioregions. An example of a
unit that needs to be established is the Applegate Watershed, which is
currently administered by two national forests and two BLM Districts
(sidebar).

9\) [Measure plan performance through the achievement of actions and
outcomes.]{.underline} Traditionally, plan performance has been measured
through attainment of output targets. We feel that measurement of plan
performance should primarily be done through 1) comparing the expected
actions from the strategic plans to actions undertaken through the small
landscape plans on an annual basis and 2) comparing movement toward the
desired conditions every few years. Either of those measures might have
four results: 1) concluding things are fine, 2) adjusting the actions
that would be undertaken to achieve the mix assumed in the strategic
plan, 3) considering a change in the mix of treatments in the strategic
plan, or 4) considering a change in the desired future conditions.

[10) Make science-based planning a reality.]{.underline} 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 plans 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. Scientists
will be asked to assist in a wide variety of ways under our proposal
including: creating knowledge of relevance to forest planning, working
on the integrative science of bioregional assessments and planning,
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 to treat management as an experiment.

[11) Establish independent reviews to provide an "outside check" on the
use of technical and scientific information.]{.underline} 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 of the
science-basis of plans and their implementation. They can 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 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 if the information transferred from scientists to policy
makers and planners was understood and used appropriately.

Field reviews of projects should also be conducted 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 for
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, opportunities for
discussions with scientists, and open communication across functional
areas and with upper levels of administration. This part of the review
process should especially look to see if the planning process provided
an opportunity for the agency to develop new ideas, new approaches to
solving problems, and new relationships with other governments,
agencies, tribes, communities and the near and distant public. This part
of the review should be developed as a separate paper available for
public review and comment and should be included in the annual
performance evaluation of the NF.

**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:

They address all lands within the geographic area being studied on which
they report conditions, trends, risks, and other issues of interest.

National forests and other federal agencies with responsibilities within
the bioregion help coordinate the assessment so that it covers all
federal lands and issues.

They 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. At their best, these assessments
should create forums in which scientists, managers, and the public can
collectively understand the assessment findings.

They 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.

[Bioregional assessments]{.underline}

Biorgional assessments are driven by need to understand the current
state and trends on forests, rangelands, and watersheds, relative to
ecological and social sustainability. These assessments provide needed
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) attempts
to provide 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 problem-based and issue-driven scientific and
technical analyses of what is known about the lands and resources within
a large geographic area. These areas of interest often will not follow
national forest boundaries. As an example, the Deschutes National Forest
is neatly divided in half by two bioregions of interest: 1) that of the
northern spotted owl and 2) that of the interior Columbia Basin. Given
the large area often covered by bioregional assessments, they will
require the participation of other federal agencies, tribes, state and
local government, tribes, and the public.

These assessments 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 of
the region 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 assessment of species
diversity in forest planning and develop procedures for estimating the
viability of focal species, threatened and endangered species, and
sensitive species. They should also apply these approaches to estimate
viability under likely management on the different ownerships in the
region.

2\) Define measures of ecosystem integrity and develop procedures for
estimating the level of ecosystem integrity in different ecosystems in
the region including the characteristic diversity of major functional
groups, productivity, soil fertility, and rates of biogeochemical
cycling. They should also apply these procedures to estimating ecosystem
integrity under likely management on the different ownerships in the
region.

3\) Suggest approaches to addressing the difficulties in ecological
sustainability discovered in the analysis.

4\) Make estimates of the range of historical variability for a number
of resources, including the range in the size and patterns of openings
in the different forest types.

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

6\) The bioregional assessments should compile or develop the best
scientific and technical 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 region.

7\) They should also respond, to the degree possible, to technical and
scientific questions developed by the collaborative groups participating
in the assessment.

[Watershed Assessments]{.underline}

"Watershed assessment" is the common name for information development
processes for relatively small, ecologically identifiable geographic
areas. Boundaries for these assessments range from small river basins,
mountain ranges, or other landscape units that can logically connect the
bioregional assessment and large landscape plans to local conditions. In
some parts of the country, most notably the southeastern part of the US,
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 many 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 creating 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 think about and care about
lands and resources at the scale of watersheds. This "sense of place"
should make it easier to meaningfully engage them in watershed
assessments than can occur in bioregional 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 plan for a larger landscape. They address the following tasks:

1\) They interpret the implications of the goals in the strategic plan
for the area, in the context of site-specific information and analysis.

2)  They develop a "place-based" analysis that provides context for
    developing small landscape plans.

3)  They identify important ecological, social, economic and
    institutional variable to monitor during management implementation.

4)  

(More to come)

**Planning**

[Bioregional Guidance]{.underline}

These efforts develop scientifically credible conservation strategies
for species and ecosystems. These strategies are then employed as the
foundation on which large landscape and small landscape plans are built.

