About This File: 

This file was created by scanning the printed publication. Misscans identified

by the software have been corrected; however, some mistakes may remain.
MARK W. BRUNSON is an assistant professor of forest resources, Utah State

University, Logan, UT 84322. LlNDA E. KRUGER is a research soil scientist, U.S.

Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, 4043

Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105.: CATHERINE B. TYLER is a social science

technician, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest

Research Station, 4043 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105. SUSAN A.

SCHROEDER is a graduate student in forest resources, Utah State University,

Logan, UT 84322. Published by the Pacific Northwest Research Station as part of the

program of work by the People and Natural Resources Research, Development, and

Application Program and the ConsoRtium for the Social Values of Natural Resources.

Papers were provided in camera-ready form for printing by the authors, who are

therefore responsible for the content and accuracy. Opinions expressed may not

necessarily reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The use of trade, firm or corporation names in this publication is for the information

and convenience of the reader. Such use does not constitute an official endorsement

or approval by the U.S. Department of Agriculture of any product or service to the

exclusion of others that may be suitable.

Technical Editors

Disclaimers
Defining Social Acceptability in Ecosystem

Management: A Workshop Proceedings

Kelso, Washington

June 23-25, 1992

Mark W. Brunson 

Linda E. Kruger 

Catherine B. Tyler 

Susan A. Schroeder

Technical Editors

Published by:

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service 

Pacific Northwest Research Station 

Portland, Oregon 

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-369 

August 1996
Brunson, Mark W.; Kruger, Linda E.; Tyler, Catherine B.; Schroeder, Susan A., 

tech. eds. 1996. Defining social acceptability in ecosystem management: a 

workshop proceedings; 1992 June 23-25; Kelso, WA. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR369. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific 

Northwest Research Station. 142 p.

This compendium of papers was developed in response to the assumption that 

implementing an ecological approach to forest management requires an 

understanding of socially acceptable forestry -- what it is and the implications of doing

it. The papers in this collection bring to bear perspectives from a variety of social 

science disciplines and question whether the focus on social acceptability is an 

appropriate and useful one.

Keywords: Ecosystem management, social acceptability, environmental ethics, social

values, landscape aesthetics, public participation.

Abstract
1 Introduction: Social Acceptability in Ecosystem Management

Mark W. Brunson and Linda E. Kruger

7 A Definition of “Social Acceptability” in Ecosystem Management

Mark W. Brunson

17 My Talk to the Forestry Class

Chris Anderson

25 Leopoldian Forestry and the Ethical Acceptability of Forest Practices

Peter List

37 Social Acceptability in Anthropology and Geography

Richard Hansis

49 Socially Acceptable Forestry: Mediating a Compromise or Orchestrating

the Agenda?

Walter F. Kuentzel

65 The Public, the Forest, and the U.S. Forest Service: Understanding Attitudes

Towards Ecosystem Management

Katrina Rogers

77 Forest Aesthetics, Biodiversity, and the Perceived Appropriateness of 

Ecosystem Management Practices

Paul H. Gobster

99 Defining the Social Acceptability of Forest Management Practices and 

Conditions: lntegrating Science and Social Choice

George H. Stankey

113 The Social Context of Ecosystem Management: Unanswered Questions and

Unresolved lssues

Mark W. Brunson

127 Bibliography

Contents
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In June 1992, the USDA Forest Service adopted ecosystem management, defined by 

then-Chief F. Dale Robertson as “the use of an ecological approach to achieve multipleuse management of the national forests and grasslands by blending the needs of people 

and environmental values in such a way that the national forests and grasslands represent

diverse, healthy, productive, and sustainable ecosystems.1” To meet that objective, forest

managers need to know not only how natural systems function and are sustained, but also

how social systems function and are sustained in their relationships with natural systems. 

In other words, they need to be able to do sustainable and socially acceptable forestry. 

This publication explores some of the implications of doing socially acceptable forestry.

The articles contained in this report arose from a workshop held just about the same time

that Robertson was making his historic announcement. A small group of social scientists

and humanists from around the U.S. had been invited to discuss the meaning of “social

acceptability” in the context of the Forest Service’s New Perspectives program, which was 

a precursor of ecosystem management. The workshop took place June 23-25, 1992 in

Kelso, Washington, a timber town in the heart of the Pacific Northwest. It was organized 

not in anticipation of Robertson’s announcement, but in response to previous work by

Stankey and Clark (1991), who had conducted a problem analysis of social science 

aspects of implementing the New Perspectives program. One of their conclusions was 

that “there is inadequate understanding of what constitutes ‘acceptability’ with regard to 

the practice of New Perspectives and of the associated impacts of these differing 

conceptions” (p. 23). The Kelso workshop offered a way to broaden that understanding.

While the Kelso workshop happened over three years ago, the papers developed from the

experience retain their value. The shift from New Perspectives to ecosystem 

management has not lessened the need to understand why the public finds some 

management practices acceptable and others not acceptable, why some practices are

MARK BRUNSON is an assistant professor of forest resources, Utah State University, Logan UT 84322.

LlNDA E. KRUGER is a research social scientist, Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, 4043

Roosevelt Wy NE, Seattle, WA 98105.

1 Robertson, F. Dale. 1992. Memo to Regional, Forest, and Research Station Directors, June 1992. On file with the

authors.

1

Introduction:

Social Acceptability in Ecosystem Management

Mark W. Brunson

Linda E. Kruger
acceptable in some situations or locations but not in others, or why some practices may

be acceptable but still are opposed.

One shift that has occurred since the workshop is the increasing recognition of the 

importance -- and value -- of public participation throughout the planning and decisionmaking process, from the initial thinking about an activity through its implementation. As

mentioned in some of the papers that follow, providing a meaningful role for the public in

decisionmaking seems to be a key factor in whether people can live with a project or not,

and is part of the process of social learning (Friedmann 1987) that also encompasses

adaptive management (Lee 1993).

In addition to an ecosystem approach, resource agencies are embracing an adaptive

approach to management. An adaptive management approach views management as an

experiment - a process of learning from experience whereby we increase our 

understanding of the reciprocal Relationship between natural systems and social systems

across time and space. It speaks to the question of acceptability as it builds on 

relatedness across social and natural systems, and recognizes the complexity involved. It

also recognizes the particularity of specific places (Agnew and Duncan 1989; Entrikin

1989; Sack 1992) and the fusion of experience and context (Sack 1980). These aspects

are elaborated in the papers that follow.

Social learning, both in terms of process and outcome, provides opportunities for both

public learning, whereby citizens learn about their own and others’ interests, and 

organizational learning, whereby professionals learn about the conditions affecting and

affected by alternate courses of action (Shannon 1991)2. This shared experience of

knowledge-gathering may help expand the range of what is acceptable in any particular

situation while helping professionals more finely tune their approaches to mesh with public

desires. The Kelso workshop helped set the stage for social learning to occur.

The workshop began with a field tour which included timber harvest units, an abandoned

sawmill site, and unmanaged forest stands. Following the tour, we sat down to discuss

how different academic disciplines would approach the problem of determining if the

forestry practices and conditions associated with ecosystem management are -- or could

become - socially acceptable. The following articles were not presented at the workshop,

but were generated and/or shaped by the discussions that took place there. Not all of the

participants contributed papers,3 and one essay was contributed by a writer who was

unable to attend, but they reflect the spirit and the intellectual diversity of the workshop.

Each one offers thoughtful insight into the theoretical and practical issues of social science

underlying U.S. public land management in the 1990s.

2 Shannon. Margaret A. 1991. Building public decisions: learning through planning, an evaluation of the NFMA forest

planning process. A paper written for the Office of Technology Assessment. On file with the authors.

3 Workshop attendees, and their organizational affiliations at that time, were: Mark Brunson. Oregon State

University; Paul Gobster, USDA Forest Service, North Central Forest Experiment Station; Richard Hansis,

Washington State University-Vancouver; Linda Kruger, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station;

Walter Kuentzel, University of Wisconsin; Bernard Lewis. University of Minnesota; Peter List, Oregon State

University; Katrina Rogers, High West Center for Environmental Policy; George Stankey, Oregon State University;

Kerry Vachta, Michigan State University.

2
In the first paper, “A Definition of Social Acceptability’ in Ecosystem Management,” Mark

Brunson responds to Stankey and Clark’s (1991) challenge about inadequate 

understanding of the meaning of acceptability. He offers a working definition of social

acceptability which is based partly on the literature in various social science disciplines, as

well as qualitative survey research he undertook in response to Stankey and Clark’s 

problem analysis. His discussion focuses on four aspects of his definition which can have

important implications for ecosystem managers: the social context in which individual 

judgments are made; factors which typically influence the comparative process; behavioral

expressions of acceptability judgments; and the challenges of observing and measuring

acceptability.

Natural resource professionals manage for an aggregate we call “the public.” Yet that 

public is comprised of individuals, each of whom makes his or her own acceptability 

judgments. In a personal essay, “My Talk to the Forestry Class,” Chris Anderson 

describes some of the complexity of factors that enter into those individual judgments. 

The author, an essayist and writing teacher, discusses how he reacted to changes in the

forest adjacent to his home when it became the site of a study examining the silvicultural,

ecological, and socioeconomic impacts of ecosystem management silviculture. He finds

that despite his initial opposition to the kinds of timber management that might be 

indicated by an ecosystem management approach in the Pacific Northwest, he’s less 

displeased about the results than he had expected.

Many elements of ecosystem management are intended not to produce solutions that are

right from a scientific standpoint but rather are right from an ethical standpoint. 

lncorporating public opinion, accounting for noninstrumental values, giving equal weight to

species — all are ecosystem management objectives that are intended to make natural

resource management more equitable. In “Leopoldian Forestry and the Ethical

Acceptability of Forest Practices,” Peter List outlines trends in the literature of 

environmental ethics that are reflected in the new approaches to national forest 

management. Then, using data from two surveys that measured attitudes toward forest

management and environmental ethical judgments, he describes how philosophical 

orientations to the natural world are reflected in public opinion about forests and their 

management.

Approaching the question of acceptability from a cultural perspective, anthropologist

Richard Hansis addresses the importance of meanings and the relationships among

meanings, values, beliefs, and knowledge. In “Social Acceptability in Cultural 

Anthropology and Human Geography,” Hansis explores the literature on innovation and 

the acceptance of new ideas, suggesting the concept of “cultural consistency” as a 

criterion of acceptability. He demonstrates the importance of context and the risk of 

underestimating the power of symbolic meanings embedded in place. Hansis develops a

five-step approach to gaining a better understanding of the acceptability of management

practices.

Walter Kuentzel brings the writings of mainstream sociology to bear on the issue of social

acceptability. In “Socially Acceptable Forestry: Mediating a Compromise or Orchestrating

the Agenda?” he considers whether the consensus-building orientation of ecosystem 

managers is legitimate. He argues that while the Forest Service and the forestry 

profession view themselves as neutral mediators of a sort — “stewards of the common

3
ground” — they are far from disinterested participants. Instead, Kuentzel says, they 

compete along with other interests for public support of a particular “acceptable” agenda,

and so their ability to gain acceptance may require a better understanding of their own

roles.

In “The Public, the Forest, and the U.S. Forest Service: Understanding Attitudes Toward

Ecosystem Management,” Katrina Rogers argues that understanding whether the public

values ecosystem management requires a more direct assessment of the historical 

context upon which values are based, as well as of the current political climate which

shapes people’s attitudes. She traces the history of attitudes toward forests in EuropeanAmerican society, and discusses how social values concerning forests are reflected in the

public policy arena. She also bridges the gap between the literature of social values and

the practice of gauging those values, offering for foresters’ consideration a potential 

instrument for measuring social acceptability.

Paul Gobster also offers a practical tool for ecosystem managers in “Forest Aesthetics,

Biodiversity, and the Perceived Appropriateness of Ecosystem Management Practices.”

He describes how the biological objectives of ecosystem management may conflict with

the aesthetic objectives of many who value natural landscapes as scenery, and suggests

that society may not be able to quickly adopt the “ecological aesthetic” espoused by Aldo

Leopold and others. Having identified this quite fundamental problem, he promptly offers 

a way to solve it by introducing the concept of “appropriateness” as a short-term 

alternative for resolving perceived conflicts between aesthetic and biodiversity values. He

outlines how perceptions of appropriateness might be studied and used in the context of

ecosystem management practices.

The first attempt to apply ecosystem management on a large scale was the Forest

Ecosystem Management Assessment Team (FEMAT) process conducted in the spotted

owl region of the Northwest in 1993. As a key FEMAT scientist, George Stankey learned

first-hand how few people were satisfied by the process or its outcome. The experience

brought home the difficulty of finding solutions that are both ecologically appropriate and

socially acceptable. His article, “Defining the Social Acceptability of Forest Management

Practices and Conditions: lntegrating Science and Social Choice,” outlines four basic

questions that require attention in order for such integration to take place. The answers to

those questions will go a long way toward determining what is managed, who it’s 

managed for, and the institutions developed to maintain a dialogue between managers

and publics about social acceptability.

The last paper, “The Social Context of Ecosystem Management: Unanswered Questions

and Unresolved Issues,” considers emerging problems associated with ecosystem 

management as an idea, about its implementability, and about specific aspects of 

ecosystem management practices and conditions. Mark Brunson discusses issues raised

by national forest stakeholders who were surveyed as part of his 1991-92 study of the

social acceptability of non-traditional timber management - particularly those associated

with risk and uncertainty — as well as ones arising from the Kelso workshop. Like

Stankey, he is concerned about reconciling ecological and social objectives, and argues

that the most basic question may be whether the ecosystem management concept itself is

acceptable. He discusses why this question has not been asked, as well as potential

answers.

4
Finally, a bibliography of sources is offered which incorporates readings from a variety of

academic disciplines. Compiled by the workshop participants, it focuses most heavily on

the contributions of writers working outside the realm of natural resource management. 

Its aim is to identify works that are less well-known to scientists, managers, and others

working in ecosystem management, but which may be useful to those interested in 

learning more about society’s relationship with natural resources and the environment.

This report, as well as the workshop which generated it, is a product of the Pacific

Northwest Research Station’s People and Natural Resources Research, Development and

Application (RD&A) Program in Seattle, WA. Work on the issue of social acceptability 

continues through research sponsored by the Program. For example, a recent publication

by Bruce Shindler and others (1995) documents findings from a study of acceptability 

conducted in Southeast Alaska in 1994.4

It is our hope that the articles and references provided here will help managers and others

as they consider issues surrounding the acceptability of management practices.

Agnew, John A.; Duncan, James S. 1989. Introduction. In: Agnew, John A.; Duncan, 

James S. The power of place: bringing together geographical and sociological 

imaginations. Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman: 1-8.

Entrikin, J. Nicholas. 1989. The betweenness of place: towards a geography of 

modernity. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 196 p.

Friedmann, John. 1987. Planning in the public domain: from knowledge to action. 

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 501 p.

Lee, Kai, 1993. Compass and gyroscope: integrating science and politics for the 

environment. Washington, D.C.: lsland Press. 243 p.

Sack, Robert David, 1980. Conceptions of space in social thought: a geographic 

perspective. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 231 p.

Sack, Robert David. 1992. Place, modernity, and the consumer’s world. Baltimore: The 

Johns Hopkins University Press. 256 p.

Shindler, Bruce; Peters, Jim; Kruger, Linda. 1995. Social values and acceptability of 

alternative harvest practices on the Tongass National Forest. Corvallis, OR: Oregon 

State University. 97 p.

Stankey, George H.; Clark, Roger N. 1991. Social aspects of new perspectives in 

forestry: a problem analysis. Milford, PA: Grey Towers Press. 33 p.

4 A synthesis of this report is available from the People and Natural Resources RD8A Program, Seattle Forestry 

Sciences Laboratory, 4043 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105. Ask for Challenges #11 “Timber Harvesting on

the Tongass: What’s lmportant to Local Citizens.”

5

Literature Cited
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6
Brunson, Mark W. 1996. A definition of “social acceptability’ in ecosystem management.

In: Brunson, Mark W.; Kruger, Linda E.; Tyler, Catherine B.; Schroeder, Susan A., tech.

eds. Defining social acceptability in ecosystem management: a workshop proceedings;

1992 June 23-25; Kelso, WA. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-369. Portland, OR: U.S.

Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station: 7-16.

Social “acceptability” is one of three criteria that are supposed to guide ecosystem 

management decisions, yet a recent problem analysis found “there is an inadequate

understanding of what constitutes ‘acceptability’ with regard to [ecosystem management].”

Based on research undertaken in response to that analysis, this paper offers a working

definition of social acceptability. Subsequent discussion focuses on the implications for

ecosystem managers of four aspects of that definition: the social context of individual

judgment, influences upon the comparative process, behavioral expressions of 

acceptability judgments, and observation/measurement issues.

Keywords: Mixed scanning approach, attitudes, behaviors, ecosystem management,

social acceptability.

This collection of papers culminates a research effort with a deceptively simple objective:

to define “public acceptability” with regard to management practices and conditions in the

national forests. When the USDA Forest Service’s New Perspectives in Forestry research

initiative was launched in 1990, its goals were to identify practices and policies that could

(1) “maintain biodiversity” while (2) managing forests “to balance values and produce a

sustained supply of goods and services” (Stankey and Clark 1991, p. 12). The word

acceptability appears in neither of those goals. Yet clearly an underlying impetus for New

Perspectives was widespread and growing skepticism about the Forest Service’s ability to

sustain both the flow of resources and the forests that provide those resources. Simply

put, the public increasingly found practices and conditions on the national forests to be

unacceptable, and the Forest Service needed to find ways to reverse that trend.

MARK BRUNSON is an assistant professor of forest resources at Utah State University, Logan, Utah, 84322.

7

Abstract

lntroduction

A Definition of “Social Acceptability” 

in Ecosystem Management

Mark W. Brunson
If public acceptability is to be an explicit objective of national forest management, the

Forest Service will require methods to measure acceptability of current practices, predict

acceptability of proposed practices, and understand the reasons for failures to achieve

acceptability. Yet when Stankey and Clark (1991) evaluated social science research 

problems associated with New Perspectives, they found that “there is inadequate 

understanding of what constitutes ‘acceptability’ with regard to the practice of New

Perspectives and of the associated impacts of these differing conceptions” (p. 23).

Consequently the study was launched which ultimately produced this document as well as

other papers exploring meanings of acceptability in a forestry context (Brunson 19921,

1993; Johnson and others 1994). In the intervening period, New Perspectives has 

evolved from a research initiative into agency policy, now called “ecosystem 

management.” The latter is described by the Forest Service leadership as “a multiple-use

philosophy built around ecological principles, sustainability, and a strong land stewardship

ethic, with a better recognition of the spiritual values and natural beauty of the forests”

(Robertson 1991, p. 19). Robertson’s description implies certain requirements for future

practices and conditions on federal forests:

- they must be ecologically sustainable, directing managed forests toward a “desired 

future condition” which embodies the complexity of ecosystem interrelationships at

a variety of spatial and temporal scales; 

- they must be economically feasible, meeting societal demands for the myriad 

products of forests at a cost that does not exceed the priced and unpriced benefits

gained; and 

- they must be socially acceptable, reflecting a sensitivity toward recreational, 

aesthetic, spiritual, and other noncommodity values of forests.

The adoption of ecosystem management therefore underscores the need to understand

what socially acceptable forestry might be. The objective of this paper is to provide some

foundation for that understanding. It offers a working definition of social acceptability, and

discusses aspects of that definition that are likely to affect the implementation and 

evaluation of ecosystem management. The definition represents a synthesis of ideas

about public judgment drawn from a number of disciplines including forestry, political 

science, sociology, psychology, landscape architecture, economics, and philosophy. 

Many of those ideas were found in an extensive literature review. Others were offered by

my collaborators in this document, during a June 1992 workshop in Kelso, Wash., and in

the papers subsequently submitted for this collection. Blame for the synthesis, however, 

is entirely mine.

The first obvious step toward defining acceptability in a forestry context was to examine

current conceptualizations in related applied fields as well as the basic social sciences.

However, it quickly became apparent that acceptability itself rarely appears as a rigorously

defined concept in basic social science. Authors write of norms, preferences, values, and

so on, but it is not clear where acceptability fits in this conceptual framework. Is an

1 Brunson, Mark W. 1992. Social acceptability of New Perspectives practices and conditions. Final project report 

prepared for the Cascade Center for Ecosystem Management, Consortium for the Social Values of Natural

Resources, Olympic Natural Resources Center, and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific

Northwest Research Station. On file with the author.

8

A Definition 

of Social

Acceptability
“acceptable” condition one which violates a widely shared social norm, for example, or is it

simply one that fails to reflect the preferences of whichever constituency group holds the

balance of power? How does an ‘acceptable” condition differ from a “desired” condition?

If basic social science offered few answers, the forestry literature offered some answers

but also created as many new questions. In the Forest Service, the term acceptable may

be most familiar as part of the Limits of Acceptable Change system for wilderness

planning (Stankey and others 1985). Although the authors did not define what they meant

by “acceptable,” they used the word in two ways: to describe what is legally permissible

under the Wilderness Act of 1964, and to describe what wilderness users agree is 

desirable as determined during a consensus-driven planning process. What, then, does it

mean for a wilderness condition to be “unacceptable”? Since legal mandates carry more

weight in public policy than visitor preferences, the consequences of “unacceptability” may

vary considerably.

Acceptability is also an objective of visual resource management, as noted in this rather

ambiguous passage from a manual published by the British Columbia Ministry of Forests

(1981). The agency defined its scenic management challenge as being “to maintain

acceptable forest landscapes and, at the same time, ensure that optimum economic and

social benefits accrue to the people of the province” (p. 7). This statement seems to imply

that acceptability somehow exists apart from economic or social influences, and may even

be antithetical to societal needs -- even though clearly it is society which must do the

accepting.

Even though the term acceptability is not used, much has been written about the ways by

which humans judge environments. Based on this a tentative definition could be crafted:

Social acceptability in forest management results from a judgmental process by which

individuals (1) compare the perceived reality with its known alternatives; and (2) decide

whether the “real” condition is superior, or sufficiently similar, to the most favorable 

alternative condition. If the existing condition is not judged to be sufficient, the individual

will initiate behavior -- often, but not always, within a constituency group -- that is believed

likely to shift conditions toward a more favorable alternative.

Several aspects of this definition have implications for a policy objective of achieving 

public acceptability in ecosystem management. Acceptability is characterized as a 

product of individual judgments, but it is susceptible to group influences and provides an

impetus for group behaviors. Judgments of acceptability are said to be a result of a 

comparison process, thereby suggesting that (1) there must be something with which to

compare and (2) certain general rules will govern the comparative process. Acceptability 

is said to be reflected by behaviors rather than simply by attitudes toward a forest practice

or condition, although it is understood that behaviors are usually stimulated by attitudes.

And finally, acceptability is said to be generally not observable, but rather something that

must be inferred from the absence of overt behavior indicating a failure to achieve it.

9

lmplications of

the Definition
Management decisions regarding government-controlled resources must consider the

impacts of those decisions on an aggregation of persons we call the public. Yet really

there is no such thing. Public opinion exists only as a “constitutionally institutionalized

norm” (Habermas t 989); we behave as though it were something more because 

democracy cannot function if we do not do so. But “the public” is in fact a constantly 

shifting set of interpersonal affiliations, each of which can be characterized in terms of

positive or negative responses to governmental actions commonly expressed by its 

members.

Ultimately those responses are the result of individual humans making choices based on

available information. Because much of that information is filtered through the network of

interpersonal affiliations, individual judgments invariably are based in part on the perceived

judgments of reference groups, i.e, groups to which a person belongs (or aspires to

belong) which serve as standards for judging appropriate behaviors in situations when

more direct cues such as previous personal experience are ambiguous or nonexistent

(Shibutani 1955). Few direct cues are available for evaluating ecosystem management

due to its newness; therefore, the influence of reference groups may be enhanced.

Carroll (1989) offered a relevant example of reference group influence on judgments about

forest management. He found that “negative evaluation of the Forest Service serves as 

an important unifying theme for loggers in the study area. One logger candidly stated, ‘I’m

a logger, so I’m supposed to hate the Forest Service” $.101). Therefore it might be 

difficult for a logger to offer a positive evaluation of a Forest Service initiative such as

ecosystem management, especially if it is to be made in a setting where a number of 

loggers are present and are monitoring each others’ responses (e.g., a public involvement

meeting).

Efforts to shift a practice or condition from unacceptable to acceptable status (or at least

a to a position of neutrality) ultimately must be directed at individuals. Given the polarization

that has characterized contemporary disputes between natural resource interest groups, it

may be easier to achieve changes in acceptability judgments when individuals are most

likely to respond as such, without the attitude-reinforcement dynamic found in group 

meetings. However, it is much more efficient to target new information at reference

groups, which may be relied upon to subsequently influence the judgments of large 

numbers of their members. Probably the most effective information strategy will be one

that targets both groups and individuals.