They develop strategies for conserving the focal species defined in the
bioregional assessment and for threatened, endangered, and sensitive
species, using the procedures for estimating species viability developed
in the bioregional assessment. They also develop strategies to conserve
ecosystem integrity, using procedures for estimating the level of
ecosystem integrity in different ecosystems in the bioregion developed
in the bioregional assessment.

The develop strategies for increasing the stewardship capacity of
current institutional arrangements, government programs, and
community-based conservation organizations in order to achieve the goals
of the national forest system.

They also provide guidance on other regional issues.

[Large and Small Landscape Plans]{.underline}

Both strategic plans and implementation plans should address all lands
within the geographic area. They should build on the plans already in
existence, reacting to issues and problems with these plans as
identified in a collaborative effort. The likely management of
non-federal lands is considered to estimate the context and likely
cumulative effects of federal land management. A coordinated plan for
all federal land would ideally be the result at both levels. These plans
should be done collaboratively in partnership with other federal
agencies, states, and local governments, tribes, and the public. In this
way, the federal land management plans are coordinated with plans or
anticipated activities that states and localities have for some or all
of the area. From the perspective of public participation, these
planning process 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 Plans (Strategic Plans)

Large Landscape Plans (Strategic Plans) have the following
characteristics: they provide a set of strategies to achieve
sustainability and place management of the national forests in a
regional context based on the bioregional assessments and other
information. They set resource management goals for different parts of
the national forests including criteria and indicators for measuring
accountability and effectiveness. They create a policy dialogue that
involves public as participants and employ a technical review process to
assess the use of knowledge in developing the strategic plans.
Generally, the plans should be completed within one year and updated as
issues arise or conditions demand.

We have named the strategic planning level the "large landscape plan"
because the ecological scale of the resource issues often extends beyond
the boundaries of a single national forest. Measuring the ability of
plans to conserve the species and ecosystems of interest can occur only
when the implications of plans for these species and ecosystems are
"added up". The plans must "fit together" in this aspect. If bioregional
guidance is available, that will be used to make sure these plans, in
aggregate, provide the needed protection. If the large landscape plans
are to develop the needed conservation strategies, coordination of large
landscape plans will be needed to address specific species and
ecosystems.

One of the primary purposes of having these plans involve all federal
agencies and producing a coordinated plan is to enable cooperation
across arbitrary administrative boundaries in an effort to significantly
strengthen their joint stewardship capacity. In other words, we expect
coordinated strategic plans to 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. These plans 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 of large landscapes should:

1\) Set goals for different parts of the landscape expressed in terms of
the desired future landscape condition, and the uses and outputs, to
achieve ecological sustainability and contribute to economic and social
sustainability. Developing a vision of the future landscape conditions
and outcomes needed to achieve this result should be a central focus of
planning. Given the likely conditions that will occur on nonfederal land
in the future, the federal agencies need to develop a vision of the
future condition of forests, rangelands, and watersheds that will be
sought and the goods, values, uses, and services that they will provide.

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

3\) Develop a strategy for moving to the desired condition. Make an
estimate of the suite of actions (type, amount, budget) needed to move
the existing conditions to the desired 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
(qualitatively) 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.

The purpose of strategic planning is to set a clear course of action for
a specified period of time. These Plans should answer the question:
"What are conditions and outcomes that we should seek on the national
forests 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?

Small Landscape Plans (Implementation Plans)

Determine the mix of activities and projects needed to meet the goals in
the strategic plan\--to implement the strategic plans.. A key
information component will be the watershed assessments that will
facilitate the development of management options within a participatory
framework. Projects are developed in combination, to the degree
possible, with attention to cumulative effects, and include
implementation schedules, measurable performance standards, budget plans
and staffing plans. A technical field review process helps evaluate
effectiveness of the projects in meeting the goals. Plans are developed
within 6 months and remain in effect for the duration of the activities.
New activities can be added at any time to the overall plan with
consideration of cumulative impacts and consistency with the general
strategic intent of the plan. This is the planning level that is based
upon Adaptive Management, meaning that it is a continuous cycle of
activity, evaluation and review, adaptation and change.

From the process of defining activities to meet the 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 seperately, 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 highlight of 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.

Performance evaluation of complex strategies depends on the ability to
"add up" the cumulative effects of multiple projects and multiple
activities at the large landscape scale. Measurement of plan performance
would be done through 1) comparing the expected actions from the
strategic plans to actions undertaken on an annual basis and 2)
comparing movement toward the desired conditions every few years. Either
of those measures might have four results: 1) concluding things are
fine, 2) adjusting the actions that would be undertaken to achieve the
mix assumed in the strategic plan, 3) considering a change in the mix of
treatments in the strategic plan, or 4) considering a change in the
desired future conditions.