As noted previously, acceptability judgments are comparisons made based on available

information. Clearly the first rule of comparison is that there must be a conceivable 

alternative to the condition or practice being evaluated. Conditions that are seen as

unavoidable -- those that may be considered “acts of God” -- lie outside the realm of

acceptability judgment no matter how disastrous their consequences might be for natural

or human environments. Similarly, no comparison can be made if an alternative exists but

the evaluator is not aware of it.

Yet humans also have a psychological need to make attributions -- to assign causes to 

the behaviors and circumstances we observe. As Heider (1958) pointed out, it is through

attribution that we are able to organize the continuous stream of information we receive

from the world into meaningful units. Therefore we can expect members of the public to

judge forest conditions based on their beliefs about why the condition is present. If it is

10

lndividual Judgments

in a Social Context

Dynamics of 

the Comparison

Process
perceived to be “natural,” it is likely to be acceptable. This may be true if the natural 

cause has no alternative or, if an alterative does exist, because ours is a culture which

increasingly equates nature with rightness (List, this proceedings). Conversely, if

environmental disasters are seen as resulting from human activities or decisions, as many

people believed concerning the 1988 fires in Yellowstone National Park (e.g. Buck 1989),

the resulting condition may be unacceptable despite its natural origin.

If a forest condition is perceived to have human origin or design, its acceptability is likely

to depend upon a judgment about the practice that created it. The acceptability of the

practice will depend, at least in part, upon its perceived objective. Surveys conducted 

during ecosystem management field tours found that the most positive responses 

commonly referred to the purpose of the new approaches to forestry being demonstrated

(Brunson 1992’). Ecosystem management was presented during the tours as an honest

attempt to maintain diversity of species and ecosystem components, and tour participants

accepted that characterization. As long as that continues to be true, then people may find

ecosystem management practices generally acceptable even if they dislike the “sloppy”

forest conditions they temporarily create.

Just as a desirable objective can make a somewhat objectionable practice more 

acceptable, the reverse is also true: the acceptability of the ends may depend on the

acceptability of the means employed to achieve it. To be acceptable, ecosystem 

management must be seen as the best (or a good enough) means to achieve biodiversity

and ecological sustainability. To decide which of several alternatives is “best,” an 

evaluator must weigh the desirability, equitability, and feasibility of each alternative.

The easiest of these factors to evaluate is desirability. Anyone can decide which outcome

they, want the most; more information is needed to judge feasibility and equitability. Some

evaluators may not possess that information. Foresters sometimes complain that public

demands (for example, a ban on clearcutting) are made with little understanding of the

consequences. Certainly some people are unaware how much less efficient it is to grow

many timber species in an uneven-age condition, and some of those people might find

clearcutting more acceptable if they understood all of the economic and biological factors

behind a decision to clearcut. It is also true, however, that others would decide that

uneven-age silviculture is preferable as long as it is even marginally feasible. The 

difference is that the evaluation process used by those in the former group put more

weight on feasibility; for them, a less feasible alternative may be judged less acceptable

even though it promises more favorable results if successful. (Low feasibility here may

imply higher economic costs, or a lower probability of success.)

Similarly, a desirable outcome may be rejected if the outcome appears unfair to a 

particular constituency group. lssues of fairness do enter into natural resource politics.

Recent research on attitudes toward forest and rangeland management has suggested

that while Americans do want to de-emphasize commodity production, they also worry

about the effects of such a change on resource-dependent communities. Thus they

repeatedly say that local community needs should receive the highest priority in making

decisions about forests or rangelands (Brunson and Steel 1993, Shindler and others

1993), and they prefer that any increase in federal grazing fees be phased in rather than

taking place immediately (Brunson and Steel 1993).

11
Related to both feasibility and equitability is the question of risk. Slovic (1987) 

characterized risk as two-dimensional: one dimension describing the fatality and global

extent of risks, and one describing the extent to which risks are currently known. Forestry

ranks low on the first dimension, but high on the second. Because mature forest 

ecosystems develop slowly, many years can pass between a decision and recognition of

its consequences. We can predict the condition an ecosystem management practice will

produce in 50 or 100 years, but we have no experimental evidence. Risks of an error in

judgment (a decision’s ultimate feasibility) are not entirely knowable, and any adverse

results are likely to be borne (inequitably) by generations which had no opportunity to 

prevent its occurrence.

A final general rule governing the acceptability judgment process is that practices and

conditions are judged in a geographic context. An obvious example of this is the so-called

NlMBY (not in my backyard) syndrome. In a study of the scenic impact of partial-harvest

practices associated with ecosystem management, Johnson and others (1994) found that

57 percent of urban/forest interface residents would rate a partial harvest acceptable at an

unidentified location, but only 32 percent rated the same scene acceptable in a stand

adjacent to their own backyards. The influence of geography is not simply a matter of 

self-interest, however. An example is offered by the environmental activist who was 

asked during one ecosystem management field tour how he felt about an experimental

harvest unit. He replied that while it illustrated a real step toward sustainable forestry, he

was dissatisfied because that watershed had already been extensively logged, and he felt

no more harvest there was warranted even if it was designed to enhance biodiversity in

the regenerated stand.

Because acceptability is a product of cognitive judgments, it is a description of one’s 

attitudinal orientation toward forest conditions or practices. Yet the definition here refers

not to attitudes, but to behaviors. Once a judgment has been made, an evaluator 

decides what (if anything) to do in response to that judgment. If the judgment is favorable

-- i.e, the condition or practice is acceptable -- quite likely no behavior will be initiated. No

recreation visit will be cut short; no local TV station will be alerted to “environmental

destruction” by the Forest Service; no angry letter will be written to a member of

Congress. Because North Americans are much more likely to criticize a bad bureaucracy

than to praise a good one, only rarely will a supportive behavior be initiated in response to

an acceptability judgment.

If the judgment is not favorable, the evaluator faces a choice: is it so unfavorable that

action needs to be taken to shift the condition or practice toward a more acceptable state?

Only if the latter choice is made should we say that the situation is “unacceptable” for 

purposes of ecosystem management. What I am arguing here is that if the evaluation is

not sufficiently unfavorable to elicit an ameliorative behavior, the condition really is neither

acceptable nor unacceptable, and it is not necessary for a managing agency to respond.

This distinction is made for two reasons. The first reason is that people’s attitudes may 

not always reflect the actions they want taken. It makes little sense for managers to try to

respond to every shift in attitude even before it is strong enough or stable enough to

cause the public to want something done. The second reason is that behaviors can be

monitored and measured more easily and more efficiently than attitudes. While periodic

“attitude checks” are a critical part of a socially responsive democracy, behaviors provide

a more cost-effective early warning system of the need for a change in policy or practice.

12

Attitude-Behavior

Links and the

Measurement

Problem 
Social psychologists have long wrestled with the problem of consistency between attitudes

and behaviors. The theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein 1980) holds that

behavior is linked most consistently with behavioral intention, and even then, 

circumstances may intervene. For example, I may intend to stop visiting a certain favorite

campsite because logging-related sediment has reduced fish populations, but find myself

camping there anyway because an alternative site is occupied or because my family

prefers that site for other reasons.

Attitudes are less closely related to behaviors. They may change because of new 

information received before any behavior is instigated. They may never translate into

action because the attitude is not held strongly enough to warrant expending the personal

resources (time, money, energy) likely to change the situation. Or an individual may 

prefer not to behave consistently with an attitude because the behavior would not be

sanctioned by an important reference group. In each case, action by an agency in

response to the attitude is unwarranted, either because the action is unlikely to satisfy the

evaluator in the long term, or because the evaluator does not really care whether the

action is taken or not.

When behavioral scientists ask research subjects to identify ranges of acceptable and

unacceptable conditions, these ranges are not always contiguous (Petty and Cacioppo

1981, Williams and others 1992). Often there is some mid-range situation about which

respondents are noncommittal. The definition of acceptability offered here implies that

such mid-range evaluations should be considered acceptable even though, in fact, they

are not. Elsewhere (Brunson 1993) I have warned that such a consideration could create

a situation whereby ecosystem management produces a barely adequate forest (capable

of being endured) rather than one that is pleasing to its constituencies (capable of being

praised). However, there really are two questions here - one of policy and one of 

measurement.

The policy question is this: If foresters strive for social acceptability, are they shooting for 

a suitable target or sinking to an endurable threshold? The answer will depend partly on

whether forestry is perceived as a social good or a necessary evil. For example, if one

assumes that “the public” views all timber harvest as degrading to the forest, then the task

becomes one of defining how much degradation society is willing to withstand. But if one

assumes that some timber harvest is desirable -- because it provides products beneficial 

to society -- while too much harvest is detrimental, the policy objective is more likely to be

to strive for a “desired future condition’ rather than a “tolerable future condition.

Clearly the target approach is a more palatable guideline for policy than the threshold

approach. We expect our ecosystem managers to seek a desired condition; in fact, the

term desired future condition is now part of the Forest Service planning lexicon. But how

will managers know whether they are on the proper trajectory toward the desired target?

Here is where the measurement issue arises. An agency could continuously monitor 

public attitudes, repeatedly asking people how they are doing, and succeed primarily in

annoying a public that has other things to do than respond to government surveys. Not

only would such a program be impossibly cumbersome, but it would detract from the other

role of public land managers, which is to make scientifically based professional judgments

about ecosystems.

13
Alternatively, a well-designed and truly collaborative public participation process could be

used to define the bounds of possible trajectories. Managers could then choose from

among those trajectories based on their scientific knowledge and economic realities. If 

the participation process is handled properly and repeated often enough, and if the 

managers are monitoring social behavior sufficiently well to notice when the trajectory no

longer falls within the socially defined boundaries, it should not be necessary to monitor

attitudes on a continuous basis. Behaviors that indicate unacceptability -- expressions of

dissatisfaction, whether through political action or simply “voting with one’s feet” -- are

more indicative of a real diversion from the optimal trajectory than attitudes which may

never lead to behaviors.

This “mixed-scanning” approach (Etzioni 1973) acknowledges that the quest for optimal

solutions is rarely attainable under conditions of even moderate uncertainty (Simon 1959),

yet it avoids the “tyranny of small decisions” that can arise from an incrementalist, stepby-step approach to planning. Skeptics may notice that mixed-scanning resembles, at

least philosophically, the Forest Service planning efforts of the 1980s -- the shortcomings

of which contributed greatly to the need to adopt ecosystem management. Yet while 

those efforts came under heavy and well-deserved criticism, the mixed-scanning approach

can be used effectively if the agencies truly watch for signs of unacceptability. Even more

importantly, they must be truly willing to make the necessary adjustments if behavioral

monitoring or periodic attitude checks make it clear that a practice or condition no longer

meets the ecosystem management objective of social acceptability.

One of the continuing problems associated with ecosystem management is the lack of 

rigorous definitions for its associated concepts. This is not uncommon for an evolving

body of theory and practice, and in fact may be symptomatic of the vibrancy of forest 

science and management. Even definitions of ecosystem management itself tend to lack

rigor. Typically they are expressed in generalities, as in Robertson’s (1991) definition

reprinted in the introduction to this paper, or in terms of objectives as in my own 

description which immediately follows Robertson’s. Nonetheless, these descriptions do

have common elements. Ecosystem management is meant to be holistic, incorporating

both sociopolitical and biophysical systems. It is meant to focus not on the outputs that

flow from the forest, but on the condition of the forest that remains. It is meant to be 

sustainable, to preserve biodiversity, to reflect the natural processes so that ecosystem

integrity is maintained at the landscape level. It is meant to be responsive to the broad

range of social values in a way that is equitable to both urban and rural resourcedependent communities.

This list of agreed-upon elements contains a number of vague terms that are troubling to

some foresters: holistic, sustainable, biodiversity, ecosystem integrity, social values. In a

recent issue of Journal of Forestry, for example, Hill (1993) asks: “What are the key 

elements of ‘forest condition’ to be maintained in meeting ecosystem management goals?

... What is a landscape? How large is a landscape?” (p. 34). All are good, basic 

questions. Foresters’ unease is great enough that a committee of the Society of American

Foresters chose to omit the word “sustainability” from its land ethic canon because no one

could agree on what it was that was to be sustained (Craig 1992).

The attempt in this paper was to provide some structure to at least one of these slippery

concepts. A definition of social acceptability was offered that considered such questions 

as who does the accepting, who the decision is made, what the consequences of a

14

Conclusion
decision can be, and how to observe acceptability through its consequences. Much more

can be said on this issue. Brunson (1993) offers an expanded discussion of the 

implications of the social acceptability judgment process for ecosystem managers. The

papers that follow examine that same issue, and many others. A definition does not solve

any of the problems associated with the social acceptability of natural resource 

management; however, one can hope that it provides a useful framework for beginning

the problem-solving task.

Ajzen, Icek; Flshbein, Martin. 1980. Understanding attitudes and predicting social 

behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 278 p.

British Columbia Ministry of Forests. 1981. Forest landscape handbook. Victoria, BC, 

Canada: lnformation Services Branch, Ministry of Forests. 97 p.

Brunson, Mark W. 1993. “Socially acceptable” forestry: what does it imply for ecosystem 

management? Western Journal of Applied Forestry. 8(4): 1-4.

Brunson, Mark W.; Steel, Brent S. 1993. National public attitudes toward federal 

rangeland management. Rangelands 16(2): 77-81.

Buck, Bill. 1989. A Yellowstone critique: something did go wrong. Journal of Forestry. 

87(12): 38-40.

Carroll, Matthew S. 1989. Taming the lumberjack revisited. Society and Natural 

Resources. 2(2): 91-106.

Craig, Ray. 1992. Land ethic canon proposal: a report from the task force. Journal of 

Forestry. 90(8): 40-41.

Etzioni, Amitai. 1973. Mixed-scanning: a “third” approach to decision-making, In: Faludi, 

Andreas, ed. A reader in planning theory. Oxford, United Kingdom: Pergamon Press:

217-229.

Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The structural transformation of the public sphere. Burger, T.; 

Lawrence, F., translators. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 301 p.

Heider, Fritz. 1958. The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: John Wiley & 

Sons. 322 p.

Hill, Lawrence W. 1993. An open discussion is critical. Journal of Forestry. 91(7): 34.

Johnson, Rebecca L.; Brunson, Mark W.; Kimura, Takashi. 1994. Using image 

capture technology to assess scenic value at the urban/forest interface: a case study.

Journal of Environmental Management 40: 183-195.

Petty, R.E.; Cacioppo, J.T. 1981. Attitudes and persuasion: classic and contemporary 

approaches. Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown. 314 p.

15

Literature Cited
Robertson, F. Dale. 1991. The next 100 years of national forest management. 

Transactions, North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference. 56: 19-21.

Shibutani, T. 1955. Reference groups as perspectives. American Journal of Sociology. 

60: 562-659.

Shindler, Bruce; List, Peter; Steel, Brent S. 1993. Managing federal forests: public 

attitudes in Oregon and nationwide. Journal of Forestry. 91(7): 36-42.

Simon, Herbert A. 1959. Theories of decision-making in economics and behavioral 

science. American Economic Review. 49(3): 253-283.

Slovik; Paul. 1987. Perception of risk. Science. 236: 280-285.

Stankey, George H.; Clark, Roger N. 1991. Social aspects of New Perspectives in 

Forestry: a problem analysis. Milford, PA: Grey Towers Press. 33 p.

Stankey, George H.; Cole, David N.; Lucas, Robert C. [and others]. 1985. The Limits 

of Acceptable Change (LAC) system for wilderness planning. Gen. Tech. Rep. INT-176.

Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, lntermountain Forest and

Range Experiment Station. 37 p.

Williams, Daniel R.; Roggenbuck, Joseph W.; Patterson, Michael E.; Watson, Alan 

E. 1992. The variability of user-based social impact standards for wilderness 

management. Forest Science. 38(4): 738-756.

17
Anderson, Chris. 1996. My talk to the forestry class. In: Brunson, Mark W.; Kruger, 

Linda E.; Tyler, Catherine B.; Schroeder, Susan A., tech. eds. Defining social 

acceptability in ecosystem management: a workshop proceedings; 1992 June 23-25

Kelso, WA. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-369. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of

Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station: 17-23.

A homeowner recounts his intimate knowledge of the forest land adjacent to his home and

shares his thoughts on what makes a forest valuable and a landscape beautiful. He 

discusses different ways of knowing and seeing the forest, exploring the complexity of the

issues and of his experience of the land.

Keywords: Understanding, awareness, values, temporal seeing, affordance, landscape

aesthetics.

I appreciate Mark including me in the class today, asking me to come and say a few

things on behalf of the homeowners who live on the edge of the forest -- that species

affected by the changes in the habitat. I’m glad to talk about aesthetics and other 

intangible values implicit in the “New Forestry,” since it was aesthetics that brought me 

to the woods.

I live not far from here, about 15 minutes by foot from that direction (pointing north). 

Max and I walk this road two or three times a week, in fact (he’s whining, straining at the

leash to sniff the students circled around us). There’s a cut-off trail just about a hundred

yards above the house, and we often walk up the 510 road to this clearcut and back. It’s 

a good two miles, and flat.

Walking here today, thinking about what I wanted to say to you, I realized again how little

the harvest bothers me anymore. It was over a year ago now that the loggers started in,

and I grieved and panicked and wrote letters and attended meetings, and I still wish, very

much, that the forest was the way it was before the harvest began. But I have to admit --

and this is a kind of confession, I guess, given some of the things I’ve written and said -- I

CHRlS ANDERSON is an associate professor of English at Oregon State University. Corvallis, OR, 97331.

Reprinted from Edge Effects by Chris Anderson, by permission of the University of lowa Press. ©1993 by

University of lowa Press.

18

Abstract

A Talk Given One

October

Morning at the

Foot of the

Clearcut at the

End of the 

510 Road

My Talk to the Forestry Class

Chris Anderson
have to admit that this morning, as Max and I walked our familiar route, and the clouds

kept moving through the trees and changing shape, and the forest kept opening up before

us, I was feeling much of my usual solace. I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but the

woods are still peaceful and beautiful to me, they still satisfy me deeply, and I’ve been 

trying to figure out why. Why hasn’t the cutting entirely ruined the forest for me? What

makes a landscape aesthetically pleasing?

Right now I can think of 10 factors.

1. Familiarity and Routine

I’ve wan<ed this road so often I’ve become comfortable with it, at home, despite the new

cutting. It’s not just that I’m accustomed to the gaps. It’s that walking in the forest through

so many moods and seasons I’ve developed an intimacy with the landscape, both gaps

and trees. I know it the way I know a page I’ve pored over, word for word. Layers keep

revealing themselves: a flicker’s nest, a deer trail, the broad sweep of the hill.

Other times I’m walking here and I know the forest well enough for it to be neutral, no

impediment to my thoughts. I don’t have to find my way or see things for the first time and

so am free to let my thoughts go, to let a rhythm of thinking and remembering establish

itself, and the landscape fades, then, can be taken for granted (though all the while there’s

this sense of it, still, of its hardness and presence, of the automatic earth my feet keep

stepping on, the background of trees: both awareness and forgetfulness, in a balance).

2. The Absence of People

Sometimes I think my main requirement in a landscape is the absence of people and

chattering and Pepsi cans and minivans. Until today, Max and I have walked here for

months without seeing more than two or three other walkers. Evidence of the human is

everywhere, I guess, in the stumps and the flags and the spray painted numbers, but even

so the harvested, managed forest is on the other end of the scale from the shopping mall

built up the street from our old house in town (over everybody’s protest) -- far superior to

the new housing development being carved out farther down the mountain. I much prefer

stumps and new seedlings and the bare hills to asphalt and foundations and heavy 

equipment. I’II take any clearcut over any Dairy Queen. What the spirit craves, I think, is

its own absence. It longs for the not-human, for the plain fact of things, for the slow 

growth of leaves, the obvious trunks and branches, the flashing of birds.

I grow so tired of my own voice, so often distort or contaminate what I make or propose,

that what I most need is a landscape I didn’t invent, some otherness I can’t be blamed for

and that won’t immediately yield to me. We crave forgetfulness.

3. Spatial Definition (or the Aesthetic Success of the Patchcutting)

This strategy of checkerboarding little one acre clearcuts is meant in part to be an 

aesthetic compromise, a way of extracting some trees without devastating the forest as a

whole, and I think it partly works. There are holes in the forest now, small vistas opening

up within the larger structure of the trees, but the larger structure of trees still exists, the

18
patterning of trunks and branches extending off into the distance. It’s still a forest. 

Walking through it you still generally think: trees.

Psychologists talk about *spatial definition” as a key element in the appreciation of a 

landscape. We like what we can distinguish from other things, see in relation -- 

foregrounds and background, perspectives. Photographs of open plains or dense forests

always score lower in the tests of random participants than scenes of mixed elements,

more open forests, fields with houses and barns or small hills. Apparently we have some

ancestral memory of getting lost and so have an instinctive need for landmarks.

4. The Solace of Open Spaces

In fact: I kind of like some of the openings the patchcuts create. They let in more sun.

There’s more sky, more horizon: stars at night, clouds and distant mountains by day. 

Many of the patchcuts look ragged and junky glimpsed in a row, but sometimes, coming

around a corner on this road, you have a view of several interrelated patchcuts that seems

like an opening up, an unfolding. Sometimes you get the sense of perspective, 

interlocking rooms leading your eye off into the distance. There’s a pleasing tension

between openness and fullness, a suggestion of depth.

Frankly, I don’t even mind this clearcut itself (gesturing toward the bare hill behind the

class, 40 acres or so-the experimental control for the patchcutting). I wouldn’t want the

whole forest clearcut, but I have to admit that I find something actually pleasing about

passing through trees into a broad clearing. It’s the visual equivalent of breaking through.

There’s a cleanness and spareness about the view, a quality of sweeping up, of 

expansion, not to mention the panorama of the Cascades just visible over the tops of the

lower firs. Clouds pass overhead, varieties of weather and light. You can see the rest of

the forest, have a perspective on that fullness not possible from inside it.

I grew up in Eastern Washington, desert and wheat fields and the Palouse all around me,

and I often long for that landscape. In the winter especially the valley can seem 

claustrophobic to me, and I want nothing more than to get in the car and drive up the

gorge until I come to the wide open country again.

Who’s to say that a plain is less beautiful than a forest?

5. Acquaintance with the People

I’ve spent some time now with the foresters who manage this place, shaken their hands,

had coffee and eaten lunch with them, walked with them in the woods, and seeing their

faces, hearing their voices, I’ve been sure of their commitment to the forest, their care and

concern. They seem like good people to me, with ideas and paradigms and training and

careers of hard, careful work, with expertises that make sense. I’ve glimpsed young

wildlife biologists jogging on the Powder House trail, seen a forest ecologist at the store,

picking out bananas. The cutting has been humanized. I can’t walk up here or look at the

gaps in the forest without thinking of the sincerity and craft of the people behind the 

cutting.

19
6. A Sense of How the Forest is Managed

I know now from having heard the talks and looked at the maps that the foresters who

manage this place think of it, minimally, as a mosaic. When I was shown around I was

always shown views that contained a number of different elements and ages of trees, a

clearcut here, then a fifteen year old stand, then a thirty, a fifty, some hundred year old,

and even some old growth. What I’ve been told, what makes sense to me, is that for 

economic reasons alone the managers can’t afford to clearcut anymore than they have.

There’s not enough land to sustain that level of harvest.

Others in the College of Forestry see this mosaic management approach as too sloppy

and uncoordinated, arguing for a more coherent plan. That seems right to me, too, just as

an outsider.

But I’m reassured that even minimally the forest has to be kept varied and in pieces, that

in any single far view there will always be a large number of trees. I keep thinking of

something Jeff Garver, the forest manager, told me on the other side of the mountain

here, as we were looking out over Lewisburg Saddle into Soap Creek Valley, the 

checkerboard of cuts and trees spreading out as far as we could see. In a 100 years, he

said, all these same elements will be here, in this scene, just in a different combination, a

different arrangement -- the clearcut a 100-year old stand, the 100-year old stand a

clearcut.

7. A Layman’s Understanding of Theory

I’ve heard the jargon and seen the graphs and understood the basic reasons for the

research they’re doing here, what they hope to study -- the costs of smaller scale 

harvesting, the effects on birds and wildlife, the success of reforestation -- and the 

conceptual coherence of all that has reassured me. In part, I’ve let myself be soothed by

euphemistic jargon. Calling a cutting a “harvest” or a “treatment” softens the violence a 

little, abstracting from the harsh realities, and there’s a way to let that softening work on

you without being deceived by it. But part of the relief, too, is knowing that the cutting isn’t

irrational or impulsive or motivated by profits only. Behind the new gaps in the forest are

clear, coherent, well-reasoned paragraphs in scientific proposals. Behind them are 

untested hypothesis and important research goals, goals I completely endorse. After all,

the cutting done here has been done in the interest of exploring alternatives to 

clearcutting, exploring ways of harvesting that also take plants and animals and humans

into account. And a community of scientists is thinking about all this, and there’s a 

tradition of theory and publication to support their discussions, institutions and grants and

professional organizations to certify any actual work that might get done, and the process

is slow, considered, and recursive. On several levels of abstraction, in other words, the

cuttings make sense, and that makes them aesthetically more acceptable. Theory orders

them, and order is pleasing. There’s a purpose to the cutting, and purpose is pleasing.

Knowledge of the theory informs the eye, helping me see things I wouldn’t have seen

before: the deliberately engineered snags or “wildlife trees,” for example, or the seed

traps, framed screens left on stumps to catch the naturally distributed fir seed. Theory

opens up the landscape, reveals new details to take pleasure in.

20
8. A Greater Awareness of the Complexities and Contradictions -- a Greater Sense of

Confusion

The cutting in this forest has led me to think more about the timber crisis in general. I take

all the articles in the paper personally. Values compete -- the aesthetic and the economic,

the preservation of wilderness and the necessary production of timber -- and now, after

the cutting here, I’m just more aware of all the dilemmas, feel them more immediately, and

that changes how I view the forest. I’m not able to see the trees innocently or naively 

anymore.

I know that a timber worker might think of the clearcut as beautiful, representing work and

family. I know that a reforester might see the uniform canopy of a plantation forest as

beautiful and an ecologist regard the same canopy as a sign of ecological barrenness,

something a blue jay would have to pack a lunch to fly over. Two people, depending on

their jobs and their education, might experience a stand of old growth as either aweinspiring or an angering waste of wood fibre.

Today the paper reports that the Diamond B Lumber Company in Philomath is closing its

mill, laying off 148 workers. The owners blame environmentalists for the absence of 

timber. “We’re just guys trying to make a living,” one of the laid off workers is quoted as

saying. “It’s the environmentalists’ right to believe the whole world should be park, but I

don’t have to believe that.” In their oversimplifying and stereotyping and superficial 

thinking, statements like this always make me angry. But they also make me stop and

think. They express legitimate struggle and paradox, too. I keep thinking of them as I 

walk through these woods, on this road, watching the clouds move up the hill, and that

complicates my aesthetic judgement, suspends it.

A colleague in Political Science has done a survey of Oregon attitudes about the 

environment, comparing them to attitudes nationally. Oregonians are less sure of things.

In response to the question “Should clearcutting be banned” 44 percent of participants

nationally "strongly agreed” but only 35 percent in Oregon. Should more wilderness areas

be established? 48.3 percent of the people in the nation strongly agree, 25 percent in

Oregon. People who live close to trees, are dependent upon them in whatever way, are

less convinced about any generic policy or blanket statements.

9. Bird Song

One result of the reading and research I’ve done since the cutting started is an awareness

of all the birds in the forest—juncos and chickadees and warblers and thrushes and hawks

and owls. A pair of pileated woodpeckers, old-growth indicators, are regular visitors in my

backyard. I’m starting to be able to identity bird songs. I keep track of what species come

to the feeder on the deck. Walking this road now I have a new source of pleasure, partly

compensating for the missing trees, or at least now I’m noticing dimensions of the forest

that were always there, available to imagination and the senses, unrecognized. The forest

exists in its fullness and depth at more than one level at once, in more than one

dimension.

21
10. Temporal Seeing

Foresters are always thinking ahead, looking at any present scene partly with the eye of

the future. When a forester looks at a clearcut he sees simultaneously a ten year old

stand blocking the view of the valley. When he looks at a full stretch of trees he imagines

the thinning and then the falling twenty and eighty years hence. The imagined future is a

filter blurring the aesthetics of the present.

Even in my short time, I’ve seen the prospects change with the seasons and the light. I’ve

seen the clearcut raw and scarred right after the loggers left, in February, no green leaves

to hide the stumps and tire tracks. I look at it now in the fall, less than a year later, and 

the vine maple are turning red and the sun is just now coming out and the fullness of

shadow is softening the hill (the sun flooding the hillside suddenly, casting low shadows,

and the movement of clouds above that, and blue showing). I know that in the spring new

trees will be planted, and that in ten years those trees will be ten feet tall, and in twenty

years taller still. Sometimes for a moment I can imagine the ground as a forest, and that

image changes my perception of the present bareness, suspends and complicates it.

To see the forest temporally is to see it with patience. To see the forest temporally is to

see it with some measure of trust and acceptance. It’s to make a commitment to seeing it

again and again, a commitment to coming back day after day and studying it, reading it

inch by inch, with discipline and respect, over years. To see the forest temporally is to 

see change and growth and the cycle of things as beautiful, not just the single, static

scene.

I don’t mean that I’ve attained that kind of patience or acceptance. I remain resistant to

change and suspicious of the powers that be, though more complexly so.

But I have glimpsed the temporal, at least, know it as that crucial missing layer in my 

seeing, and my life, a new unimagined dimension, like bird song, only deeper, reaching

farther. I know that there is a cycle and there is change and nature is never still.

We shouldn’t be chauvinistic about the present, whatever its urgencies and attractions.

Wordsworth said we “half perceive and half create” the beauty we find in nature, and I

guess that’s what I’m saying, too. On the one hand, I see the forest differently now

because of the ideas and knowledge I bring to it. I accept it because I know more and am

more confused about notions I used to take for granted. On the other hand my sense of

this landscape, my pleasure in it, seems to come from the outside, too, unbidden and

uncontrolled, surprising. I didn’t expect to feel the way I do and even resisted it.

Satisfaction is the feeling actually produced in me when I walk here over time. Enjoyment

is what I experience in the presence of these trees and these openings, just empirically,

prior to thoughts and theories.

Don’t misunderstand me. When I walk up in the old growth on the other side of this ridge

(pointing southeast now) my visceral response, unbidden and controlled, is a feeling of

deeper respect and reverence, deeper quiet, than any satisfaction I feel on the 510 road.

The depths are greater, the shadows fuller, both the sweeping up and the sense of

22
enclosure more profound. The emotional and sensory reactions the old growth produces

in me are stronger, in short, than the reactions produced on the 510 road, and they seem

to have less to do with my own imagination -- seem the product of the big trees 

themselves, seem in fact a silencing of thought.

I don't think I’ve been taken in. Temporal seeing also means constantly being on the 

lookout for compromises and backsliding and discrepancies between what’s said and

what’s done. The forest still lacks a long-range management plan, and it’s not at all clear

how committed the management really is to citizen involvement and the “sensitive 

forestry’ showcased here. The current plan for this stretch of ground is to come back in

ten and then twenty years to remove the remaining two thirds of the trees, and I’m 

naturally concerned about that, too, both the aesthetic and the ecological effects. Will the

replanted trees grow and what will they look like? What will the rest of the forest look like,

the rest of the 12,000 acres, beyond this particular hillside? What will the financial and

political pressures be in the future? Are we being told the truth, or all that we need to

know? If anything, I’d like to see myself as one of those pesky, persistent, letter-writing

and meeting-attending laymen every institution needs to prod and check it. The price of

landscape is eternal vigilance.

All I’m saying is that these things are complicated. AlI I’m saying is that this landscape,

too, this patch-cut, worked-over, altered forest, has its own pleasures and compensations.

Landscape aestheticians and psychologists talk about “affordance.” We deem something

beautiful because of some ancestral memory of what the landscape “affords” us, what it

enables us to do, which is why forested scenes are always the most highly rated in the

surveys. A forest (our instinct tells us) affords shelter and material and food and 

landmarks and so we are attracted to its depths and vistas. We say it’s beautiful. What

this particular stretch of forest affords me is an opportunity to walk with my dog and smell

the wet ground and look off into distances, and for that I’m grateful. It affords me a 

chance for intimacy with trees and rocks and natural things, and in that sense, with the

voles and the deer mice, apparently, the chickadees and the flickers, I can attest that the

patchcutting has not completely destroyed the habitat I need. So far at least, there are 

still enough trees.

23
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24
List, Peter. 1996. Leopoldian forestry and the ethical acceptability of forest 

practices. In: Brunson, Mark W.; Kruger, Linda E.i Tyler, Catherine 8.; Schroeder,

Susan A., tech. eds. Defining social acceptability In ecosystem management: a 

workshop proceedings; 1992 June 23-25; Kelso, WA. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-369.

Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest

Research Station: 25-36.

A wide variety of environmental and ethical frameworks exists within which foresters 

operate. These frequently competing systems reveal the complexity of humanenvironment relations. Given the disparate nature of ethical considerations facing

foresters, this paper seeks to develop coherent ways to view ethical acceptability and

apply them to understanding forestry issues. Four concepts in contemporary 

environmental ethics are discussed, with special focus on the land ethic of Aldo Leopold

and its role in substantiating ethical acceptability and shaping public opinion about 

environmental issues.

Keywords: Environmental ethics, multiple values, Leopoldian forestry, ecophilosophy, 

ethical acceptability.

Philosophical systems of environmental ethics make ethical values and principles central

in determining what is right and wrong, good and bad, virtuous or vicious with regard to

our environmental behavior and practices. They provide intellectual foundations for 

evaluating what is ethically acceptable and unacceptable in our relationships to animals,

trees, forests, ecosystems, and other parts of nature (DesJardins 1993, Regan 1984,

Rolston 1988). Though forestry is a collection of technical sciences, foresters make 

normative judgements about their roles and responsibilities and the proper kinds of forest

practices, so forestry also embodies ethical appraisals in its basic conceptions and 

management activities (Rolston and Coufal 1991, SAF 1989). These judgments are not

always very visible and identifiable, but they are present nevertheless.

The discipline of environmental ethics has grown and developed in the past thirty years as

an intellectual response to environmental crisis. Contemporary systems of environmental

ethics would not exist if humans were comfortable with their relationships to the

PETER LlST is a professor, Department of Philosophy, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331.

25

Abstract

lntroduction

Leopoldian Forestry and the 

Ethical Acceptability of Forest Practices

Peter List
environment and with the environmental attitudes and values that have existed in 

industrial societies. This means that insofar as forestry has assumed and utilized 

traditional ethical notions about humans and forests, its ethical content will not harmonize

with those systems very well. The ethical dimensions of forestry will need to be reworked

to incorporate new conceptions of ethically acceptable behavior (e.g. Devall and Sessions

1985).

In this report Mark Brunson tentatively defines “social acceptability” in forestry to involve

individual, comparative judgments about the desirability or undesirability of forest 

conditions; these judgments are grounded in general rules and typically are influenced by

group processes. This definition makes very clear the normative character of this specific

concept, tying it directly to social and institutional standards. These standards have in

turn•been influenced by the ideas and philosophies of various individuals and groups in

our cultural history. Historians document the fact that while systems of environmental

ethics were not originally part of the European intellectual heritage in the U.S., this picture

began to change in the nineteenth century and continues to evolve to this day. Several

such systems have slowly percolated into the mainstream of public consciousness, and

ideas about the ethical desirability of our environmental practices now influence the way

the public thinks about forestry and forests (Dunlap 1991, Nash 1989, Olsen and others

1992).

At the same time, philosophers, scientists, naturalists, and other thinkers who have 

formulated systems of environmental ethics define normative principles in different ways,

and there are now several competing systems in place in our society, not all of which have

equal sway over public consciousness. The most dominant system has been that 

commonly referred to as “resource conservation”, but this system has been challenged by

more biocentric ecophilosophies such as deep ecology since the rise of environmentalism

in the 1960s. Public forestry too has inherited these differences of philosophy. Since the

early part of this century it has been influenced rather heavily by Gifford Pinchot’s brand of

forest conservation (Clary 1986), and is only recently awakening to the more biocentric

ideas of Aldo Leopold and other thinkers (Coufal 1989).

Given this variety in ethical frameworks, the problem arises of determining how to 

define the ethical acceptability of a forest practice and showing what this would mean 

for federal forestry. To tackle these issues, I will first identify four important concepts in

contemporary philosophical discussions of environmental ethics, using them as a 

means of giving initial shape to the idea of ethical acceptability. I will then look at one

major system of environmental ethics, the land ethic of Aldo Leopold, to consider 

specifically how it incorporates and explains these concepts, and thus gives substance 

to the notion of ethical acceptability. Finally, I will show how some important features 

of Leopoldian forestry are accepted by the American public.

26
The first of these intellectual notions now permeating philosophical analysis is the central

distinction between anthropocentric and biocentric ethical systems and principles. While

this distinction has been characterized in several ways (Eckersley 1992, Norton 1987,

Rolston 1988, Scherer and Attig 1983), and realistically represents a continuum of ideas

(Steel and others 1994), it tells us that at one end of the scale fall ethical attitudes and

principles that emphasize human concerns, desires, and interests in the environment and

in nature, and are thus human-centered, while at the other end are those that focus on all

relevant elements of nature and its biotic systems, not only the human ones, and are thus

biocentered or “ecocentered.” Of course this concept is itself an anthropocentric one in

another sense, but the point is that the internal content of ethical systems can differ along

this continuum.

Most systems of environmental ethics in contemporary philosophy imply that the norms

and values used to evaluate environmental practices must be more biocentric than the

anthropocentric principles that characterize traditional ethical systems in western culture

(e.g. Callicott 1989, Devall and Sessions 1985, Gray 1981, Johnson 1991, Naess 1989,

Rolston 1988, Taylor 1986). Historians of environmental ethics in fact use this conceptual

distinction to differentiate many traditional Christian and classical ethical systems from the

new systems that have emerged in the twentieth century, such as Leopold’s land ethic,

deep ecology, and ecofeminism. Donald Worster (1977) refers to this change in ethical

tradition as the emergence of “the biocentric conscience” or “biocentric outlook,” and

traces it to such earlier writers and naturalists as Gilbert White, Henry David Thoreau,

Goethe, and Charles Darwin. Moreover, many of the advocates of these new systems

specifically emphasize the centrality of biocentrism in rethinking human relationships to

nature. As Holmes Rolston (1988) puts it, we will have an “adequate ethics for this Earth

and its communities of life” when we take the environment to be primary rather than 

secondary to human interests.

Related to this first distinction is that between the intrinsic or inherent value of natural

objects and their instrumental value. The idea of inherent worth can be traced to the 

eighteenth century German philosopher lmmanuel Kant (1785), who attributed this value

to humans but not to other natural creatures. Philosophers have transferred Kant’s idea

into environmental ethics, and applied it to animals and other natural objects and 

processes. In Kant’s philosophy, inherent value is the value that something has because

of what it is in itself; that is, an end in itself. More recently the idea has also come to 

mean the value a natural thing has, just because it exists or is alive. lnstrumental value,

on the other hand, refers to the value something has as a means to some end or to its use

value.

Most current systems of environmental ethics imply that in addition to the biocentric or

ecocentric orientation of their principles, the idea of intrinsic or inherent worth is another

important dividing line that separates them from traditional, anthropocentric ethical 

systems. In fact, these two distinctions are related. Anthropocentric systems treat nature

and natural objects as having mostly utilitarian or instrumental value, while biocentric 

systems take a step beyond this to make the inherent or intrinsic value of natural objects

also crucial. In the more radical of the new ethical systems, such as deep ecology, 

inherent value is attributable to all objects, species and processes in nature, whether 

animal, vegetable or mineral, biotic or abiotic. By implication, these biocentric systems

would attribute inherent value to forests and their many natural components and 

processes as well. The deep ecologists Arne Naess, Bill Devall and George Sessions

27

Some

Concepts

from

Contemporary

Environmental 

Ethics 

Biocentric and

Anthropocentric

Ethics

lnherent and

lntrinsic Value
claim that all nature has intrinsic worth, and they make the principle of biocentric equality

one of the ultimate intuitive norms of ecophilosophy (Devall and Sessions 1985, Naess

1989). Philosophers who extend this concept in this way believe that it produces a more

satisfactory intellectual basis for our relationships to natural objects than do systems that

locate only human instrumental value in nature. If we value something for its inherent

worth, they argue, and not solely for what we can use it for, we are more likely to treat it

with deep respect and are not as prone to do anything we want with it (Ehrenfeld 1981).

A third conceptual component of these emerging ethical systems is that they typically take

the values in nature or the values “carried” by nature to be diverse and multiple in 

character. Some systems, in fact, outline the details of specific kinds of values, giving us 

a kind of inventory for understanding what the different forms of inherent and instrumental

values are in the natural environment.

In the literature of environmental ethics, two early examples of writers who emphasize

multiple values are John Muir and Aldo Leopold, though clearly there are other thinkers

and writers before them who did so as well. Muir (1901) especially stressed aesthetic, 

spiritual, and recreational values in the wild in his many writings about the American

wilderness from the 1870s on. Leopold’s land ethic, which was formulated in the 1930s

and 1940s, stresses the cultural, historical, ecological, and “philosophical” values of wild

animals and other elements of nature (Leopold 1949). Since Leopold’s day, many other

writers and thinkers have made efforts to codify and classify these values. For example,

Holmes Rolston, an influential philosophical writer in environmental ethics, variously 

identifies ten to fourteen different kinds of specific values in nature, ranging from the 

economic to the aesthetic, the cultural to the religious (Rolston 1988, Rolston and Coufal

1991). Rolston believes that these values are a means whereby we actively participate in

nature, for they are actualized in real natural things and experiences.

A fourth feature of these new systems of environmental ethics is that they move away

from the resource conservation philosophy toward newer forms of “ecological sensibility,”

to use Jon Rodman’s expression (1983). Rodman argues that there are four currents of

thought to be found in environmental thinking since the late nineteenth century: resource

conservation, wilderness preservation, moral extensionism, and ecological sensibility.

Moreover it is possible to see these as part of an evolution of ethical systems in our 

culture whereby resource conservation and wilderness preservation are giving way to

newer forms of ecological consciousness (Rodman 1983).

The creation of the resource conservation philosophy in the United States is associated

with the ideas and efforts of many scientists and government servants in the nineteenth

and early twentieth centuries, such as Eugene W. Hilgard, George Perkins Marsh, John

Wesley Powell, Carl Schurz, Bernhard Fernow, W.J. McGee, Gifford Pinchot, and

President Theodore Roosevelt. Pinchot went so far as to imply that he was the inventor 

of this philosophy as a driver for government resource policy, along with his colleague

McGee (Pinchot 1947), but clearly it was a system of ideas borrowed from European 

models and imported to this country in the nineteenth century by practitioners of such 

disciplines as soil science, forestry, hydrology and geography (Hays 1959, Petulla 1977).

The application of the philosophy to federal resource management by Pinchot and his 

followers is one of the most important chapters in the history of this form of environmental

ethics in the United States.

28

Diverse and

Multiple Values

Resource

Conservation 

and Ecological

Sensibility
The resource conservation philosophy, as Pinchot conceived it, was clear in outline and

aims. Under McGee’s influence, Pinchot (1910, 1947) defined conservation in utilitarian

terms as “the use of natural resources for the greatest good of the greatest number for the

longest time.” In this guise, he stated that it was based on several important ethical 

principles concerning the land: first, the wise human use or development of land

resources; second, the prevention of waste and the preservation of those resources for

future generations; and third, the democratic allocation of the resources for the common

good, as opposed to their monopolistic control by powerful corporate interests.

Philosophically this viewpoint assumes that nature is composed of raw material units for

human extraction, conversion and consumption, and that those resources exist primarily

for humans to benefit from and use, mostly for economic and commercial purposes.

Pinchot carried this utilitarian philosophy into federal forestry where, as one of the first

professional foresters in the federal government and first head of the U.S. Forest Service,

he applied it to the management of the newly created national forests (Clary 1986, Steen

1976).

As a form of environmental ethics, resource conservation is anthropocentric in definition

and goals, stresses primarily the instrumental values of forests and forest components,

and in fact makes trees a domestic product of human enterprise by emphasizing their

value as “crops” in a system of human agricultural production (Clary 1986). It also

assumes that there are a limited number of uses and values that are important in nature

and in forests. The primary values of forests are, of course, economic and commercial,

and to a lesser degree recreational, rather than aesthetic, inherent, or ecological (Pinchot

1910). Moreover, humans are given a centrality and authority with regard to forests that

permits their interests, desires, and needs to come before those of other forest organisms

and systems, in determining how forests should be manipulated. Basically forests or trees

are a resource for humans rather than for other natural organisms, and those organisms

are either ignored or not given much significance beyond their contribution to human life.

Of course, when this philosophy was put to use in the first decade of this century, ecology

was yet to be clearly delineated as a science so it is not surprising that there is little

recognition of the ecological significance of forest components and processes in it.

Rodman and others have argued that resource conservation thinking was important in its

day for several reasons. For one thing, it helped to restrain the blatant and destructive

raids on national resources, such as the western forests, that had been made by many

individuals and corporations before the turn of the century (Rodman 1983). It thus

deserves respect for its early accomplishments in preserving and maintaining the national

forests for future human exploitation, some decades later. For another, it was an 

improvement philosophically over the resource mining approach in forestry that involved

no principles of conservation at all. But there is an emerging viewpoint shared by many

environmental philosophers that this form of thinking has outlived its usefulness as an

exclusive orientation to nature. It is now argued that it has failed to stem the tide of 

natural destruction in a time of increasing human consumption of nature, and thus must

be superseded by new ideas and ethical principles that exhibit a deeper view about our

normative relationships with natural systems and objects. Some philosophers have even

argued that the resource conservation philosophy should be jettisoned altogether, and that

it is logically inconsistent with a deep ecological approach to nature (Devall and Sessions

1985), but others are more pluralistic and suggest that our society can simultaneously

29
adopt several systems of environmental ethics or several kinds of moral frameworks

(Stone 1987). In either case, the point is that systems of environmental ethics are 

evolving away from this earlier form of anthropocentric, normative thinking, and are

reaching out in new directions philosophically and practically. It is no longer as acceptable

to advocate a purely human-oriented resource conception about such natural objects as

forests, forest species, and forest organisms.

To sum up, in formulating the idea of the social acceptability of public forestry practices, it

is important to understand the idea of the ethical acceptability of these practices. This

idea in turn can be illuminated by understanding some basic concepts from contemporary

environmental ethics, namely: the ideas of biocentrism, of inherent or intrinsic value, of

multiple values in nature, and of an ecological sensibility that goes beyond resource 

conservation.

Aldo Leopold’s land ethic has something to say about each of these concepts. Leopold’s

mature land ethic was shaped by many influences, including his training as a forestry

graduate student at Yale University from 1906 to 1909, and his experiences as a member

of the Forest Service in the Southwest during the second and third decades of this century

(Flader 1974, Meine 1988). His early conception of forestry was more production-oriented

and focused on timber and rangeland issues. Its aim was to enhance the interests of the

existing and dominant land users in the national forests, rather than to promote ecological

goals (Meine 1988). Later on he developed a more broadly conceived and humbling idea

of forestry as an ecological science and art that downplays the utilitarian approach to

forests in favor of a more biocentered philosophical perspective (Leopold 1949). Forestry,

in his mind, could be freed from what he saw as its limited resource conservation roots to

become a means to promote land health and to understand some of the many noneconomic values in nature. It could become one example of an applied environmental

discipline which leads to new forms of ethical awareness about natural communities and

processes.

Leopold was especially attuned to the idea of a more biocentered environmental ethic, and

he formulated his land ethic so that the “biocentric attitude” would be prominent. He 

suggested that forestry should be based on ecology and ecological principles rather than

on strictly anthropocentric ones, and he argued that land managers should pay serious

attention to forests as total natural systems and thus to the many natural components that

are parts of those systems. Humans, he implied, are parts of forest communities but are

only one of many forest users; there are other species and natural objects that exist in

forests and many natural processes that are critically important. Nonhuman forest 

organisms use forests for their own purposes, just as humans do, and some of these uses

have very little, if anything, to do with human life. A Leopoldian, biocentered forestry

would not elevate human desires and goals to a position of first importance then, though

there would be times when human desires would come first. Leopold was very clear, in

any event, that humans have special ethical responsibilities, of an individual sort, to

forests and their component organisms.

30

A Leopoldian

Version of Ethical

Acceptability
Leopold reformulated this idea that humans are parts of biota in a now famous dictum that

they should stop thinking of themselves as the conquerors of nature and natural systems

and instead become “plain members” of the biotic community along with its other 

organisms (Leopold 1949). Foresters too should conceive of themselves as “biotic 

citizens” in forest communities, rather than as only servants in the business of timber 

production. They should move beyond the narrower, agronomic model of forestry, and

stop thinking of trees as only crops and forestry as a form of agriculture concerned with

the propagation of trees for the production of wood and wood products. To Leopold,

forests and trees are naturally evolving objects that are parts of various biota, integral

components in a complicated energy system involving the earth and the sun. Of course

foresters should be interested in managing forests for wood products, but more 

importantly to Leopold they should also think of themselves as applied ecologists and 

aestheticians who are concerned with a whole series of forest functions, including wildlife,

recreation, watersheds, wilderness, scenery, and, most importantly, scientific knowledge.

The general goal of this kind of forestry is the ecological health of forests rather than the

production of “cellulose” to meet the demands of society. Leopoldian “biotic foresters”

would do more than merely manipulate forests for narrow human ends; they would learn

how forests throw light on the processes of nature, and would come to see themselves as

parts of the collective system which he called the “land” (Leopold 1949). An important 

feature of Leopold’s emphasis on biocentrism is his revolutionary philosophical principle

that ethical status and concern should be extended to all organisms, species, and natural

components in the biotic community. In fact, this is now one of the most important 

principles in contemporary systems of environmental ethics, and distinguishes them from

most traditional forms of ethical thinking. By implication this would mean that forestry 

practices are ethically acceptable if they recognize that all forest components and 

organisms are valuable and deserve ethical consideration -- not just those which are of

economic importance to humans, such as certain species of trees or mammals.

Finally, Leopold (1949) clearly saw the importance of multiple values in nature. To take

one illustration, his essay “Wildlife in American Culture” identifies several kinds of cultural

value in the customs and experiences we have with wild things and wilderness. These

include the “split-rail” value that, for example, comes from imitating earlier methods of

hunting or woodscraft in our excursions into the wilds, and the “man-earth” value that

results from having experiences that remind us of our dependency on other animals and

organisms in the food chain. Leopold implied that these are instrumental values since 

they express the value of wildlife and wilderness in terms of human social and individual

welfare; they are a kind of human “social asset.” More radically he also believed that

wildlife and wild things have value in a deeper sense that cannot be articulated either in

these “civilized” terms or in the more common, monetary exchange terms of our economic

system. The question, “what is a wild goose worth?”, revealed to him this deeper value

that is not quantifiable and not instrumental. He implied that raising this question was like

asking about the value of a painting or poem, and could perhaps be answered only in 

aesthetic terms if it had a definitive answer at all.

Additionally, Leopold’s land ethic implies that all components of the biotic community, the

community of nature, have value because they fit into the community, contribute to its

functioning, and fill a niche in the natural whole. This kind of “holistic” ecological value 

does not exhaust their worth, of course, but it is of primary importance in his notion that

the biotic community or the earth and its components have more than economic

31
significance. In a very fundamental way all components and processes in nature are 

valuable because of their ecological contribution to the system as a whole. Recently

Holmes Rolston and James Coufal (1991) have applied these Leopoldian ideas to

forestry. They have argued for the importance of multiple values and the biotic community

concept in forestry, and suggested that the professional ethics of the Society of American

Foresters should take a Leopoldian turn.

Leopold formulated several foundational principles that provide a basis for normative 

judgments about our environmental behavior, a framework for judgments about the ethical

acceptability of forest practices. The most famous of these is his principle (1949) that a

human action is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the

biotic community, and wrong when it tends otherwise. In this principle he encapsulated

his ecological convictions about the importance of the diversity and fertility of the land’s

components and structures, claiming that these features of the biotic community are what

give it its evolving stability.

Moreover, this principle invites us to pay attention to the biotic system as a whole, to

maintain its wholeness and not destroy its component biota piecemeal on pain of 

ecological impoverishment, human insecurity, and loss of natural values. In contrast with

the resource conservation philosophy of Pinchot, the first duty of conservation is the

preservation of the biotic community and its various parts rather than the development of

land “resources” for human uses. In this regard Leopold was an ethical conservative; he

believed in the value of ecological caution in altering the land’s components. The first rule

of intelligent tinkering, he told us, is to save all of the cogs and wheels. All parts, no 

matter how small or seemingly insignificant, are important in making the whole system

work and must be preserved. And this applies to forests as well as to other natural

systems; we should respect their biological integrity, beauty, and evolutionary stability, 

and value their components for more than their contributions to our personal and 

economic welfare. It is important to preserve the “wild” parts of our forests so that we can

learn how they function and discover what values they and their components have in

themselves and for us. This is both prudent and ethically desirable.

In short, Leopold’s land ethic includes a strong commitment to biocentrism, to something

more than instrumental values in nature, to ethical principles that take us beyond resource

conservation to a new form of ecological sensibility, and to the importance of multiple 

values in the biotic community. Leopoldian forestry implies that forest practices are 

ethically acceptable if, among other things, they are biocentric and holistic in orientation, if

they are not dominated by agricultural and commercial purposes but by the goal of 

ecological forest health, and if they promote the many instrumental and intrinsic values

that exist in forests. None of this should be taken to imply that Leopold was opposed to

forest management -- for example, that he was in favor of a “hands-off” approach to

forests -- for he clearly would have favored some form of ecosystem management in 

federal forestry. Ecology is the basic science that undergirds his ideas in the land ethic.

What connection does this Leopoldian philosophical viewpoint have with the social 

acceptability of forest practices? One way to answer this question is to ask, does the 

public accept some of these general features of Leopoldian forestry?

32

Ethical

Acceptability

and Social

Acceptability
This is obviously an empirical question that can be answered by social research, and 

several of us in the Sustainable Forestry Program at Oregon State University have been

studying it through the use of survey instruments, among other things. In Fall, 1991, we

conducted a national and an Oregon survey of public attitudes about the environment in

general, about human ethical relationships to forests, and about some issues in federal

forest policy. We purposely included several Leopoldian land ethic statements in our 

surveys to get a sense of which of them were “acceptable” to the American public and

which were not. For example, the statement “humans should have more love, respect 

and admiration for forests” is an adaption of a Leopoldian assertion about the biotic 

community (Leopold 1949), while the statement “plants and animals exist primarily for

human use”. is an example of a traditional anthropocentric attitude (Dunlap and Van Liere

1978). Survey respondents were given the opportunity to indicate how strongly they

agreed or disagreed with a variety of general attitude statements. Using the results from

the surveys, we then designed a forest values scale which arrays some of these attitudes

along a continuum, with the most anthropocentric orientation on one end and the most

biocentric orientation on the other.

Overall we discovered that both national and Oregon publics tend to be more biocentric in

their value orientations toward forests than anthropocentric (Steel and others 1994).

Additionally, when comparing our national and Oregon samples, the national public was

found to have even stronger biocentric values than the Oregon public, though the 

difference lies in the intensity of value orientations and not in their direction. These results

are consistent with other sociological analyses that show greater public support for the

environment in recent years (Dunlap 1991).

In a second analysis of our survey data we assessed broad forest policy preferences

among the public, asking them to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with

12 statements concerning management of federal forestlands. Preference statements

were designed to cover dimensions of commodity-based (single-use) management and

ecosystem (holistic) management. For example, the statement “federal forest 

management should emphasize timber and lumber products” was taken to be part of a

commodity-based orientation, while the statement “federal forest management should

emphasize a wide range of benefits and uses rather than timber and wood products

alone” is closer to an ecosystem orientation. Results of this analysis show that none of 

the commodity-based policies was supported by a majority of either the Oregon or 

national samples, and both groups tended to be more ecosystem-oriented than 

commodity-based. The national public was significantly more likely than Oregonians to

prefer ecosystem management policies, but, even in a state that has experienced the 

federal timber crisis first-hand, support for ecosystem-based policies was dramatic. 

Again, the difference between the two samples in this regard lies in the intensity of 

support rather than in its direction (Shindler and others 1993).

To further identify public policy orientations, survey respondents were asked to self-select

their position on a seven-point scale regarding the importance of management for 

environmental and economic considerations in federal forests. At one end of the scale fell

responses that gave highest priority to natural forest conditions (wildlife, old-growth

forests) even if this had negative economic consequences. At the other end were those

that gave priority to economic interests (employment, tax revenues) at the expense of

33
natural environmental conditions. Results showed that the largest single response for 

both samples was at the midpoint of the scale; near-majorities favored a balance between

environmental and economic components. Moreover, the remaining responses were 

dispersed more toward the natural environment end of the scale than the economic

(Shindler and others 1993). We concluded that both Oregon and national publics approve

of managing federal forests with a holistic, ecosystem-based approach that emphasizes

natural conditions in balance with economic ones, with more public support for natural 

forest conditions than for economic interests. There is wide public agreement, we believe,

with a more environmentally oriented and multiple-valued approach to federal forest

management.

At the same time, our survey data also indicate that the public expects to be more

involved in federal forest planning. We asked our survey respondents to rate the value of

public participation in federal forest planning on a scale that ranged from “no value” to

“great value,” and results show that 78 percent of both the Oregon and national samples

support increased participation even if it adds to the cost of government (Shindler and 

others 1993). There is a very clear and strong public desire to be involved in federal 

forest resource allocation.

A natural conclusion from this survey data is that federal and other public foresters who

appeal to Leopoldian ideas as a philosophical basis for reorganizing and implementing

new forms of public forest management are likely to find more public support for their

endeavors than those who do not, but only if the public is more seriously involved in forest

planning. The public has taken an increasing interest in the disposition of federal forest

lands in recent years, and federal foresters can no longer effectively think of themselves

as having the exclusive or even dominant right to determine what should be done to the

national forests. Forest managers in the Forest Service and BLM should turn then not 

only to forest experts and scientists, to economists, engineers, silviculturalists, and 

biologists, but to the publics they serve, to understand the acceptability of different forest

practices in different forest landscapes. This will require considerably more social 

research in specific forest localities to determine specific public preferences. If, however,

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Devall, B.; Sessions, G. 1985. Deep ecology, living as if nature mattered. Salt Lake City: 

Peregrin Smith Books. 266 p.

34

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36
Hansis, Richard. 1996. Social acceptability in anthropology and geography. In: Brunson, 

Mark W.; Kruger, Linda E.; Tyler, Catherine B.; Schroeder, Susan A., tech. eds. 

Defining social acceptability in ecosystem management: a workshop proceedings; 1992

June 23-25; Kelso, WA. PNW-GTR-369. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture,

Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station: 37-47.

Little explicit discussion of social acceptability has taken place in anthropology and 

geography. This paper synthesizes literature from these two disciplines in its examination

of values and their relationship to acceptability. It provides both frameworks and 

examples of how anthropologists can contribute to the understanding of social 

acceptability. Context is shown to be an important factor in determining acceptability, 

particularly when considered in light of the meanings construed by the people involved.

Keywords: Values, acceptability, meanings, context, qualitative methods, emic approach.

The question of acceptability, narrowly conceived, has received little attention in cultural

anthropology and human geography. Both have described relationships among humans

as social and cultural beings, and between them and the physical environment, especially

in cultural ecology, and have examined changes in these relationships. Resistance to and

acceptance of change have been the stuff of many investigations, above all in 

anthropology, but few explicitly focus on the individual and social conscious and 

subconscious processes which go into the determination of what is acceptable and what is

unacceptable. Thus, the culture change literature has examined large scale changes, e.g.

the transition from gathering and hunting to agriculture, and speculated on the reasons for

this change, e.g., population growth (Murdock 1956), but has not looked in depth at the

issue of acceptability, per se (Anyinam 1987). This literature lately, though, has brought in

issues of internally induced changes caused by class, gender and factional interests and,

hence, has included the role of human agency, as well as ecological, economic, 

technological, and demographically induced changes (Brumfiel 1992). In human 

geography, diffusion of innovation literature has emphasized exposure to new ideas or

practices and economic motivations (Blaut 1987; Meir 1988). This paper will attempt to

synthesize literature that deals with the broad question of what is acceptable and methods

used to study this question.

RlCHARD HANSlS is a professor of anthropology at Washington State University, Vancouver, WA, 98663.

37

Abstract

lntroduction

Social Acceptability in Anthropology and Geography

Richard Hansis
People, as social beings, form groups, either formal or informal, that have culture. Some

definitions of culture view it as consisting only of values, beliefs, norms, rationalizations,

symbols and ideologies, while other definitions include behavior and material artifacts

(Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952). A number of anthropologists view culture as the creation 

of meaning; humans “... ascribe meanings of their own creation to objects, persons, 

behaviors, emotions, and events and proceed to act as though these meanings are real”

(Robbins 1993, p. 6). A problem with the use of ideas and meanings as the definition of 

the culture concept is the distinction which can be made between what is supposed to be

proper behavior or thought and what really happens (Burch 1971). Nevertheless, many

anthropologists now view culture not as shared meaning systems, rules for action, or

behavior, but as something contested by different interests (Foster 1991). Culture, in this

view, is not uniform; it will vary across individuals and groups. Forests and forest 

practices, according to this latter perspective, take on different meanings for different 

individuals and groups, and, in the process of being contested, take on new meanings. 

At the same time, group identities are created, defined, and modified in the process of 

contesting meaning (Schmink and Wood 1992).

Kinds of human action on the environment and meanings attributed to these actions are 

filtered through values, social structure, technology, and the economy (and I would add,

knowledge and beliefs) , all of which interact with each other. Knowledge and beliefs are 

filtered through values (Hansis1) as well as through the filters named in the previous 

sentence.

It follows that all knowledge -- mine, yours, a physicist’s -- is constructed through the

human mind and does not just reflect reality. Certain tools, e.g., scientific methods, help 

in constructing better knowledge, but science also tells us that we must be tentative in our

knowledge. Any representation of our own, as well as others’, values, knowledge, belief,

and meaning must be open to revision. Thus, managers and social scientists must be

aware of how their assumptions about the nature of the biophysical and social world 

influence their values, knowledge and beliefs and those of the people they hope to involve

in participation.

If values consist of a relationship, that is, the worth of objects, concepts, or states of 

being, it is obviously a normative word and important to the understanding of what is

acceptable. Clyde Kluckhohn understands values to be “conceptions of the desirable” 

(Vogt and Albert 1966, p. 6). Values define for us what is true, right and beautiful.

Kluckhohn (1961) also suggests that a value orientation -- that is, all values that a person

has -- combines normative and aesthetic propositions and existential statements about

what the nature of human beings, society, and nature actually is (Kluckhohn and

Strodtbeck 1961). A value orientation, then, includes beliefs about what exists and that

which is desirable.

1 Hansis, Richard [in press]. “Science, knowledge and the forest issue in the Pacific Northwest.” In: Soden. Dennis, ed.

Science and Public Policy. Commack, NY: Nova Science Publishers. On file with the author.

38
If each individual has a number of values, some of which may conflict with each other, and

a rank ordering of values, then it is possible that an individual may be willing to accept

tradeoffs. The nature of these tradeoffs is not readily apparent even knowing an 

individual’s ranking of values. One cannot say that satisfying all values ranked lower than

number one will outweigh the lack of satisfying the most important value, or vice versa, in

any given context. Certain values may be absolute in that a person may not be willing to

accept any tradeoff. The less specific the value, the motivationally stronger it is 

(Rappaport 19952). In any society there will be a predominant value orientation held by 

the majority or the dominant population and a series of variations or differences 

(Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961).

Mutual relationships exist between values and the institutional structures which groups

develop for dealing with common human problems. Values may be caused by the 

process of solving these problems and passed on to other people and future generations.

In turn, these solutions to common problems are then judged according to how well they 

fit with the values that people have and how effectively these means solve these 

problems. Acceptability rests on values. An analysis of acceptability would also have to

include an examination of beliefs and practices and then an analysis of how they fit 

together (Barth 1987).

Thus, two questions need to be answered. First, how do values interact with each other in

confronting a specific situation in order for individuals and groups to decide what is 

acceptable? Second, what do people know or believe about the object, concept, or 

situation?

Barnett (1953), who has written extensively on innovation and acceptance, points out that

there are three main factors which determine acceptance of a new idea. One is the 

character, nature, or content of the idea. A second is situational features connected to the

idea. The third is the range in qualities of possible acceptors. These three factors will 

interact in complex ways which determine rejection or acceptance. The following several

paragraphs rely on Barnett’s analysis.

Among the elements which make up the situational factor are the personal and social 

characteristics of the advocate. The first element or variable is prestige of the advocate,

which is not only inherent in the advocate, but also depends on the potential acceptor.

Prestige is related to competence, but no person or group is considered equally 

prestigious by everyone, and no one is considered competent in all areas. Different 

criteria for excellence as well as personality conflicts influence prestige ratings. In 

addition, the advocate of a new idea cannot depart too radically from the reputation which

she has established.

Personality and personal relations of the advocate of the idea or practice to the potential

acceptors affect the effectiveness of its transmission. One of the dimensions of personal

relations is the degree of control of a situation or a relationship held by the advocate.

2 Rappaport, Roy A. 1995. Comments. Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting. Albuquerque, NM. 259 p. 

On file with the author.

39
Another is whether relatives, friends, or strangers are advocates; the former two are more

likely to be convincing than the latter.

Majority opinion also may convince someone to accept a new idea. Advertising often 

plays on the likelihood of someone being swayed by learning that many other people have

bought or used a product.

Characteristics of the new idea or practice include its intrinsic qualities and the feasibility

of its acceptance. To be acceptable, a new idea must have meaning to the potential

acceptor; the researcher cannot impose her conceptions of meaningfulness. It must have

some relationship to a previous experience; there must be a connection which is real to

the acceptor. Wholes, as defined by the observer/acceptor, are accepted or rejected; clusters of traits seen as units are judged, not the individual traits. These clusters of traits or

the new idea do not necessarily have the same meaning for the acceptor and the 

advocate. One place where different meanings may occur is when an unacceptable 

analogy suggested by the new idea is introduced. For example, some people involved

with the forest issue may object to the concept “ecosystem management” because it

evokes the related term “ecology” that may be associated in their mind with positions

opposed to logging. Conversely, if the introduced idea evokes a complementary idea, it

may be accepted because it is not a contradiction nor is it identical with the known cluster

of traits.

Conformance -- that is, agreement between the older ways and a new idea -- is not 

enough to guarantee acceptance. Desirability, which is judged by comparing the intrinsic

merits of the new idea to the intrinsic merits of existing ideas, also enters in determining

compatibility. Sometimes a new idea may be accepted just because it is new, if the 

acceptor values conventional ideas negatively.

An idea must have qualities that make it superior to an existing idea in order for its

acceptance to be worth the effort to accommodate it. New ideas are judged against 

multiple values which determine whether or not the new idea will replace familiar ideas

that are functional alternatives. One of these values is efficiency or effectiveness, a value

which is especially salient when issues such as personal welfare are at stake. A second is

cost, which is a function of an individual’s economy of preferences. Another is that some

new ideas are accepted because they give the acceptor an advantage in prestige, power,

or material advantage. If others have adopted a new belief or way of doing things, then 

an individual or group may also accept in order to gain or keep legitimacy. A fourth is

pleasure. The effort required to accept the new idea, the excitement which it can invoke,

the freedom of action which it allows, and the doubts and fears which it inspires are all

parts of hedonistic considerations. A fifth, related to the previous value, is the difficulty,

time, and level of concentration required to master the new idea. Therefore, simple ideas

usually will gain wider acceptance than complex ones. A sixth one, penalties, would

include punishment, ridicule, and blame. New ideas which allow more individual choice, 

as opposed to those which require agreement with others or which require being put into

practice in a social context, will be accepted less easily, according to Barnett.

lndividual differences in the acceptance of new ideas fall under the purview of psychology.

Barnett, however, cites characteristics of individuals who, by the nature of their 

relationship to the rest of society, are more prone to the acceptance of new ideas. These

40
include the dissident or nonconformist; the indifferent, who have not irretrievably 

committed themselves to certain ways of their society; and the disaffected, who become

so because of some prior experiences in their life. Whole communities can become 

disaffected and feel anxiety and hopelessness as a result of large misfortunes. Past 

positive or negative experience with new ideas or ways of doing things will also influence

acceptability.

The above brief summary of Barnett’s analysis of acceptance, if it remains true to his

analysis, leaves him open to the charge of utililitarianism. His factors of acceptance rely

heavily on a model of human beings as rational actors calculating the personal benefits

and costs of new ideas or new ways of doing things. The multiple values which Barnett

claims that people use to determine the acceptance or rejection of an idea are easily

collapsed into one or possibly two values which can be summed up into material benefits

and internal needs for power, prestige, and pleasure. Little is said of spiritual, ecological,

amenity, participatory, autonomy, legacy, fairness, justice, or egalitarian values, all of

which may coexist within individuals and groups. What is economically efficient for society

or materially beneficial to an individual does not necessarily define what is politically and

socially acceptable.

Even when there is general agreement on values and the goals connected to these 

values, there may be disagreement on specific measures to achieve them. As well, 

communication gaps may exist among different and opposing groups. For example, the

goal of having healthy forests can be universally agreed upon, but what a healthy forest is,

and how to reach that state, is a contentious issue that may not get resolved because

people will not speak with each other.

Another earlier writer, Walter Firey (1960), addresses the types of processes which 

people will accept in solving the problem of utilizing energy and materials from the 

environment. He postulates cultural consistency as a criterion. “A resource process 

which is consistent, by a people’s own modes of reasoning, with important themes or 

patterns in that people’s culture, is more likely to be valued, and hence adopted, than a

process which is inconsistent with those themes” (p. 30). Nevertheless, Firey also 

recognizes inconsistencies in any culture and that an activity or idea may be adopted even

though it is not consistent with patterns in that culture.

One of the arguments in anthropology is the debate over materialist versus idealist 

(phenomenological) approaches to explanation. The idealist argument (Kershaw 1978)

suggests that

individuals in a given cultural setting will make their decision to accept, reject, or 

ignore an innovation on the basis of their image and impression of the new artifact, 

a decision which will be guided by the beliefs held by themselves and those around

them. Thus it is probable that there are cross-cultural differences in environmental 

cognition which influence innovation, acceptance behavior, and migration (p. 10).

ldeas assume primacy in causing behaviors for this position.

41

Frameworks

and Methods
Some anthroplogists view the task of anthropology as trying to understand the world as

seen by the experiencing subjects. One of the key conceptual frameworks used to do this

is the distinction made between etics and emics. Etics refers to the attempt to establish

frameworks that can be applied to all cultures in order to insure comparability among 

cultures. The etic view accepts the categories defined by the investigator as the basis for

explanation of the behavior of individuals and groups. Theories used by Western 

science to explain the behavior of objects, individuals or groups would be etic. Emics

refers to the attempt to document behavior and ideas which are meaningful to the group

being studied. This approach uses terminology, classifications, and belief statements of

the people being studied. It attempts to document an insider’s understanding of culture.

These two approaches are not mutually exclusive ways of knowing. Rather, they 

complement each other, especially when it is kept in mind that behavior and intention do

not always coincide. For example, ideas may change to justify behavior and then become

guides for behavior. People who believe that trees in the Pacific Northwest are a crop --

an emic perspective -- will find forest practices acceptable that are different from those

who believe that trees are one part of a forest ecosystem -- another emic perspective.

Another approach is cultural materialism, a framework that would refer to the 

environmental, economic, demographic, and technological constraints on individual

acceptance and use of new ideas, what Harris (1991) calls infrastructure. ldeas or 

innovations in the infrastructural sector will be propagated if they increase the efficiency of

productive and reproductive processes, even if they clash with existing social structure or

with symbolic-ideational features of human social life. lnnovations in the social structure 

or symbolic sphere will not be accepted if they are incompatible with the infrastucture.

Harris does not suggest, however, that any change in the infrastructure will cause

changes in the structural or symbolic spheres, nor does he deny the possibility that

changes in the symbolic-ideational sphere can be studied without reference to the 

infrastructure. Changes may be externally caused or they “may also involve interacting

social, economic, demographic, and ideological shifts that are unrelated to external 

influences but represent the adaptive choices between alternative strategies in a 

preexisting repertoire of information” (Butzer 1988, p. 92). New ideas which are adopted

may be imposed or coerced or subsidized, but are not necessarily acceptable as Belsky

(1994) points out in her essay on the use of terracing as a measure against soil erosion in

Indonesia.

This essay takes an emic approach, but the reader needs to keep in mind that the 

acceptance of new ideas takes place in a world where productive processes which sustain

health and well being are important. A materialist like Harris recognizes that human 

beings see nature through filters of values, beliefs, knowledge, and purposes. He would

ask that the causal relationship running from infrastructural factors and values be included

in any study.

Anthropology is distinctive in its comparative approach, which is often implicit, and with its

emphasis on in-depth participant observation and interviewing in addition to methods more

widely used by other social sciences, e.g. questionnaires and experiments. Questions of

validity arise when the process of investigation depends so much on the nature of the

interactions of the anthropologist and the people being studied, a theme that has received

substantial attention in the post-modernist “writing ethnography” literature. Nevertheless,

many anthropologists suggest some ways to allow for replicability (Werner and Schoepfle

42
1987). Anthropologists and others argue that questionnaires sometimes may force 

choices which do not necessarily match the value categories of the respondent (Naroll

and Cohen 1973). By using qualitative techniques, the researcher is able to pursue trains

of thought and elicit information which may not be discovered by other techniques. People

edit their beliefs and may tell the questioners what people feel the questioners want to

hear. The anthropologist hopes to catch them in unguarded moments which may be at

times of conflict when true values and beliefs may appear (Turner and Bruner 1986).

Conversely, the mere act of questioning or reporting on the values toward or acceptability

of something may cause a conscious reflection by the people being questioned. Indeed, it

is easy to imagine a scenario where one person comments to another that they have been

asked about the acceptability of forest practices and find that they will talk to other people

who have had the same experience or to people who are curious about what the purpose

of such questions is. It is not much of a leap to imagine that these people will begin to

organize a common front toward such a volatile issue as forest practices. The interactions

of the researcher, the people being studied, and the larger society in which they live can

result in such a thing as an invented tradition, a tradition which tells the group of people

what they should value and find acceptable (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). People do 

not necessarily consciously manipulate the past, but may select elements from the past

that bolster their present beliefs. Culture is continually formed and reformed as people

gain new understandings of their group (Jackson 1995). The “customs and culture” 

arguments being made in counties such as Okanagon County, Washington, can be seen

in this light.

Different groups are not isolated from each other. Ideally, in cases where conflict exists,

the different positions held by different groups would be listened to and evaluated in a

respectful and considered manner. Human beings, however, may be less open when 

confronted with difference. The group may consciously try to maintain its own identity

when it is constantly confronted by others; each group has its conception of the other

group, however faulty. In defining itself in opposition to another group, the first may 

rigidity and try to eliminate internal differences in order to present a united front.

Acceptance or rejection occurs in real situations. Because different contexts may invoke

differential ordering of values, specifying contexts becomes the initial and important step

for understanding the acceptability of management practices. Consider the following two

scenarios. In the first, a region has been settled for a good number of years. Because of

remoteness from national markets, its timber has not been able to compete with timber

nearer the national market. Little has been cut except right next to or within the population

centers. Many wooded valleys with streams full of trout exist in close proximity to the

population which depends on high-value manufacturing for its livelihood. A proposal is

made to log one of the nearby valleys by using new forestry methods. In the second 

scenario, a region, environmentally similar to the region in the first scenario, has been

heavily logged. Few wooded valleys remain near the centers of population. A proposal to

log one of these few valleys by using new forestry methods is made. An individual with 

the same value structure in each of these situations is asked whether or not she would

find logging by this method acceptable. Assume that her highest value is amenity values

which serve her recreational needs. Her second ranking value is the preservation or 

creation of meaningful and well remunerated employment for all people needing jobs and

43

The Study

of a Case
that timber harvesting can supply those jobs, either directly or indirectly. In the first 

scenario it would not be a stretch of the imagination to predict that this individual would

support logging of one or even several of these valleys if she knew that doing so would

ensure a livelihood for everyone into the indefinite future. It also would be possible to 

predict that she might oppose logging in the second scenario because of the scarcity of

places which have the amenity values she desires. The importance of context is clear.

Specifying context can be done in two ways. Scientists from a variety of disciplines can

research the region or smaller landscapes and the drainage being proposed for logging

and report a large quantity of physical, biological, archeological, historical, economic and

social information. Whether this information is similar to the information which the people

of the region have remains problematic. The meaning of the valley to people will change

depending on the scarcity of the type of environment as well as the amount of information

which they have available and have absorbed. Since acceptability depends upon the

meanings construed by people, an emic analysis of context becomes necessary.

The symbolic meanings of a place loom large for a researcher interested in acceptability,

and play a role in what context means. Visiting a place with family as a youth, catching

one’s first fish, or having some other memorable experience make places special. 

Familiar drives to these places become disorienting if the landscape is drastically

changed. Conversely, places can take on meanings because of political conflicts. 

Circling the wagons, discussed earlier, is one possible reaction to conflicts over cutting of

trees. Both sides may decide that it is here that they are going to make their stand, 

creating a conflict which may take on a life of its own and cause further hardening of 

positions in the face of threats.

A second step in understanding the acceptability of management practices is to 

investigate people’s values. Since values may at least be ranked as to relative 

importance, the researcher needs to be able to uncover this ranking. Even better would 

be to be able to use an interval scale to rank values. By having interval data on values, it

would be possible to see how much more or less important each of the values is in 

comparison with all other values. It is questionable whether this precision of data is 

possible to extract easily, because values and their relative rankings may not be that 

precisely mapped in people’s minds. Indeed, it is an open question whether people can

rationally assess their hierarchy of values (Schwartz 1994). But, by having information on

values, it may be possible to find out what tradeoffs people are willing to make or whether

they are willing to make them at all.

A third step should be an investigation of the level of knowledge that people have about

the practices and their understanding of the impacts of the project being proposed. The

researcher should be able to gather information about descriptions, classifications, and

theories which people have about the practices. Local inhabitants’ experience of forest

ecological history will shape their values and what they feel to be valid claims to forested

land. Policies shaped outside this perspective will not be considered valid as Fairhead 

and Leach (1994) demonstrate for West Africa. Their knowledge of consequences, 

including probabilities of different outcomes, will play a large role in determining the

acceptability of the proposed practices. Knowing the sources of people’s information 

about practices is part of this factor.

44
A fourth and related step to study is the attribution of purpose for the proposed practices.

Is it seen as a means to get more timber? As a Trojan Horse for the timber industry? Or 

is it seen as a form of limiting production of timber and of wasting perfectly good wood?

Some may view “new forestry” as a way of imitating natural disturbances in the forest or

as a way to protect wildlife. lmportant in deciding which of these positions people will take

is the nature of the advocate. Distrust of the proponents because of previous experience

or a generalized antipathy toward outside authority become salient issues for acceptance

or rejection of new practices.

The last important step needed is to research the character of the potential acceptor.

Especially important is the reference group(s) to which people belong or the people with

whom they identify. Understanding individual life experiences can help in discovering how

people have arrived at their positions of acceptance or rejection.

To investigate context, values, knowledge, and individual characteristics requires both 

participant observation and in-depth interviewing and survey research. Qualitatively 

gathered information allows for the exploration of nuances in meanings which people 

construe. lnformation gathered in this phase can be used in the construction of 

questionnaires meaningful to respondents. By randomly sampling the relevant population,

distribution of values and meanings can be ascertained. For an application see Hansis 

(1995).

Having carried out all these steps does not guarantee that the manager will be able to

predict the acceptability of a new idea or practice to various individuals and groups. As

meaningful participation becomes a stronger value, managers need to realize that 

devising practices that please the largest number of people may still not be acceptable if

these people have not had a voice in devising and analyzing them.

Anyinam, Charles. 1987. Availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability: four 

attributes of African ethno-medicine. Social Science and Medicine. 25(7): 803-811.

Barnett, Homer G. 1953. Innovation: the basis of culture change. New York: McGraw Hill. 

462 p.

Barth, Frederick 1987. Cosmologies in the making. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press. 99 p.

Belsky, Jill. 1994. Soil conservation and poverty: lessons from Indonesia. Society and 

Natural Resources. 7(5): 429-443.

Blaut, James M. 1987. Diffusionism: a uniformitarian critique. Annals of the Association of 

American Geographers. 77(2): 30-47.

Brumfiel, Elizabeth M. 1992. Distinguished lecture in archeology: breaking and entering 

the ecosystem -- gender, class, and faction steal the show. American Anthropologist.

94(3): 551-562.

45

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47
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48
Kuentzel, Walter F. 1996. Socially acceptable forestry: mediating a compromise or 

orchestrating the agenda? In: Brunson, Mark W.; Kruger, Linda E.; Tyler, Catherine B.;

Schroeder, Susan A., tech. eds. Defining social acceptability in ecosystem 

management: a workshop proceedings; 1992 June 23-2S Kelso, WA. Gen. Tech. Rep.

PNW-GTR-369. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific

Northwest Research Station: 49-63.

Rather than being a process based on consensus, natural resource policy is shaped by

continuous conflict, with players characterized by different levels of power and influence.

lnstead of being a neutral mediator in the midst of this arena of conflict, the U.S. Forest

Service tends to influence popular definitions about forest management, thereby 

maintaining its own power. Sociological theories, such as consensus-conflict and theories

of state and power, are examined as a way to understand such imbalances of power and

their resultant influence on forest policy.

Keywords: Ecosystem management, resource policy, social values, stakeholders, 

consensus-conflict framework, social structure, public discourse.

The U.S. Forest Service’s ecosystem management initiative is often framed as the “middle

ground” between the two extremes of “the wider industry-environmentalist conflict”

(Drushka 1990). Writers often use a battleground metaphor to characterize this conflict

(Harbison 19921). Salwasser (1990) says forest managers are “caught in the crossfire

between competing interests.” Ecosystem management researchers point to fundamental

shifts in the values of society as the cause of this emergent conflict over the future of the

nation’s forests (Brooks and Grant 1992, Salwasser 1990, Williams 19912). The task of

WALTER F. KUENTZEL is a sociologist and assistant professor in the Recreation Management Program at the

University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, 05405.

1 Harbison, J.S. 1992. New Perspectives in the Ouachita National Forest. Paper presented at the Fourth North

American Symposium on Society and Resource Management. Madison, WI. May 1992. On file with the author.

2 Williams, G.W. 1991. New Perspective, new forestry, or biological diversity: how did we get here? Paper 

presented to the Bureau of Land Management’s Biological Diversity/Silviculture Workshop. Gleneden Beach, OR.

May 1991. On file with the author.

49

Abstract

lntroduction

Socially Acceptable Forestry: Mediating a Compromise 

or Orchestrating the Agenda?

Walter F. Kuentzel
forest managers in this escalating conflict is to act “as a mediator between society and the

physical environment” (Bonnicksen 1991, p. 10), or to be stewards of the common

ground” (Salwasser 1990, p. 34). The problem for managers is to “help society select an

optimum mix of values’ (Norris 1990, p. 1) that balances the competing interests of 

society. This institutional self-perception assumes that public policy is the product of 

pluralistic compromise where every individual has equal opportunity for input into public

discourse. In this social arena, orderly policymaking requires a public agent (i.e. the

Forest Service) to mediate divergent claims, and to fashion a compromise. Thus, the

Forest Service seeks to forge a socially acceptable forestry in the middle ground between

competing interests who bring different social values into the conflict.

I argue, however, that this middle ground metaphor is an inadequate way to think about

the social controversy that surrounds contemporary use of the nation’s forest lands. The

prevailing view (Drushka 1990, Salwasser 1990) thinks of policy as a consensus-making

process. I argue, however, that policy is forged in ongoing conflict. Forest policy reflects

how people mobilize their natural resource ideologies, which are constantly challenged,

into institutional routines and practices that reflect a particular view of how forests ought to

be managed (Gramsci t 1971, Thompson 1990). Power in this arena of conflict is never

even. Different interests in a debate have differential access to the policymaking process

(Block 1987, Culhane 1981, Galanter 1974). Further, the Forest Service is not a neutral

mediator of compromise, but is one proactive player in this arena of conflict. It exerts an

agenda onto public discourse that reflects its institutional impetus to maintain public 

legitimacy and organizational power. Therefore, the alternate perspective presented here

focuses on how ideological claims successfully frame societal definitions and norms about

forest management, and therefore systematically exclude the consideration of competing

policy options.

The prevailing view in the Forest Service and forestry profession sees policy as the 

outcome of a compromised consensus. The alternate view I present here sees policy as

the outcome of conflict. The consensus-conflict issue was a central issue of debate in

sociological theory during the 1960s. Bernard’s (1983) analysis of this debate can provide

an orienting framework for thinking about the Forest Service’s role in current social

controversies, and for thinking about socially acceptable forest management practices. It

also draw parallels between Bernard’s framework and theories of the state (Block 1987)

and theories of power (Stone 1980) to make arguments against pluralist assumptions

about agency neutrality and equal access to the policymaking process.

The consensus-conflict debate asked if social order is the product of an inherent drive

toward association and cooperation, or the outcome of competitive power relationships

achieved through ongoing episodes of social crisis and conflict. Bernard’s (1983) analysis

of the consensus-conflict debate cross-tabulates this debate into four categories with one

axis representing assumptions about contemporary societies and the other representing

assumptions about human nature (figure 1). The resultant four types of theories include

conservative consensus theories, sociological consensus theories, radical conflict 

theories, and sociological conflict theories.

Conservative consensus theories describe human nature as inherently cooperative, 

and societies as inherently associational. The problem of social order for these theories 

is a logistical one of how to rationally manage human association such that the individual’s

50

The

ConsensusConflict

Debate

Conservative

Consensus

Theories
interests correspond to the public interest. These theories assume that social order must

be centrally managed by the upper class (Aristotle), by the “intellectual priesthood”

(Comte), or by the laws of government (Locke). The result is a rationally managed social

order that seeks to maximize the benefits that accrue to a society. Conflict, from this 

perspective, is viewed as deviant. Thus, the problem of social order asks how to minimize

conflict by bringing the deviant back into the associational fold through institutional law or

appeals to reason and knowledge made by the intellectual elite.

Sociological consensus theories maintain that individuals are inherently driven by selfinterest, but have enough rationality to recognize the need for cooperative association 

that makes individual action accountable to the good of a wider society. Therefore, out 

of a common interest in self-protection, people come together to form governments that

will protect society from unrestrained individual self-indulgence. More recent sociological

elaborations of this “social contract” describe the concept of social norms and values as

shared standards of conduct that hold societies together. Durkheim (1982) used the

51

Sociological

Consensus 

Theories

Figure 1 - Bernard’s (1983) analysis of the consensus-conflict debate.
concept of a social norm as the standard of behavior for people occupying positions in a

progressively elaborate and complex division of labor. Parsons (1971) described the 

concept of social values as mechanisms that are functional for maintaining social order

and social consensus. From the sociological consensus perspective, conflict is incipient in

human nature, and the problem of social order is how to minimize conflict through shared

evaluative standards.

The radical conflict theories are most closely aligned with neo-Marxist theories of society.

This perspective asserts that people naturally seek to live in harmonious relationships with

one another. Yet the structure of societies, and in the modern/contemporary case, the

structure of capitalism, situates people in unequal relationships with one another. This

approach focuses on the economic or material base of society and asserts that the drive

toward capitalistic accumulation stratifies society and places owners and wage laborers in

an adversarial position. From this perspective, class conflict characterizes society, and

the problem of social order is how to establish a more equitable economic system that 

facilitates personal expression and minimizes adversarial human relationships.

Finally, the sociological conflict theories maintain that conflict among people is the

inevitable motor of history. Societies remain stable when people successfully frame the

public agenda and fashion institutions that “normalize” their accounts in public discourse.

The legitimacy of these institutions is challenged by specific historical events that can lead

to charismatically led revolutions, social movements, or institutional overhauls. This 

perspective maintains the struggle for dominance found in the radical conflict theories, but

rejects the value-judgment that a given social order (e.g. capitalism) is bad and must give

way to a new and better system. instead the sociological conflict perspective asserts that

social order results from the effective mobilization of power through the control of 

ideological meaning. A society reproduces itself when those in power successfully 

manage public discourse. Thus, from this perspective, social conflict is a given, and 

social order is founded on power mobilized in ideological meaning, and naturalized as the

“way things ought to be.”

I argue that the Forest Service’s thinking about its own position in the policy arena and

about ecosystem management in particular falls almost exclusively in the two consensus

traditions. The conservative consensus tradition in the Forest Service and forestry 

profession represents a top-down response to present-day controversies. This 

perspective observes that the public lacks consensus about forest management, and

about what benefits forests should provide. This lack of consensus is due to public 

misperception, misunderstanding, and confused thinking about forestry and timber 

management (Madden 1990). Thus, the public needs education from the forestry 

profession because there is a gulf between public perception and empirical reality (Magill

1991). Social acceptability follows from the profession’s persuasive appeals 

(McQuire 1968, Petty and Cacioppo 1986) to the public about best-management-practices

that are grounded in empirical research.

This does not mean that the conservative consensus position in the forestry profession is

an elitist argument for forest management. The centerpiece of ecosystem management

forestry is its effort to incorporate divergent social values into management practices. The

conservative consensus tradition, however, tends to objectify the notion of social values

within the framework of rational scientific management. Social values from this 

perspective refer to valued objects such as commodity values, amenity values, ecological

52

Radical

Conflict

Theories

Sociological

Conflict Theories

Consensus vs.

Conflict in

Ecosystem

Management

Forestry
values, and public use values (Stankey and Clark 1991)3. These objectified values are the

end state toward the realization of desired outcomes and social benefits (Driver and 

others 1991). Thus, the forestry profession seeks to quantify these values and thereby

maximize the provision of benefits to society.

The sociological consensus position in the forestry profession corresponds to the crossfire

or battleground metaphor (Salwasser 1990). This perspective emphasizes that social 

values, in the sociological sense, have moved off center of forestry practices. Social 

values that favored economic growth, rural community development, hard work, and work

in the out-of-doors helped perpetuate a long history of “Old Forestry” practices. These

kinds of values were functional for social order in that they provided a legitimating 

mechanism that maintained the prevailing harvest procedures and institutions that 

supported them (Parsons 1971). The shifting social values of society, that come from a

progressively more urban and post-industrial population and labor force, do not support

the old way of doing forestry. Thus, the forestry profession in the 1980s and 1990s is

scrambling to square itself with a new mix of social values. Ecosystem management in 

the Forest Service, from the sociological consensus perspective, is seeking the middle

ground between shifting social values. Social acceptability is achieved by accommodating

the optimum mix of social values. This consensus provides the agency and the 

profession a gauge for the most desirable forestry practices and orientations, and in turn,

re-legitimates the profession’s function in society.

These two consensus positions dominate the ecosystem management literature, and may

frame the way the Forest Service thinks about its own role in society. From the 

conservative consensus perspective, foresters wonder why they are no longer agents of

public trust, carrying out their jobs in a scientifically grounded way, but are instead

besieged by litigation, public relations battles, and growing local controversies. From the

sociological consensus perspective, foresters attempt to extract themselves from the 

center of controversy, casting themselves as mediators of conflict waged in the public

arena, but then wonder why their policies of compromise often feed the flames of 

controversy rather than extinguish them. Consequently, the question of social 

acceptability is asked from a sociological consensus perspective. What forest 

management strategies will accommodate the growing diversity of natural resource values

evident in contemporary society?

The conflict perspective, on the other hand, suggests that public controversy of various

magnitudes has always characterized the Forest Service’s policymaking process.

Controversy and social tension are necessary and sufficient conditions for policy 

generation. A radical conflict analysis would depict Forest Service policymaking as the 

outcome of class conflict. Kolko (1963) argues that Forest Service policy during the

Pinchot years favored large, wealthy timber interests over small local timber interests. 

The I.W.W. movement in the 1910s and 1920s was a labor movement that used socialist

rhetoric to challenge the foundations of the timber production process (Todes 1931).

Finally, the equity movement in the U.S. Forest Service during the 1930s (West 1982) 

was a struggle between large cattle interests supplying beef to midwestern markets, and

3 This differs from sociological definitions of social values, which refer to values as stable beliefs used as standards

of evaluation (Rokeach 1970) or as “criteria of desirability” (Williams 1979).

53
small scale grazers seeking subsistence from western National Forests. The radical 

conflict perspective asserts that the economic structure of society maintains inherent

inequalities between different social groups. This inequity means those who contribute

more to society’s economic input will have more influence on the disposition of its surplus.

Consequently, forest policy exhibits an institutional inertia that favors wealth. Yet forest

policy is the outcome of conflict when outside wealth and power are imposed on local (or

rural) social structures.

More importantly, the conflict perspective would maintain that policies like ecosystem 

management are not compromised solutions that attempt to integrate multiple social 

values and interests. Rather, policies result from the ongoing tension between the inertia

of institutional power and routine, and counter-efforts to mobilize power in alternate 

meanings and ideologies. From the sociological conflict perspective, policy statements 

are statements of imperative reflecting a “normalized” view of the world that is logically 

consistent and nonproblematic in everyday life. So when a person says that “we’ve got to

quantify society’s values,” they implicitly assume an empirical view of the world that relies

on mathematical modeling of subjective phenomena, which should then influence 

decisionmaking. This normalized view guides the institutional practices and social 

traditions that reflect the “way things ought to be.” Policy shifts constantly because people

challenge established statements of imperative, and successfully redefine or reframe an

issue of public contention. From this perspective, policy is not a compromise of multiple

viewpoints, but is a function of who can formulate the most compelling story about some

phenomenon, and then mobilize people and institutions behind that account.

A sociological conflict analysis of the Forest Service would say that the agency is 

struggling to define how forestry in the 1990s ought to be, in order to reassert its 

institutional purpose and legitimacy. “Traditional” foresters cling to the even-aged, single

species approach to silviculture as the most efficient way to provide forest products, while

a new generation of foresters press for ecosystem management to ensure a sustainable

resource. Meanwhile, others (Atkinson 1990) level charges of “silvicultural correctness” at

the ecosystem management policy, saying the policy has diluted the agency’s purpose

and effectiveness. Consequently, the Forest Service is not building policy by mediating

divergent claims, but is instead influencing policy in its efforts to “normalize” its definition

of forestry for the 1990s.

As such the Forest Service is not a neutral mediator of divergent social values. Rather, it

is one stakeholder that actively tries to influence public discourse in a way that favors its

institutional perpetuation. Further, the “playing field” of controversy is never level. Those

who most successfully frame the agenda determine what questions are relevant and

therefore who can best address them. Thus, access to the policymaking process is never

equal because the way questions become relevant determines who becomes interested

and how they bring resources to bear on the issue. From this conflict perspective, the

Forest Service is not engineering a socially acceptable forestry. Instead, it is a participant

in contemporary conflict that forges new ways of thinking about humans and forests, and

creates new ways that people organize themselves around the use of natural resources.

Therefore, from a conflict perspective, a socially acceptable forest management policy

implies an uncontested policy. This does not mean that the policy is a good policy. It 

simply means that either structural forces preclude access by certain people to the policy54
making process, or oppositional groups have been unable to articulate a coherent 

alternative to the dominant ideology embodied in the extant institutions and social 

practices. Thus, the consensus analysis asks how to achieve a socially acceptable forest

management policy, while the conflict analysis asks who is able to dictate forest policy,

and how? To understand this question of access to, and influence of policy, two issues

must be analyzed more closely. First, what is the role of the Forest Service as an agent 

of the state, and second, why do people have unequal access to the policymaking

process? This paper therefore extends Bernard’s (1983) consensus-conflict framework,

drawing parallels between theories of the state and theories of power to address these

issues more carefully.

The middle-ground perspective of the Forest Service, and the forestry profession by 

definition, assumes that it acts as an impartial mediator of social disputes. It

achieves compromise by facilitating policy that relies on basic science and broad

social input. Conflict approaches to state theory, however, maintain that resource

management agencies are not impartial providers of public goods, and neutral 

mediators of resource allocation debates. State theory in the radical consensus 

perspective says that the state is structurally predisposed to favor the interests of the

wealthy or upper classes. State theory in the sociological consensus perspective says 

that the state is but one player in an environment of conflict. The state’s actions are 

proactive attempts to influence the public agenda so as to maintain institutional authority

and legitimacy. Consequently, the state acts within its own ideological framework and

mobilizes its resources to “normalize” its accounts in public discourse. The following 

sections situate the Forest Service’s self-perception about its role as a state agent in the

context of state theory (Block 1987), and consensus vs. conflict perspectives of the state

(figure 1).

The state in the conservative consensus position functions as a trust to insure the 

collective public good. This approach asserts that each person has an equal claim 

to the society’s benefits, and an equal voice in their allocation. The state functions as the

coordinating unit to rationally maximize benefits, and to ensure their equitable distribution.

Where consensus is in question, the state acts as the final arbiter making allocation 

decisions based on reasoned and impartial judgments. Thus, decisionmaking is 

autocratically centralized as the state serves as the proxy for individual interests. The 

ideology and rhetoric of the Progressive Conservation Movement was closely aligned with

this democratic individualist theory of the state. Writers such as Hays (1959), Pinchot

(1947), and Van Hise (1910) firmly believed that the role of the state was to provide 

rational scientific management of natural resources that provided the greatest good for the

greatest number and for the longest time. For these writers, science and centralized state

power offered the best prescriptions for resource management.

The state in sociological consensus theories serves a regulatory function that mediates

between conflicting factions in a society. Here, state theory embraces the pluralist 

tradition that asserts different interest groups in society mobilize their collective resources

to achieve outcomes that favor their aims. The crossfire metaphor falls squarely in this 

tradition. The Forest Service, as an agent of the state, seeks to provide an orderly 

allocation of resources to the public as a whole. They are constrained by groups with

widely varying aims. One group wants to maximize wood fiber production, another wants

to enhance wildlife, and still another wants off-road vehicle (ORV) access. The state must

55

The U.S.

Forest

Service

as a State

Agent

Democratic 

lndividualism

Pluralism
facilitate a policy compromise that more or less satisfies the demands of these multiple

constituencies. From this perspective, the state agency does not create public policy.

Rather, the state facilitates a compromised solution to divergent public demand. This 

pluralist perspective, by virtue of the ecosystem management rhetoric, appears to be the

predominant position in the Forest Service today. In addition, the tension between “Old

Forestry” and “New Forestry” practices may reflect the inability of the old guard to shed its

self-prescribed role as the scientific benefactor of public benefits from the conservative

consensus position, and to take on the role of mediator of pluralistic public demand.

The state in radical consensus theories is rooted in class relations. The instrumentalist

theory of state proposed by Miliband (1969) takes a neo-marxist approach by asserting

that the state serves to manage the economic affairs of the upper class. Policymaking

resides in the hands of the capitalist class, who then use the state as the mechanism to

reproduce conditions that maintain their wealth. The “capture” thesis (Culhane 1981, 

Foss 1960, West 1982) is illustrative of instrumental state theory. This perspective argues

that state agencies can become controlled by public interests with a critical stake in how a

resource is allocated. Policy decisions are only made with direct influence and approval of

that influence. These policies become solidified in the institutional structure of the agency

and access to the benefits offered by the agency becomes limited.

Structuralist theories of the state (Gold and others 1975, Poulantzas 1969) reject the 

conspiracy assumptions of instrumentalist theories that assume the upper classes play an

active hand in government policy. Instead, state officials endorse policy actions that favor

wealthy interests that are revenue generating, and neglect lower class interests that are

service demanding and drain state revenues (Poulantzas 1969). The “cooptation” thesis

(Selznick 1949) illustrates structuralist state theory. State agencies seek to solidify their

position by soliciting the input of influential individuals and groups within local jurisdictions.

In the interest of survival, the agency willingly consents to interest group dictates, and 

orients its policy toward the needs of the powerful.

State-centered theories (Block 1987) argue that wealthy interests are not passive 

benefactors of state efforts at self-perpetuation. Instead, wealthy interests and labor 

interests actively bolster the power of the state. This perspective maintains that

capitalism, if left to free market forces, is inadequate for organizing a stable society,

because the profit motive yields chronic cycles of overproduction, followed by product

devaluation, unemployment, and decreased product demand. Thus, capitalism seeks to

rationalize the market by promoting a protective regulatory state that restrains market 

freedom. Progressive era historians have shown how early 20th century Forest Service

policies favored wealthy timber interests by moderating market fluctuations in the industry,

thereby reducing the risk of large scale capital investment (Robbins 1982). Labor also

contributes to expanding state power by relying on an agency to guarantee human 

working conditions, minimum wages, and job retraining. Thus, labor relies on the state to

participate in the flow of capital investments that will sustain the conditions of labor, for

example, through the subsidization of timber sales.

56

Instrumentalist/

Structuralist/

State-Centered
The sociological conflict perspective sheds the mediator and class-based assumptions

about the state. Instead, the state actively participates in the arena of conflict, pressing its

agenda into public discourse and positioning itself to sustain its legitimacy and authority.

Thus, the state is only one actor in a broader constellation of players that might include

various status groups, labor organizations, business sector interests, civic organizations,

or other state agencies. The dominant positions articulated in a conflict are the ones that

“ring a responsive chord,” or successfully frame public “common sense” about an issue.

Thus, policy is influenced by those who most effectively frame a view of the world that

translates societal perceptions in the most compelling way. The Forest Service, from this

perspective, has proactively moved to reframe its natural resource ideologies and, at the

same time, reframe the account of its institutional mission. In a time when the Forest

Service felt it was losing control of the forests in the NEPA and NFMA planning (and 

litigation) process, forces within the Forest Service, such as the Association of Forest

Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (AFSEE) were able to mobilize an approach

to ecosystem management (Williams 19912, Salwasser 19924)within the New

Perspectives initiative. Ecosystem management can be seen as an effort by the Forest

Service to expand, or at least maintain, its authority in an environment of increasing 

outside public pressure and conflict. The Forest Service’s desire to understand the 

mechanisms of “social acceptability” is also a proactive state effort to expand, or at least

maintain, its authority in an environment of increasing outside public pressure and conflict.

The Forest Service’s desire to understand the mechanisms of “social acceptability” is also

a proactive state effort to expand, or maintain, its legitimacy by incorporating a wider array

of social values in its management planning. In either case, these actions by the Forest

Service embody ideological claims about how natural resources “ought to be” managed.

These claims are embedded in conflict, and designed to perpetuate state institutions that

operate in an environment that constantly changes.

The Forest Service’s consensus perspective assumes that the public can have equal

access to the policymaking and decisionmaking processes of a society. This assumption

understands the concept of power in a rather benign way. A “rational” society delegates

authority to a centralized body that arbitrates disputes and makes the final decision.

Power is vested in social institutions that must balance divergent public needs and

demands. To maintain their legitimacy, these institutions must wield power in good faith,

seeking to maximize social benefits at minimal cost. Thus, power from the consensus 

perspective enables a more equitable distribution of societal benefits, and ensures a more

orderly functioning of a society. The conflict perspective, on the other hand, 

conceptualizes power as a constantly contested dynamic. Power is not endowed by a

4 Salwasser, H. 1992. Ecosystem management: a new perspective for National Forests and Grasslands. Paper 

presented at the University of Wisconsin. Madison, May 14, 1992. On file with the author.

57

Legitimacy 

and the State

Power and the

U.S. Forest

Service
social contract, but instead is the outcome of a competitive process where different 

stakeholders vie for social influence. People contest power through argumentation and

public discourse. People achieve power by framing their discourse in the most socially

compelling way. They then reproduce power through institutions that reflect a certain 

societal perspective. Consequently, people sympathetic to the prevailing view have

greater access to the policymaking process, and those who challenge the prevailing view

must fashion accounts that effectively reframe the world ways that can mobilize action. 

To illustrate these divergent approaches to power and access to policy, the following 

sections parallel Stone’s (1980) analysis of power and Bernard’s (1983) consensus/conflict

framework (figure 1).

The approach to power within the conservative consensus tradition is what Stone (1980)

calls decisional power. This form of power derives from the classic Weberian description,

of power where A has power over B when A gets B to do something that he or she 

otherwise would not do. Thus, an individual or group exerts power with the tools of 

persuasion, either verbal, physical, legal, or emotional. This consensus perspective casts

the Forest Service in the role of information broker. It assumes the public has incomplete

information about resource management issues and therefore needs education to make

rational policy judgments. From this perspective, the Forest Service attempts to solve 

public disputes over forest management by better educating the public about forestry

practices. The agency exerts power using technical knowledge, and what Weiss (1983)

calls the shared myth of science.

In the sociological consensus tradition, power emanates from a normative structure within

a society. In what Stone (1980) calls anticipated reaction, A holds power over B when B’s

actions are influenced by how he or she thinks A will react. The force of power lies in the

expectations of others, and not in some purposive calculated action by those with power.

An individual or group exerts power unintentionally (Bachrach and Baratz 1970) over 

others through sanctions embedded in the structure of society. From this consensus 

perspective, the Forest Service’s power is an institutional power bestowed on it by the

public. Thus, groups in society who make claims on the benefits offered by the National

Forests must act in reference to the institutional procedures and policies of the agency.

New Forestry, from this perspective, can be viewed as a good-faith effort by the Forest

Service to solidify its power in an environment of shifting social values. The agency’s 

unintentional form of power is weakened when norms and values diverge, and certain

groups no longer rely on established institutions to define and manage public policy. The

Forest Service, perceiving this shift in public values, seeks resource policies that can

accommodate the developing interests of multiple groups. This perpetuates its position as

final arbiter in allocation debates, and ensures that interest groups will continue to act with

reference to agency policy in the claims they make on forest lands.

Theories of power in the conflict tradition argue that power is achieved through struggle

that thereby engenders inequity. Power from the radical conflict perspective relates to

what Stone (1980) calls nondecisionmaking power. Nondecisional power means that A

has power over B when A can manage the public agenda such that B does not think of

58

lnformation

Broker

Anticipated

Reaction

Nondecision

Making
alternate agendas or courses of action (Crenson 1971). The class-based assumption of

the radical conflict perspective asserts that wealth controls the social agenda by solidifying

the economic structure of a society. Consequently, the laboring class participates in the

image of economic progress and is ostensibly content with its social position and life

chances. Shifts in power occur when the working class becomes dissatisfied with its 

social position and perceived potential.

In the early years of the Forest Service, the large timber and railroad companies actively

supported Pinchot’s conservation agenda as a means to stabilize fluctuations in the timber

market and solidify market conditions. This coalition between the federal government and

wealthy timber companies effectively established the rules of the game in the timber

industry, limiting the ability of smaller timber operators to compete. The I. W. W. 

movement in the 1910s and 1920s was a counter-struggle by labor in the timber industry

for improved hours, job security, and disability compensation (Todes 1931). The I. W. W.

used a socialist rhetoric to challenge the structure of labor compensation, and thereby

challenge the corporate/government power coalition.

Power struggles from a sociological conflict perspective are not restricted to class-based

interests. Instead, power resides with the individual or group best able to capture the

imagination of a broad social constituency, and who can then implement an institutional

organization that embodies the ideals, values, and beliefs of that constituency. Change

occurs when groups unsatisfied with the status quo effectively “mobilize meaning in the

service of power” (Thompson 1990). That is, power is derived from the ideologies that

commit people to certain beliefs, attitudes, and courses of action. These ideologies then

have material consequences (Althusser 1971) in the way they are made concrete in the

institutions and laws (i.e, the social systems) that support that ideological meaning.

The equity movement within the Forest Service’s grazing policy of the 1930s (West 1982)

illustrates this form of systemic power. The equity movement represented a policy

designed to limit the control that large Western stockmen had on Forest Service grazing

permits during the early 1900s (West 1982). The policy sought to limit the size and 

duration of grazing leases to accommodate homesteaders with small livestock holdings hit

hardest by the depression. Thus, the equity movement embraced the ideology of 

homesteading and depicted the Western Stockman’s Association as the enemy; and 

institutionalized a policy in the Forest Service that limited the Association’s power. In the

late 1930s, however, the Forest Service backed off its equity policy because it wanted the

stockmen’s support in a threat to transfer the agency from the Department of Agriculture

to the Department of lnterior (West 1982). In this latter case, the Forest Service reembraced its multiple-use conservation ideology to stem the threat of transfer.

The purpose of this analysis has been to critique the way the U.S. Forest Service and the

forestry profession think about their role in the policymaking process. By elaborating the

consensus-conflict framework to draw parallels with state theory and theories of power,

this paper suggests that the Forest Service’s self-described “stewards of the common

ground” label is inadequate. This elaboration shows that the Forest Service is not a 

neutral mediator seeking compromise between competing factions in the public sector.

59

Systemic

Conclusion
Rather, the Forest Service in general, and ecosystem management in particular, is

embroiled in the middle of a controversy that is seeking to crystallize some revised version

of how forestry for the 1990s ought to be, in the historical context of an emerging postindustrial society. In other words, the Forest Service and the forestry profession take an

active role in pressing forth their own agenda into the public debate, and are far from

disinterested players. From this perspective, the Forest Service cannot be neutral

because its own agenda and its own sense of self-justification is at stake. Thus, the

Forest Service will mobilize its own power and resources in a highly fractionalized 

environment of conflict to refine and nourish its vision of forestry for the 1990s. 

Ecosysfem management helps legitimate the Forest Service by engaging in an emerging

ideology. At the same time, its shifting emphasis feeds the flames of controversy.

The question of social acceptability is asked from a “middle ground” perspective, and may

not be exactly the best question for the forestry profession. From the consensus 

perspective, social acceptability is forged in a “marketplace of competing ideas” (figure 1).

This perspective uses prescriptive persuasion to bring the public back in line with the

forestry profession’s scientific rationales. This social engineering strategy seeks to 

develop methods of persuasive appeal (Manfredo and Bright 1991) that have the desired

effect. The sociological consensus position uses effective leadership to facilitate social

compromise in the form of emergent norms or value clarification. It then seeks to bring 

the forestry profession in line with this social compromise. Social acceptability comes 

from concession, followed by policymaking that maximizes benefits to the greatest 

number of people. This strategy seeks to first quantify divergent social values, and then

actively involve the public in Delphi processes, focus group sessions, workshops, and

other less formal input mechanisms.

Social acceptability within a conflict approach lacks the intentionality of the consensus

approach, and is instead the product of broader structural forces. The radical conflict 

position asserts that the agency sustains a class-based interest that seeks to extend its

own authority by favoring the interests of the wealthy. Social acceptability is defined in a

negative sense as the acquiescence to an economic structure that sustains inequitable

relations as the “way things ought to be.” The sociological conflict position asserts that

social acceptability is the product of ideological mobilization, and that the Forest Service

and forestry profession are just one interest among many seeking to promote their 

agendas within public discourse. Thus, social acceptability is achieved in a historically

meaningful context (e.g., Pinchot’s achievements during the Progressive era) when 

someone can mobilize mass support behind an account of what forest management

should be, at the expense of alternate accounts. In this context, however, power is 

necessarily unequal and always contested, and the socially acceptable way of doing is

constantly changing.

The public has mobilized an effective challenge to the efficiency-driven methods of 

the even-aged, single-species timber production process. This analysis suggests that

instead of formulating an ecosystem management compromise and then engineering

social acceptability among competing forces, the forestry profession may first need to 

analyze more carefully its own role in the policymaking process. The Forest Service must

60

Social Acceptability 

Ecosystem

Management

in the 1990s?
address such questions as the balance of power in local conflict situations, its own access

to decisionmaking power, its relationship to economic equity, its power of exclusion from

the allocation process, its institutional inertia that constrains responsive action to local

problems, the forces that influence its agenda, its own agency values, its structural ties to

public interests, how these ties legitimate its own existence, and the ideologies that frame

the agency and professional agenda. Forestry of the 1990s may turn not so much on the

Forest Service’s ability to facilitate social acceptability of its practices a.e. selfjustification), but more on a formal understanding of the public challenge to timber 

production, and consequently of the agency’s predicament and chances within the broader

context of social structure and public discourse.

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63
This page is intentionally left blank.

64
Rogers, Katrina. 1996. The public, the forest, and the U.S. Forest Service: 

understanding attitudes towards ecosystem management. In: Brunson, Mark W.; 

Kruger, Linda E.; Tyler, Catherine B.; Schroeder, Susan A., tech. eds. Defining social

acceptability in ecosystem management: a workshop proceedings; 1992 June 23-25;

Kelso, WA. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-369. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of

Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station: 65-76.

An examination of past attitudes towards forests and forestry reveals the complexity and

depth of emotive valuation that is a part of American political culture. This evaluation of

forests can be seen in today’s highly emotional public debate. With the historical 

perspective established, a discussion of some methods that have been used to determine

how the public values the nonuse or intrinsic qualities of various elements in nature is

useful and appropriate. Finally, a discussion is undertaken of methodologies and 

instruments that might be used to conduct a formal assessment of public attitudes toward

ecosystem management practices. With this information, public resource managers will 

be better prepared to 1) determine the acceptability of ecosystem management practices

to American society, 2) develop appropriate public education and awareness programs, 3)

improve overall communications among interested and involved parties, 4) gather more

input into their own decisionmaking process, and 5) anticipate whatever public response

may greet their management decisions.

Keywords: Ecosystem management, public attitudes, values, contingent valuation,

historical attitudes, acceptability.

Since the National Environmental Policy Act (1970) was passed in 1969, the 

relationship between public land managers and their constituents has been altered. Title I

of NEPA required all federal agencies to analyze the environmental impacts of their

actions and to submit those analyses for public review, thereby creating new means of

access and new political strategies for interest groups (Lester 1989). The requirements 

for public review have been used successfully by environmental and citizens’ groups to

influence the decisionmaking process. NEPA’s principles were reaffirmed specifically in

regards to the Forest Service with the passage of the National Forest Management Act of

KATRlNA ROGERS is director of the High West Center for Environmental Policy Studies at Flagstaff, Ariz., and 

currently teaches at the American Graduate School of lnternational Management at Geneva, Switzerland.

65

Abstract

lntroduction

The Public, the Forest, and the U.S. Forest Service: 

Understanding Attitudes Towards Ecosystem Management

Katrina Rogers
1976 (1982), which also requires public involvement in agency planning and 

decisionmaking. These procedures represented an important change for the Forest

Service which, since its founding at the end of the nineteenth century, had seldom 

considered citizen input and, as a matter of procedural policy, never sought it. New public

awareness and concern about natural resources and their utilization placed resource 

managers under the constant scrutiny of a skeptical and often confrontational public. the

spectrum of interested participants has expanded significantly, and managers today find

that the views and opinions of an increasing number of groups and individuals have

become important components of the decisionmaking process.

The adoption by the Forest Service and other agencies of ecosystem management

reflects this change in the agency. Forests are now to be evaluated not only as sources 

of timber but also as wildlife habitats, areas of biological diversity, areas with 

aesthetically-pleasing qualities, and areas where a number of use and non-use values

may be realized. This is not to say that forestry previously ignored such ideas; rather,

there appears to be a shift towards management strategies which attempt to incorporate a

number of ideas and values into its outcome.

The Forest Service is committed in theory, practice, and law to multiple-use management.

Programs are diverse, ranging from managing wilderness areas, timber, wildlife, 

recreation, minerals, range, fisheries, soil, and air and water quality, and for cooperation

with state and private forestry Wenner 1987). But the Forest Service also has a mandate

to manage these lands for the American people. This means that the public not only must

be consulted, but in many ways must be an active participant in the decisionmaking

process.

Effective resource management requires an understanding of public expectations and

needs. An incomplete understanding of “what the public wants” undermines the goals of

the agency and fosters tension between the public and the agency. As a result, social

science research has become invaluable to the Forest Service in order to assess these

questions. In the case of ecosystem management, questions include, “Who exactly is ‘the

public?’” and “what does this public want?” Furthermore, is ecosystem management 

compatible with what the public wants?

“The public” can actually be seen as several different constituencies. Lands held in trust

by the Forest Service are considered to be for all of the American people. In addition,

smaller groups of recreation users, consumers of forest products, commercial users, and

local populations who live near the forest are also considered part of “the public.” Other

interested parties, such as environmental groups and labor unions, are also considered to

be Forest Service constituencies. As such, public values or attitudes are not monolithic.

lnstead values can be influenced by the occupation of the individual (e.g. logger or 

biologist) or the proximity of the individual to the forest in question.

The attitudes of American society towards the environment have varied greatly, both 

within the context of the past and the present. Like a nation’s political culture, its “forest

culture” is based on such diverse influences as philosophies and religions, shared 

experiences, economics and ethics, values and mythologies. And though the forest 

culture has changed considerably over time, each change has come about slowly and no

change has been comprehensive or absolute.

66
Since the dawn of history, human survival has depended on the ability to control nature, 

to make it produce, to conquer its wildness, and to use it to make human life more 

comfortable. Yet civilizations such as the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and early Greeks

also valued nature for its aesthetic and intrinsic qualities (Worster 1989). In the complex

tracing of intellectual history, overlapping and often contrasting attitudes towards forests

have coexisted in any given society.

The Judeo-Christian tradition implied that the natural world belonged to humans for

exploitation as the result of a gift from God. Genesis 1:28 decreed, “be fruitful, and 

multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the

sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

While the Old Testament did address stewardship responsibilities and possibilities

(Veeraraj 1989), the mechanistic view of sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe

reduced nature to a tool of human use (Merchant 1989). Ecological critiques of

Christianity argue that its anthropocentrism made it possible for mankind to exploit nature

(White 1966), and therefore, Christianity bears a huge portion of responsibility for the 

current state of the environment, particularly in the Western world. Other scholars argue

that a simplistic charge against Christianity denies the complexity of intellectual history

which forged the beliefs of the early Europeans in America (Veeraraj 1989). For the early

settlers in the New World, attitudes towards forests were shaped by more than their

Christianity. Their understanding of wilderness was driven by the philosophy of science

and the more materialistic issue of simple survival.

The first European settlers in North America understood the environment within the 

context of use. Like the wilderness of the Old World, the forests of the New World posed

danger to the settlers in a variety of ways (Nash 1973). The wilderness harbored threats,

both real and imagined, of wild animals and indigenous peoples intent on doing harm to

the new settlers. Additionally, to the Puritans the forest was an allegory to the human 

condition. The forest was a place where evil resided and could destroy a naive soul, as

depicted in the writings of early American authors such as Hawthorne.

The physical character of the primeval forest was also an antithesis to the Puritan settlers

who were accustomed to the domesticated countryside of Europe. Since medieval times,

Europeans had engaged in intensive clearing of the land for farming. Early landscape

design reflected a belief that nature should appear harmonious and symmetrical, giving

nature a “civilized” and neat look. In a narrative discussing the settlement of Concord,

Massachusetts, the forest was portrayed in graphic detail as a small group of Puritans

struggled through unknown woods, swamps, and flesh-tearing thickets. Initially, the town

founders wandered lost for days in the bewildering gloom of the dense forest. Then came

the back-breaking labor of carving fields from the wilderness (Johnson 1910, Lillard 1947,

Nash 1973).

The attitude toward forests until the mid-nineteenth century was, therefore, primarily one

of conquest. This idea was a culmination of philosophical ideas (nature to be categorized

and subdued by science), religion (nature given for man’s use by God), and economics

(material needs for survival). The individual who valued it otherwise was considered naive

or foolish. Frontier literature is replete with references to wilderness as an enemy to be

conquered. Historians of westward expansion often chose military metaphors to describe

the coming of civilization: they conquered the wilderness, they subdued the forests, they

67

Historical

Attitudes 

about

Forests
“struggled” and “fought” in campaigns to “tame” the continent (Eggleston 1905, Nash

1973).

With the beginning of the transcendental movement in the middle of the nineteenth 

century, other long-suppressed attitudes re-emerged as powerful ideas on the American

intellectual front. The philosophy of the German romantics and American 

transcendentalists was typified for Americans in the writings of Henry David Thoreau. “In

Wildness,” said Thoreau, “is the preservation of the world” (Thoreau 1893). To the 

transcendental philosophers, forests became valued for their beauty alone. Biblical 

references also were used to support this focus on a stewardship ethic. Genesis 2:15

read: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take

care of it.” Stewardship, according to John Muir, meant leaving the wilderness alone, and

preserving it for future generations.

As romantic justifications for wilderness developed, a few Americans conceived of a 

possibility for its deliberate preservation. Some believed that society should legally protect

selected areas, exempting them from the destructive energies of civilization. But 

preservationist policies ran counter to the dominant political attitude of westward 

expansion, and examples of preservation were rare through most of the 19th century.

By the late 1800s, however, issues that had previously been chiefly philosophical began to

manifest themselves in the very practical difficulty of land allocation. Some middle ground

was needed that could respond to both resource use (exploitation) and preservation.

Those having a romantic appreciation for the land became allied somewhat with the 

growing conservation movement, which argued for a measured use of resources that

would conserve some for future generations. Both groups were saddened and alarmed at

the disappearance of wilderness from the American scene. The most noted leader in the

conservation movement was Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot was a professional forester, 

educated in Europe, who believed that conservationist practices should seek to establish

some agreeable balance between society and nature. He originally developed the idea of

multiple-use management as it came to be applied to American forests (Wenner 1987).

For the American pioneers, resource conservation and wilderness preservation were ideas

which had little value in their frame of reference. But as successive waves of populations

moved into wilderness territories, blatant exploitation was replaced by the controversy of

preservation versus conservation that has typified national discussions of the environment

ever since. Where the traditional conservationist valued forests primarily for economic 

reasons, the preservationist saw in forests a spiritual value for society that is greater than

economic considerations. In many ways, these attitudes have blended until their 

differences are more a matter of degree than mutually exclusive points of view (see List,

this proceedings).

The struggle over natural resource management continues into the 1990s and is 

manifested in the political debate, where values are expressed along clearly drawn lines on

opposite sides of controversial issues. The debate regarding forests is particularly 

emotional and conflictive, and attempts at compromise only seem to intensify the 

debates. For example, in 1993 when the Clinton administration called for a substantial

reduction of logging on Federal land in the Northwest and a $1.2 billion economic aid

package to depressed timber communities (Egan 1993), timber interests felt that the plan

effectively destroyed their industry as well as local economies in Washington and Oregon,

68

The Political

Environment

and Values
while environmentalists felt that too many areas were sacrificed to establish a 

compromise.

It is clear that Americans in general hold values towards forests that are mixed and often

in conflict. Although not exhaustive, a categorization of these values must include:

1. Spiritual-Symbolic: A tree specifically or forests generally can be worshiped as a 

religious symbol or can be said to contain spiritual qualities. They can also be 

understood in the context of a symbol for an idea or concept.

2. Beauty: Forests have aesthetic qualities, including scenic and/or decorative. Beauty 

can also be interpreted as an end in itself.

3. Material Use: Forests provide lumber, crucial for sustenance in modern living. They 

also provide jobs, and sustain local economies.

4. Recreation: Forests provide recreational opportunities such as hiking, 

fishing, camping, and hunting. Recreation also provides jobs and aids in sustaining

local communities.

5. Knowledge: Studying a forest contributes to our understanding of biological diversity. 

It can be studied as a biological organism with a role in the ecosystem, or individually

as an historical object. For instance, a landmark tree on a trail tells us about the past 

of the forest, such as assisting in determining past patterns of human use

(Conservation Foundation 1976).

Based on an understanding of history and current political behavior, it is clear that

Americans often hold several value systems at the same time. For instance, a member of

the public may hold values that tend toward both anthropocentrism and biocentrism. One

may value forests for their beauty and right to exist, which is a biocentric idea, but

acknowledge the human necessity of use, an anthropocentric concept. This same 

ambivalence is seen throughout American discourse about forests. A tension exists

between values over jobs (e.g. timber cutting) and environmental concerns (e.g. 

biodiversity issues such as the spotted owl controversy or physical concerns such as

streambed degradation and soil erosion). Hardly anyone, despite the dichotomy 

presented in the popular press, would approve of human suffering (loss of job and home)

over preservation of the environment.

“Reality” is an interpretation of human sensory experiences. Concepts of reality are social

constructs, forged by our own understanding of what we see, by our shared values and

beliefs (Berger and Luckmann 1967). lnterpretations are based on many aspects of

human interaction, including education, acculturation, direct experience, and indirect 

experience (conversations).

How does an individual come to “value” something? One can argue that “value” means

the extent to which a person holds something to be of worth. As far as can be 

determined, other forms of life do not “value” things in the way that humans do. To value 

or not value something is based on perception and on constructed realities. For example,

there is an informal hierarchy of what humans value in nature. The American public tends

to value trees over worms, dolphins over snappers, flowers over grass.

69

Discussing

Social Values
Valuation is sometimes based on utility. If it is useful, either as a means for shelter 

(timber) or for aesthetic qualities (redwoods), then it is of higher value. If it is not useful,

either for spiritual or sustenance needs, then it is considered to be of lower value. Since

the 1960s, the dawning realization of ecosystem complexity has changed the way that 

utility is evaluated and valuation is ascribed. More and more research focuses on the

importance of biodiversity and the lack of knowledge that we have an the inter-workings of

nature. Changes in value often coincide with attitudinal changes. Forty years ago, the

term ecology was not a household word nor was biological diversity a topic on the public

agenda.

What the public values may shift and change according to context, experience, and 

knowledge, thereby shifting definitions of social acceptability. The media affect what 

people think, and offer opportunity for reflection on currently held values. For instance,

media attention to the Montreal Protocol in 1987 brought the question and problems of the

ozone layer to the public (Benedick 1991). Another example of media impact was the first

publication of the photo “Earth Rising” which showed the earth rising over the lunar 

horizon. This photograph, taken by one of the Apollo missions, influenced the way people

began to see the Earth as an island, and as finite. Experiences can also change the way

a person values something. Someone opposed to any cutting of forests might answer 

differently to a questionnaire after having visited a site where ecosystem management 

silviculture is being practiced.

Also, events can change public values. In this context, changes usually occur as a result

of one or a combination of the following events: 1) a disaster or crisis event, 2) a series of

events, 3) centralized public relations campaign/behavior modification, 4) massive 

education, and/or 5) community-based programs.

A disaster or crisis event can unify individuals to deal collectively with environmental 

problems or to pressure the government for official action. For instance, the offshore oil

spill along the coast of Santa Barbara, California in 1969 was a crisis event. The result

was an oil slick which covered an area of 800 square miles, washed up on California

beaches, and killed plants, birds, and fish. Public response emerged as an outraged 

environmental response which demonstrated the conflict between oil exploration and 

environmental interests. NEPA (1970), passed later in the year, was a direct response to

this event (Schmidt and others 1993). Similarly the grounding of the Exxon Valdez in

Alaska once again focused public attention, changed public attitudes, and rallied support

for legislation regarding public accountability. During the Gulf War in 1991, the oil well 

fires in Kuwait were used by two major U.S. environmental organizations (Greenpeace

and Friends of the Earth) to broadcast the importance of national involvement in global

environmental issues (Porter and Brown 1991).

Major catastrophes are not always required before people reconsider or change their 

values; often such changes come about through a series of events. While events 

individually may cause no attitudinal shift, each has an incremental effect that eventually

results in new values after a series of personal reevaluations. In the 1980s, a series of

industrial accidents began a public discussion of growth and economic development. 

Toxic leakage at Love Canal in New York, dioxin-tainted soil at Times Beach, Missouri,

and hazardous waste at the Rocky Flats nuclear plant in Denver all contributed to 

discussions of industrial environmental hazards (Bums and Peltason 1952). Controls on

70
urban growth were not on the public agenda 50 years ago. A combination of factors

including population growth, urbanization, and increasing air, water, and noise pollution

have all contributed to a greater sense of public awareness about the environment.

Values are frequently affected by agents (private or public) who systematically increase

public awareness of an issue and encourage behavior modification. These campaigns are

sometimes seen in sinister terms. When such campaigns come from the public sector,

they are often accused of being propagandistic; when from the private sector they are

more often benignly labeled as advertising. There are many examples of governmental

campaigns to change public attitudes. A public relations campaign to stop littering 

eventually led to legislation making littering a crime punishable by a fine. When Lady Bird

Johnson began her beautification program in the early 1960s, she encouraged people to

plant flowers and trees along the national highways. In the 1980s and 90s, federal

mandates to use recycled paper in government offices has coincided with voluntary 

recycling community programs. Values are changed by encouraging (or legislating) a

change in behavior.

Public relations campaigns can be either centralized or decentralized. The decentralized

educational system in the United States has generally been effective at political 

socialization, for forming attitudes and changing values. Anti-smoking, safe sex, and 

racial tolerance are all subjects that have been added to curricula in the school systems,

aided by public relations programs on television and newspapers. The so-called “War on

Drugs” in the American school system is such an attempt to change social values. Drugs,

once perceived as “cool,” are now advertised by the current TV idols as “un-cool.” The

uneven successes with indoctrination through the educational system are closely related

to the social and political environment within which the changes are being attempted. In

the case of ecosystem management, the question of whether a public relations campaign

combined with education can be successful remains, as individuals have tended to

become more suspicious of both advertising and government institutions. Also, 

“educating” from the top-down has autocratic overtones. “We, the experts, will tell you 

what is best for the forests.” On the other hand, there is the very real problem that people

who see snags as ugly dead wood do not know about their importance for facilitating 

habitat for life in the forest. It is analogous to the tension reflected in democracy: Can

democracy exist without an educated citizenry? What is meant by education? Who 

defines education?

There are many programs conceived of as community-based which facilitate value change

(Scott 1992). For example, a local recycling program heightens public awareness and

encourages participation and action. Some communities offer contests to suggest more

efficient and environmentally sound ways of administering the local government (Ross

1992). These are attempts at social pressure to encourage people to adopt changes 

beneficial to the environment.

Acceptability studies focus on questions of what the public values; that is, what the public

finds “acceptable” is derived from the values the public holds. While the above statement

is fairly obvious, what is less obvious and more difficult is how to uncover public values.

The first task at hand is to attempt to assess exactly what Americans value about their

forests. General conclusions can be drawn from the historical and political summaries

71

Defining Social

Acceptability 

in Ecosystem

Management
offered above, but the literature cannot accurately show regional differences, or the 

distinctions among individuals or within segments of society.

Values consist of both use and nonuse values. Use values are those which stem from

direct use of an area. In the case of forests, recreation and products derived from the

forests are considered use values. One example of a nonuse value is preserving the 

forest for future generations. In order to incorporate both use and nonuse values, a theory

of total value has been developed by environmental economists.

In a study of water quality in which both use and nonuse values were estimated, Fisher

and Raucher (1984) examined the magnitude of the relation between use and nonuse 

values. They concluded, “The intrinsic, or nonuse-related, benefits of water quality

improvements are difficult to define precisely...empiricaI efforts to measure intrinsic 

benefits consistently show these nonuse values to be positive and non-trivial...existing 

evidence indicates that nonuse benefits generally are at least half as great as recreational

use benefits” (p. 160). A number of researchers have tried to quantify use and nonuse 

values in monetary terms. In these studies, actual dollar relationships are established

between components in nature and how much individuals value these components in use

and in nonuse terms. Because these studies offer insight into how surveys may be 

developed to evaluate the acceptability of ecosystem management, a brief discussion of

their methodologies is appropriate.

Boyce and others (1989) examined use and nonuse values by dividing 115 subjects into

four groups. Members of the first two groups participated in a contingent valuation 

exercise in which they were given a Norfolk lsland pine plant and then asked the amount

of compensation they would require to give it up. Members of the other two groups were

asked what they would be willing to pay to acquire one of the trees.

Existence values were measured via a threat to destroy the trees not taken by the 

respondents. Participants in one of the willingness-to-pay groups were told that any trees

not purchased by the study participants would be destroyed. Additionally, participants in

one of the willingness-to-accept compensation groups were told that all trees they sold

back to the researchers would be destroyed. The difference between values obtained

when nothing was said about the trees and values obtained when the trees where 

threatened with destruction can be taken as a measure of the nonuse values of the trees.

BOyce and others found that the threat to kill the trees increased the average willingness

to pay from $6.06 to $16.80, and increased the average compensation demanded from

$14.12 to $26.07.

Attaching a monetary value to nature is highly controversial. Some people feel that 

deciding how much a tree is worth denies valuation on aethestic and spiritual grounds. At

the same time, these contingent valuation exercises provide insight into the attitudes of

the public regarding their forests.

In a survey of Wisconsin residents, Boyle and Bishop (1987) estimated both the total

value of preserving bald eagles as well as a conditional value of preserving bald eagles in

areas where humans would not be able to view them. Values were estimated using the

dichotomous choice format of the contingent valuation method. The total value figures for

those who had taken trips to view eagles were interpreted as a combination of use values,

option values, and existence values. The conditional values for both groups were

72
interpreted as pure existence values. The total value was $75 if eagles were viewable,

and $28 if the bald eagles were preserved in Wisconsin but could not be viewed. The $47

difference between these two values should be interpreted as use value plus possible

option value for future viewing opportunities.

A common noneconomic methodology used in assessing public values regarding the 

environment has been to rely on Inglehardt’s (1977) original survey technique. lnglehardt

devised a methodology for testing the hypothesis that public values are changing from

material well-being to a post-materialist quality of life. His hypothesis was that, as a 

person ascends the socioeconomic scale, he/she is more likely to possess environmental

values of conservation and preservation. The survey developed was both quantitative and

qualitative in nature and relied on personal interviews. Development of Inglehardt’s

methodology further refined the concepts of use and nonuse values (Steger and others

1989).

Once a survey methodology has been determined, the instrument must identify the 

essential principles of ecosystem management and must be worded to be fully 

comprehensible to the general public. Suitable and relevant questions must then be 

structured and presented and results analyzed to determine whether the data translates

into support of ecosystem management or whether they suggest a lack of acceptability 

for those new practices. Furthermore, the data must be interpreted within the appropriate

historical/political context. Based on the lnglehardt model, the following are examples of

how this might be accomplished:

lntroduction - One objective of ecosystem management is the creation of managed 

stands of trees that have higher levels of structural diversity than under current practices.

Retaining more downed wood, snags, and wildlife trees at the time a forest is cut is a

demonstrated way of achieving this objective. There is a lot of talk these days about new

techniques for managing the forest. On this card are listed some of the goals which 

different people would give top priority. Would you please say which one of these you,

yourself, consider most important (choice #1) and which is next most important (choice

#2)?

Card AA. Maintaining a high rate of growth in the logging industry. 

B. Making sure that forests are biologically diverse.

C. Allowing people to have more say in how things get decided regarding forests. 

D. Trying to make our forests profitable. 

Enter the letter of choice # 1 here 

Enter the letter of choice # 2 here

Increasingly, foresters are leaving some large green trees in areas that are being cut for

timber. This may be a valuable approach to creating structurally diverse forests on many

cutover areas. The result of these management practices is that new forests are created

that have a mixture of tree stands, including some larger, older trees. If you had to

choose, which one of the things on this card would you say is most desirable (choice #1)

and which is the next most desirable (choice #2)?

73

Applications

for Surveys on

Ecosystem

Management

Example 1

Example 2
Card BA. Foresters leave some large green trees in cutover areas. 

B. Small areas are cleared. 

C. Retain large green tree stands. 

D. Unlimited clear cutting.

Enter the letter of choice # 1 here 

Enter the letter of choice # 2 here

Quantitative surveys have methodological problems all their own, including but not limited

to the difficulties in establishing the respondent’s context in any fully-developed way and

the biases inherent in framing questions and choices of answers. Surveys have and

should continue to be undertaken within the additional context of qualitative work, such as

in-depth observation, interviews, and interaction (see Hansis, this proceedings).

Public attitudes towards forests have complicated roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition,

the philosophy of sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe, and the transcendental

movement of the nineteenth century. These very different understandings of the world

have resulted in diverse and often conflicting attitudes about the environment and about

forestry. In particular, there are conservationist and preservationist tendencies which 

often manifest themselves in contradictory ways. For example, people may desire access

to a forest as opposed to a wilderness which is left untouched, even if access means

domesticating nature to some extent.

In addition, people may value nature and yet hold that some aspects of nature are of more

worth than others. Contingent valuation exercises show to some degree the extent to

which people will “sell” nature. There is a sense that value is based on a kind of utility,

whether that utility is aesthetic or survival-based. Trees are more important than snails,

whole forests are more important than patchwork forests, patchwork forests are better

than clearcuts, clearcuts are better than jobs lost and human suffering. To understand

public attitudes, these complexities must be further explored.

Understanding whether the public values ecosystem management requires that we 

assess more directly the historical context upon which values are based as well as the

current political climate which shapes people’s attitudes. One way to assess attitudes

would be by using a number of total value survey techniques adapted specifically to

address questions of social acceptability. Surveys which evaluate both use and nonuse

values should be considered, as well as techniques which would include an assessment of

contingent values. But surveys alone will not define the historical or other contexts which

shape an individual’s values. Using research techniques from anthropology and 

sociology, in-depth interviews and interaction (conversations) assist the social scientist at

this level. As ecosystem management practices enter into the public debate about 

forestry techniques in general, it will be useful for natural resource managers to assess

the acceptability of such practices as manifested in American values and attitudes.

Benedick, Richard. 1991. Ozone diplomacy: new directions in safeguarding the planet. 

Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 300 p.

Berger, Peter L.; Luckmann, Thomas. 1967. The social construction of reality. New 

York: Anchor Books. 219 p.

74

Conclusion

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Regional Research Project W-133: 305-336.

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May.

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NJ: Prentice Hall. 158 p.

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The American environment: readings in the history of conservation, 2nd ed. Reading,

MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co: 265-276.

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Magazine. (1 August): 21-52.

Eggleston, George Cary. 1905. Our first century. New York: A.S. Barnes and Co. 268 p.

Fisher, A.; Raucher, R. 1984. intrinsic benefits of improved water quality: conceptual and 

empirical perspectives. Advance in Applied Micro-Economics. 3: 37-66.

Inglehardt, Ronald. 1977. The silent revolution: changing values and political styles 

among western publics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 482 p.

Johnson, Edward. 1910. Johnson’s wonder-working providence, 1629-1651. New York: 

Charles Scribner’s Sons. 285 p.

Lester, James P., ed. 1989. Environmental politics and policy: theories and evidence. 

Durham: Duke University Press. 405 p.

Lillard, Richard G. 1947. The great forest. New York: A.A. Knopf. 399 p.

Merchant, Carolyn. 1989. The death of nature: women, ecology, and the scientific 

revolution. New York: Harper and Row. 348 p.

Nash, Roderick. 1973. Wilderness and the American mind. New Haven: Yale 

University Press. 300 p.

National Environmental Policy Act. Pub. L. No. 91-190, 83 Stat. 852 (1970) (codified as 

amended at 42 U.S.C. 4321-4370 (1982)).

National Forest Management Act. Pub. L. No. 94-588, 90 Stat. 2949 (codified at 16 

U.S.C. 1600-1614 (1982) and other scattered sections of 16 U.S.C.).

Porter, Gareth; Brown, Janet Welsh. 1991. Global environmental politics. Boulder, 

Colorado: Westview Press. 208 p.

75
Ross, Elizabeth. 1992. ‘Man on the street’ competes to solve environmental woes. 

Christian Science Monitor. 5 May: 7.

Schmidt, Steffen W.; Shelley, Mack C.; Bardes, Barbara A. 1993. American 

government and politics today. New York: West Publishing Co.

Scott, David Clark. 1992. Saving the forest by changing attitudes. Christian Science 

Monitor. 29 April: 10-11.

Steger, Mary Ann E.; Pierce, John C.; Steel, Brent S.; Lovrich, Nicholas P. 1989.

Political culture, postmaterial values, and the new environmental paradigm: a 

comparative analysis of Canada and the United States. Political Behavior. 11: 233-254.

Thoreau, Henry David. 1893. Excursions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 472 p.

Veeraraj, Anand. 1989. Christianity and the environment. In: Dwivedi, O.P., ed. World 

religions and the environment. New Delhi: Gitanjali Publishing House: 36-118.

Wenner, L.N. 1987. The practice and promise of social science in the U.S. Forest 

Service. In: Miller, Marc L; Gale, Richard P.; Brown Perry J., ed. Social science in 

natural resource management systems. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press: 63-81.

White, Lynn, Jr. 1966. The historical roots of our ecologic crisis. Science. 55(10 March): 

1203-07.

Worster, Donald, ed. 1989. The ends of the earth: perspectives in modern environmental 

history. New York: Cambridge University Press. 341 p.

76
Gobster, Paul H. 1996. Forest aesthetics, biodiversity, and the perceived appropriateness 

of ecosystem management practices. In: Brunson, Mark W.; Kruger, Linda E.; Tyler,

Catherine B.; Schroeder, Susan A., tech. eds. Defining social acceptability in ecosystem

management: a workshop proceedings; 1992 June 23-25, Kelso, WA. Gen. Tech. Rep.

PNW-GTR-369. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific

Northwest Research Station: 77-97.

The social acceptability of “ecosystem management” and related new forestry programs

hinges on how people view the forest environment and what it means to them. For many,

these conceptions are based on a “scenic aesthetic” that is dramatic and visual, where

both human and natural changes are perceived negatively. In contrast, appreciation of 

biologically diverse forests created through ecosystem management practices depends on

experience of the subtle, multimodal characteristics of a dynamic environment, an 

aesthetic attitude that is acquired and cognitive rather than immediate and affective.

Society is unlikely to quickly adopt this “ecological aesthetic” as espoused by Aldo 

Leopold and others. However, the concept of appropriateness could serve as a shortterm alternative for resolving perceived conflicts between aesthetic and biodiversity

values. Unlike scenic assessments, assessments of appropriateness address the 

question “what belongs where?” and work to integrate aesthetic and biodiversity goals

rather than to seek absolutes. This concept also ties aesthetics together with land ethics

by seeking a harmonious “fit” between human activity and the natural world. Approaches

are outlined that suggest how perceptions of appropriateness might be studied and used

in the context of ecosystem management practices. Additional thought is given to how

researchers and managers can begin to broaden ideas of forest aesthetics over the long

term.

Keywords: Scenic beauty, biodiversity, ecological aesthetic, visual management practices,

ecosystem management, landscape aesthetic, appropriateness, human-landscape 

interactions.

PAUL H. GOBSTER is a research social scientist, USDA Forest Service, North Central Forest Experiment Station,

Chicago, IL, 60648.

77

Abstract

Forest Aesthetics, Biodiversity, 

and the Perceived Appropriateness 

of Ecosystem Management Practices

Paul H. Gobster
As a landscape architect and social scientist, one of my major concerns is how people

perceive and relate to landscapes. Researchers and practitioners who share this concern

maintain that aesthetics is a primary dimension of people-landscape interactions (e.g.,

Kaplan and Kaplan 1989). In forests, as in many other environments, people form 

perceptions of a place based on what they see and experience from an aesthetic point of

view. This might especially be the case for those who are there to recreate. Because of 

its primary nature, aesthetics also can color how other aspects of a forest will be 

evaluated. For this reason, “visual resource management” has become a critical 

consideration in managing forests for recreation, timber, and other resource values.

In the eyes of many forest landscape architects, aesthetics has long been thought of as

one of the few undebatably “good” purposes for managing forests. Traditional timber,

range, game, and water resource management is seen as having utilitarian, commodityoriented purposes that, if not held in check, can compromise the existence of this higher,

better purpose. This elite position, however, is now being challenged by another nonconsumptive, nonutilitarian “good,” namely biodiversity. Like aesthetics, biodiversity 

values of forests are getting increased attention from citizen groups, and ecosystem 

management and new forestry programs are redefining how landscape architects and

other professionals think about forest resource management.

But while managing for “white hat” resources is increasingly being looked on as the right

thing to do, what happens when forest prescriptions developed to achieve such “goods”

conflict with each other? In the case of aesthetics and biodiversity, forest landscape 

architects and landscape researchers alike are coming to recognize that principles long

advocated for enhancing the visual quality of landscapes may conflict with ecosystem

management principles for maximizing biodiversity. Are these conflicts resolvable? In this

paper I argue they are, but maintain that the way people perceive forest aesthetics -- and

the ways in which we as researchers and managers conceptualize, measure, and manage

aesthetics -- prevent an easy resolution. After discussing why this is so, I suggest a 

framework and methods in which aesthetic and biodiversity values might be addressed by

researchers and practitioners. These ideas, which center on the contextually-based 

concept of appropriateness, could offer short-term ways to deal with the fundamental 

perceptions of resource values. I conclude by suggesting ways to move beyond this

approach and towards an ecologically-based aesthetic in our management and research.

Our landscape preferences are thought to be influenced by many factors: age (Zube and

others 1983), gender (Lyons 1983), ethnicity (Kaplan and Talbot 1988), regionality

(Schroeder 1987), recreational activity (Brunson and Shelby 1992a, Ribe 1991a); some

researchers even maintain there is an evolutionary basis behind certain landscape 

preferences (Appleton 1975, Kaplan and Kaplan 1989). But of these factors, our 

dominant culture and history have played major roles in shaping our preferences for 

landscapes that are natural in character (Cox 1985, Huth 1972, Nash 1982). Our natural

landscape preferences grew from a tradition of landscape painting and aesthetic theory

that began in 17th and 18th century Europe. As our frontier was tamed and remaining

wildlands shrunk in size, Americans began to appreciate nature rather than fear it.

Borrowing from the European tradition, our attraction to natural landscapes in the U.S.

grew during the romantic and transcendentalist movements of the mid-1800s through

landscape paintings of artists such as Frederick Church and Thomas Cole of the Hudson

River School; through the writings of novelists, poets, and philosophers such as James

78

lntroduction

“Nature” and

Development of the

“Scenic Aesthetic”
Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, and Henry David Thoreau; and through the park

and estate designs of Andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted.

But the landscape portrayed through these media, and preferred by those who 

increasingly viewed and visited the landscape for recreation, was not so much a natural

environment as it was a naturalistic interpretation of one. Landscape painters often

stylized the nature they saw, carefully composing a scene by adapting formal design 

principles such as balance, proportion, symmetry, order, vividness, unity, variety in line,

form, color, and texture, and others. Subjects were often the dramatic, monumental 

landscapes of the eastern and western U.S., where mountains and other natural 

curiosities helped to define the notion of the picturesque. Other subjects emphasized the

“softened” wilderness, where human activity harmonized with nature to express a tidy,

pastoral quality. These compositional techniques were emulated by landscape designers,

who created parks and garden estates that were stylistic renditions of nature as portrayed

in paintings. As if looking at a landscape painting, people regarded these environments

for their visual scenic and picturesque qualities, and the “scenic aesthetic” became the

dominant mode of landscape appreciation (Rees 1975).

The popularization of a landscape aesthetic based on a preference for idealized, 

naturalistic scenery went far to help define how city parks were designed and which 

western parcels of land were preserved for national parks and monuments. The scenic

aesthetic also became the basis for addressing aesthetics in forest management, 

although aesthetics did not become an explicit concern in forest landscape planning and

management efforts until a century later. Management of large scale forest landscapes for

aesthetic values began in earnest in the early 1970s in response to public concern 

over clearcutting in eastern and western national forests. The USDA Forest Service’s

“Visual Management System” (1974) and programs of other public agencies were 

developed to identify aesthetic values in the landscape, define people’s sensitivity to

landscape change, and set standards for preserving, enhancing, or retaining aesthetic

quality and mitigating the effects of landscape development (Smardon 1986).

Like the landscape painters and designers of earlier times, landscape architects who 

practice visual management use formal design concepts such as variety in line, form,

color, and texture to describe and deal with change in the forest landscape. Examples in

Forest Service handbooks illustrate how introducing greater variation in corridor edges

and in the shape, size, and distribution of clearcuts can help to emulate patterns found in

the natural landscape. Following the popular scenic aesthetic, current landscape 

management emphasizes the visual, stylized design of an ideal nature, rather than one

where the dynamics of change are apparent. With considerable landscape management

responsibility focused on mitigating the effects of undesirable landscape change, forest

landscape architects often use vegetative or topographic screens and other techniques to

hide or reduce visual impacts. The “illusions” created by these techniques further the idea

that a natural forest is one that is mature, tidy, and unchanging Wood 1988).

Many research efforts have explored the nature of landscape aesthetics, from both 

theoretical (e.g., Kaplan and Kaplan 1989) and applied perspectives (e.g., Ribe 1989).

Like the visual management practices just described, researchers have tended to focus

their attention on the scenic aesthetic, asking people what they perceive to be the “scenic

beauty” or “visual quality” of the landscape under study. The scenic aesthetic is 

conceptualized as a perceptual, affective reaction to the landscape in that viewers are

79

The Scenic

Aesthetic in Forest

Management and

Research
asked to make a quick evaluation whether they like or dislike a landscape (e.g., Daniel

and Boster 1976). These judgments are facilitated through the use of simple rating scales

and the representation of landscapes by photographs or slides that allow for the efficient

evaluation of many views in a short time (Nassauer 1983). The ratings are often 

correlated in models with physical, formal design, and psychological landscape attributes

to address theoretical and applied problems in landscape aesthetics (Gobster and

Chenoweth 1989).

Visual resource management practice and research have been enormously successful in

addressing landscape aesthetics, highlighting an issue few recognized or had the 

means to deal with just two decades before. But the scenic aesthetic we have focused 

on in our research and practice has helped perpetuate a preference for forest landscapes

that some have called superficial (Nassauer 1992). By emphasizing the visual, dramatic,

and picturesque attributes of nature, by treating the landscape as a static, formal 

composition, and by conceptualizing and measuring only the visual, perceptual, and 

affective aspects of human aesthetic response, we may be limiting the range and depth of

aesthetic opportunities we afford our public. This is unfortunate in and of itself, but the

problem takes on even greater importance when we attempt to provide for biodiversity

and aesthetic values.

Some practices advocated to enhance biodiversity may go against tenets established

through practice and research to promote forest visual quality or mitigate visual impacts of

forest harvesting. While there are also many instances where practices to meet these

goals are compatible with each other or conflicting practices are resolved through 

interdisciplinary planning team efforts, the four examples below illustrate how potential

conflicts between biodiversity and aesthetic goals can occur in important aspects of forest

management:

Downed wood -- Slash left from timber harvesting often has one of the biggest impacts 

on the perceived visual quality of near-view forest scenes (e.g., Brown and Daniel 1986,

Ribe 1991b, Vodak and others 1985). Naturally occurring downed wood is often 

indistinguishable from downed.wood caused by logging practices, and thus natural decline

visible in mature and old growth stands can have similar scenic impacts (e.g., Benson and

Ullrich 1981, Schroeder and Daniel 1981). To reduce these impacts, harvest prescriptions

for visually sensitive areas often call for removing, lopping, chipping, burning, or pulling

slash back from human use areas. From a forest biodiversity perspective, however,

downed wood can be important in maintaining site quality and sustaining soil productivity,

the diversity of insects, microfauna and microflora, wildlife food and cover, and tree and

groundcover regeneration (Maser and others 1979, Stark 1988). Practices that affect the

abundance and distribution of slash and natural downed wood can thus hinder biodiversity

goals (Hunter 1990).

Tree size and old growth character -- Large diameter trees and various measures 

associated with them (e.g., tree age, height, stand basal area) have been strongly linked

to visual preferences for near-view and vista-view forest stands (Arthur 1977, Brown and

Daniel 1984, Buhyoff and others 1986, Ribe 1991b). Some temporal models of perceived

scenic beauty have shown a monotonically increasing relationship between scenic beauty

and time since harvest (e.g. Hull and Buhyoff 1986, Ribe 1991b); others suggest that as

dominant species in a stand pass maturity, scenic value may begin to decrease due to the

presence of naturally occurring standing dead and downed wood (Benson and Ullrich

80

Potential Conflicts

between Scenic and

Biodiversity Values
1981). Although scenic values are often cited along with biodiversity values as important

reasons for preserving old growth forests, these mixed results hint that the relationship

between scenic value and old-growth character is not as straighfforward as the 

predominance of large trees. According to Hunter (1990): “many old forests are not what

the average person would consider beautiful; there may be no huge, magnificent trees;

there will certainly be numerous dead and dying ones” (p. 67). In fact, the biodiversity of

old-growth forests may have more to do with the dead and dying material they produce

than with the large, living trees that remain (Hunter 1990). Some benefits of fallen trees

and downed wood have already been mentioned; additional wildlife uses of standing dead

trees or snags’ include cavity nesting and den sites, nesting platforms, feeding substrate,

plucking posts, food caches, overwintering sites, and roosts, lookouts, and hunting 

perches (Maser and others 1988).

Silvicultural systems -- Several studies have described the visual effects produced by

conventional silvicultural systems such as clearcutting, shelterwood, and uneven-age

management (Benson and Ullrich 1981, Ribe 1991b), as well as some “alternative” 

treatments such as deferment cutting (Smith and others 1989) and techniques advocated

by new forestry (Brunson and Shelby 1992b). Visual preferences usually coincide with the

perceived degree of disruption; “unmanaged” forests are most preferred, and clearcut

areas are least preferred. Several studies, however, have shown that lightly managed

stands in which dead material and low tree and shrub cover are reduced, and visual 

penetration is increased, are often preferred to unmanaged stands (Brush 1978, McCool

and Benson 1988, Patey and Evans 1979, Ruddell and others 1989). From a biodiversity

standpoint, even- and uneven-age management techniques that promote a tall and varied

vertical structure may encourage higher biodiversity (Hunter 1990). In this light, 

techniques that reduce structural heterogeneity -- e.g., the prototypical park-like stand of

mature trees with an herbaceous groundcover but little mid-level vegetation -- may be

scenically popular but could compromise biodiversity goals.

Clearcut size, shape, and distribution -- Despite the wide use of even-age 

management techniques and their disruptive effects on scenic quality, few researchers

have looked at people’s perceptions of various methods for reducing visual impacts.

Common sense would assume that smaller clearcuts would be preferred to larger ones,

and some research indicates that this is the case (Schroeder and others 1993). Ruddell

and Hammitt (1987) also found visual preferences for well-defined edges in forest 

recreation settings. Certainly forest policy and established visual management practices

have tended towards smaller clearcuts and varied shapes to decrease their noticeability in

the landscape (USDA Forest Service 1974). Likewise, corridor planning techniques often

focus on increasing the vertical and horizontal edge variety between forest and opening,

to reduce contrasting lines and emulate natural openings (USDA Forest Service 1980).

Treatments like this can enhance habitat for many edge species such as deer and ruffed

grouse (Brenneman and Eubanks 1989), but can endanger forest flora and fauna that rely

on interior forest conditions (Robbins 1979). When the amount of edge is increased, forest

interiors can be more easily invaded by weedy plant species and predators, which can

displace or outcompete native species. Likewise, increasing forest fragmentation can

reduce overall species diversity and diversity of old growth species, and it can make 

interior stands susceptible to pathogens, wildfire, and windthrow (Franklin and Forman

1987).

81
These four examples illustrate how visual management practices may work at crosspurposes with biodiversity goals. Can conflicts between aesthetics and biodiversity be

resolved? Some believe they can, but maintain that to do so we as forest users, 

managers, and researchers need to adopt a different way of thinking about 

the aesthetics of forest landscapes. As a mode of landscape appreciation, the scenic 

aesthetic might function well for some types of open spaces -- parks in particular -- but for

landscapes where ecological values are a primary consideration, we must go beyond the

superficial to a deeper understanding and appreciation of nature. ldeas about this 

aesthetic- an “ecological aesthetic” as some have called it -- stem largely from a series of

essays by Aldo Leopold, culminating in his Sand County Almanac (1949). Although

Leopold never explicitly outlined his ecological aesthetic, its elements are synthesized by

Susan Flader and Baird Callicott in their compilation of Leopold’s writings, The River of

the Mother Of God (1991):

By contrast [to the scenic aesthetic], in Leopold’s revolutionary land esthetic all the

senses, not just vision, are exercised by a refined taste in natural objects, and esthetic

experience is as cerebral as it is perceptual. Most important, form follows function for

Leopold as for his architectural contemporaries. For him, the esthetic appeal of the

country, in other words, has little to do with its adventitious colors and shapes -- and

nothing at all to do with its scenic and picturesque qualities -- but everything to do with

the integrity of its evolutionary heritage and ecological processes (p. 9-10).

Using Leopold’s writings as a starting point, I have summarized the elements of an 

ecological aesthetic in table 1, and contrasted them with the elements of a scenic 

aesthetic. I have added points from others in the fields of design, ecology, psychology,

and philosophy, and have presented them within a framework adapted from Zube and 

others (1982) to describe the “landscape perception process.” This framework, useful for

helping to organize and identify elements of an ecological aesthetic, is divided into 

sections pertaining to the individual, the landscape, the human-landscape interactions that

take place, and the outcomes or benefits that result.

A cursory comparison of elements in the table shows the fundamental differences

between the two aesthetics. For one, an ecological aesthetic requires us to redefine how

we “see” the landscape and our place in it. In the scenic aesthetic, the pursuit of pleasure

(affect) is primary, and pleasure can be derived from viewing the landscape irrespective of

the ecological integrity of that landscape. In contrast, in an ecological aesthetic, pleasure

is a secondary outcome that derives from knowing about the landscape and knowing it is

ecologically “fit.” This difference changes the focus of our relationship with the landscape

from a homocentric one towards one that is more biocentric. In the context of aesthetics,

Rosenberg’s (1986) idea of “ecological humanism’ may be a more appropriate 

conceptualization of this relationship, where ‘the needs of humans and the needs of the

environment converge” (p. 79). This ties aesthetics together with ecology and with ethics,

as expressed in Leopold’s (1949) land ethic: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the

integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise”

(p. 224-5). This change in focus also changes our idea of perception from a process that

is visual, immediate, and largely affective to one that demands engagement of all of our

82

An “Ecological

Aesthetic” as 

a Solution to

the Conflict? 
83

Table 1--Some elements of scenic versus ecological aesthetics
senses as well as our intellect to “see,” as Leopold (1949) writes, “[beyond the pretty]...

through successive stages of the beautiful to values yet uncaptured by language” (p. 96).

With respect to public land management, some might think such an approach to be elitist,

while others have argued that to manage only for popular taste reduces what is deemed of

value to the “lowest common denominator” (Carlson 1977).

The things we “see” in the landscape also change as we shift focus from a scenic to an

ecological aesthetic. The dramatic, visual elements of the picturesque continue to give

aesthetic pleasure, but so do the more subtle and ordinary landscapes of forest 

ecosystems. The beauty of these places, however, often requires deeper exploration of

their qualities; appreciating the landscape’s extra-visual properties as well as the 

dynamics pf change often takes precedence over viewing the landscape as if it were a

static composition. In ecological aesthetics, pleasure is derived from knowing how the

parts of the landscape relate to the whole -- for example, how the presence of aesthetic

“indicator species” (Callicott 1983) like the Kirtland’s warbler, eastern timber wolf, and

northern spotted owl is sustained in an intact ecosystem. These features imbue the forest

landscape with deep, symbolic meaning, whereas the composed view is often appreciated

at face value.

The last two parts of the table distinguish the interactions between humans and the 

landscape, and the outcomes that result. Having an ecological aesthetic requires that we

experience the landscape as active participants -- not watch it passively as if it were a 

picture or other art object, but relate to it as a living landscape. It is through these 

interactions that we develop “dialogues” with ourselves and with the landscape that help

us, as Spirn (1988) suggests, know ourselves and our place in the world. Although 

“snapshot” experiences of pretty landscapes may be sufficient to temporarily alter moods

in a positive way, extended dialogues with nature facilitate psychological restoration and

allow opportunities for inner change (S. Kaplan 1993). Spirn (1988) describes some of

these benefits in the context of design; the same can be said in appreciation of biologically

diverse natural and managed forests:

Design which highlights nature’s processes for our contemplation permits the 

experience of a sense of unity with a larger whole which is the universe in which we 

live... Design that fosters and intensifies the experience of temporal and spatial scales

facilitates both this reflection upon personal change and the search for identity and 

sense of unity with a larger whole. Design that resonates with the natural and cultural

rhythms of a place, that echoes, amplifies, clarifies, or extends them, contributes to a

sense of rootedness in space and time” (p. 109-110).

If we look at these differences from a management perspective, an ecological approach to

aesthetics could help resolve many of the conflicts that now occur when managing for

scenic aesthetic and biodiversity values. From the public’s perspective as well, 

substantial individual and societal benefits could be gained if people adopted an ecological

aesthetic to landscape appreciation. But is the public ready to appreciate new forestry

sites that feature exploded tree tops, tall piles of slash, or 900-acre clearings? With a

200+ year history of evolution, adherence to the scenic aesthetic is ingrained, and the

changes required for adopting an ecological aesthetic are fundamental. What, then,

should be the strategy for resolving or at least minimizing conflicts between aesthetic and

biodiversity values?

84
The concept of appropriateness could offer a viable short-term strategy for considering

publicly held aesthetic and biodiversity values. Appropriateness refers to the judged 

suitability or compatibility of an introduced change, relative to one or more management

goals. In the context of this discussion, management goals include the protection of 

aesthetic and biodiversity values. Expanded applications might incorporate additional

goals, including utilitarian ones. The purpose behind such an analysis would be to obtain

a more holistic, publicly based resource evaluation than is available through traditional,

single-issue assessments. The term “appropriate” is thus used in a perceptual sense (i.e.,

perceived appropriateness), and does not imply that current practices are inappropriate.

As a psychometric approach to assessing public perceptions, evaluations of 

appropriateness differ from evaluations of scenic preference in several important respects.

First, evaluations of appropriateness are integrative in that they merge ideas about 

aesthetics and biodiversity within a single problem focus, namely that of management

change. This changes the nature of the question from one of if change should or should

not occur to how change can best be managed to provide for multiple values.

lntegrating concepts within an appropriateness framework helps to avoid the 

incompatibilities that might occur when dealing with them singularly. The conflict between

these concepts is illustrated in figure 1, where six hypothetical forest stands are rated for

scenic and biological quality. The “old growth” and “new forestry” stands receive high

marks for their biological quality, but look messy because of dead and downed wood and

thus are rated low in scenic quality. In contrast, the “pastoral park” and “naturalistic pine

grove” look scenic, but lack structural and plant species diversity and thus receive low

marks for biological quality. The two stands on which there is agreement are the “unevenaged” stand with big-tree character that has both beauty and diversity, and the “recent

clearcut” that lacks both scenic and biological quality.

85

Appropriateness

Analysis

Figure 1 – Biological and scenic quality ratings for six hypothetical forest stands.
Figure 2 shows how these two disparate values are brought together in an evaluation. But

it also illustrates a second major way in which evaluations of appropriateness differ from

traditional assessments of scenic preference: evaluations of appropriateness are 

contextual in nature. Perceptions about the appropriateness of change depend upon

knowledge about the nature of the setting and/or situation in which that change is to

occur. The contextual nature of land use has long been recognized in city planning and

zoning, where ordinances are enacted to ensure that the function, use, and design of

adjacent developments are compatible with each other. Contextual compatibility has been

a topic of research in urban architectural psychology (e.g., Groat 1984), and has received

some attention with respect to the development of natural landscapes (e.g. Gobster 1983,

Wohlwill 1979). Context is also an integral component in some recreation planning 

systems such as the USDA Forest Service’s Recreation Opportunity Spectrum, or ROS

(USDA Forest Service 1986), where criteria for size, remoteness, degree of development,

and other factors are used to identify the ROS settings appropriate to providing desired

recreation experiences.

Figure 2 shows the same six hypothetical forest stands, rated this time for the 

appropriateness of the management practice in each of three ROS settings: “urban,” 

“roaded natural,” and “semiprimitive.” Clearly specifying the management objectives of

each of these areas, one might hypothesize the appropriateness values to vary by setting

in the ways illustrated. In.the urban setting, human concerns for scenery might take 

precedence over biodiversity values, favoring the park and pine grove stands as most

appropriate, with other plots perceived as less appropriate. In the roaded natural setting,

the uneven-aged stand might be rated as most appropriate; in the semiprimitive setting,

86

Figure 2 – Appropriateness ratings for six hypothetical forest stands in “Urban,” “Roaded Natural,” and 

“Semiprimitive” ROS settings.
the old growth and new forestry plots might be most appropriate. Appropriateness of the

clearcut would depend on its design and the specific management objectives, and might

be appropriate in the semiprimitive or roaded natural setting. The examples illustrated by

the figures are overly simplistic, but nonetheless show how biodiversity and aesthetic 

values differ and how conflicts might be resolved by looking at people’s ideas of “what

belongs where.”

Finally, assessments of appropriateness are external in nature in that a person makes an

evaluation on the basis of what he or she feels is appropriate to reach the stated 

management goal, rather than on what he or she prefers. This brings the assessment out

of a context that is affective, perceptual, and subjective (i.e., “I like”) and into one that is

more cognitive, information-based, and objective (i.e., “what is right”). In this way, the 

concept.of appropriateness also ties aesthetics together with land ethics and stewardship

by seeking a harmonious “fit” or congruity between human activity and the natural world.

This contrasts with the concept of acceptability, which seems more human-centered, and

implies the setting of standards of minimum adequacy, or limits to admissible, tolerable, or

permissible change. This semantic difference may seem slight, but it does cast the nature

of the decision/ evaluation in a philosophically different light.

Operationalizing the concept of appropriateness for research and management 

applications would be a major task. However, good models exist in the fields of visual

assessment and recreation research and management that could be adapted to the idea

of appropriateness. Specifying the nature of the judgment to be made and the context in

which it would be made is critical, and in both cases the success of the assessment relies

on the presence of objective, unbiased information. In a research application, public 

participants would first need to become familiar with the concepts and goals of biodiversity

and visual resource management, and with the techniques or practices used to achieve

management goals. This might require presentation of information before any site or 

stand evaluations. Additionally, participants must be aware of the context in which the

practices are to be applied, including the ecological capability and uniqueness of the site

and its importance to users for visual and recreational purposes. This information could 

be made available through an Ecological Classification System (Kotar 1988), ROS setting

maps (USDA Forest Service 1986), and sensitivity maps completed under the Visual

Management System (USDA Forest Service 1974). For some national forests, this 

information is currently available forest-wide, while in other cases it would need to be 

created as part of the research application.

After digesting this information, participants could then view sites under study and 

evaluate them for the appropriateness of the management practice. Gobster (1983)

demonstrates one application of this method in evaluating the appropriateness of 

residential development in “wild,” “natural,” “recreational,” and “urban” lakeshore settings.

In that study, written statements and photographs were used to depict the setting to study

participants, who then rated the perceived visual appropriateness of development in each

of the four settings for alternative sites as shown through color slides. More realistic 

portrayals of alternatives could be accomplished with on-site visits, as used by Brunson

and Shelby (1992b) in their study of the acceptability of new forestry sites. Evaluations as

well could be enriched by including open-ended questions or focus group discussions of

the alternatives along with standard, rating scale data. Ultimately, this information could

help to identify and model the effects that specific management attributes have in

87
predicting appropriateness, and in determining how perceptions of appropriateness vary

as a function of context.

88

Table 2- Some tentative criteria for defining appropriate forestry management practices with regard 

to aesthetics and biodiversity

A system to identify and manage for appropriateness could be built along these same

lines, using information from user and interest group evaluations either as a starting point,

or later, as a means to validate a model. Like the research application described above,

the management context and objectives could be defined using existing Ecological
Classification System, ROS, and Visual Management System information. Stankey and

others (1985) lay out a comprehensive process for defining “limits of acceptable change,”

which also could be fruitfully adapted to sUch an assessment. Perhaps within a GIS 

environment, areas of high scenic and biodiversity value could be overlaid with each other

and with recreation setting and visual sensitivity maps to identity areas geographically.

From such analyses, a set of criteria could be developed to spell out management goals

and applications within different contexts. A preliminary outline of these criteria is shown in

table 2.

The table lists criteria for “management emphasis,” “management change,” and 

“expression to the public” for each of three ROS settings. In an “urban’ context (e.g., a

modern campground) where large numbers of users are concentrated for extended 

periods of time, the management emphasis would be on human enjoyment, and would

attempt to achieve scenic beauty in the traditional sense. This emphasis would change as

one moves across the ROS. In “roaded natural” settings, areas seen by moderate 

numbers of users who drive through or use such settings for dispersed recreation, scenic

and biodiversity goals would be balanced. And in semiprimitive areas used by low 

numbers of people for nature-oriented recreation, the emphasis would be on biodiversity

and maintenance and enhancement of ecological processes. Management changes in

urban settings would not deviate much from current practices, and changes made to

maintain or enhance biodiversity would remain subordinate to the retention of scenic 

quality. As Hobbs (1988) suggests, attempts to enhance biodiversity in urban areas might

take the form of small scale demonstration projects geared more to educating the public

than to maintaining or reproducing high quality ecosystems. The biggest changes might

occur in roaded natural settings, where practices to maintain and enhance biodiversity

would have greater visibility than under current visual management objectives. For 

example, slash piles and snags might be more visible, clearcut edges might be less 

undulating, and the scale of landscape alterations might be larger than if visual 

management were a primary criterion. In semiprimitive areas, scale, duration, and 

visibility of changes could be greater still, but current visual management practices might

remain close to what is now permissible for areas of low visual sensitivity. In all settings,

management changes introduced to enhance biodiversity and scenic quality should be

sustainable in that they are in tune with the ecological constraints of the site and tend

towards a dynamic equilibrium over the long term.

Perhaps the most important criteria in table 2 are those that help define how ecosystem

management practices are expressed to the public. lnformation plays a key role in all 

settings because public perceptions of appropriateness depend on knowledge of the 

purposes behind the management change (Thayer 1989). This information must be 

conveyed sincerely and objectively to avoid suspicion that managers are trying “to fool the

public” (Wood 1988). In urban settings, interpretive nature trails, kiosks, ranger programs,

and other kinds of on-site information can all aid communication efforts. Off-site 

information may be a more appropriate way to communicate to users of roaded natural

and semiprimitive areas, though unobtrusive signage can be effective (USDA Forest

Service 1986).

Along with information, landscape design can offer important ways for telling the public

why enhancing biological values is important. Evidence of human care, Nassauer (1992)

maintains, acts as cues for interpreting the intentions behind ecologically sustainable landscape practices that otherwise might appear messy and “unnatural.” In urban

89
settings, these cues might include picturesque conventions that portray a diverse and 

sustainable landscape, albeit a landscape that is neat and tastefully designed. For 

example, a winding, well-maintained nature trail might be located near a high-use forest

campground to show visitors the biological diversity of an uneven-aged stand. Trail layout

and trailside vegetation might be selected to highlight a few larger or peculiarly shaped

trees, to favor fall color, or to increase the variety in height and texture contrasts. In some

cases, compatible understory, midstory, or overstory vegetation might even be planted to

enhance picturesque effects. Brushpiles, snags, and other treatments that would usually

be concealed in the visual management of urban areas might instead be highlighted by

framing them with attractive vegetation and including interpretive signage, again to portray

the intentions behind the practices. In roaded natural settings, fewer picturesque 

conventions might be used, or replaced by less stylistic cues that still help convey land

stewardship. For example, a self-guided “ecosystem management auto tour” might be

designed, where a slightly wider mowed right-of-way or pull-off would set off the land 

practice, and a brochure and marker sign would describe its function and purpose. In the

national forests, such a tour could be incorporated within the framework of the Scenic

Byways program, expanding the concept of this already successful means of public 

communications. Cues in semiprimitive areas might be subtle or missing altogether--

perhaps unobtrusive marker posts in representative areas, keyed to a brochure available

off-site. For these sites, care is exhibited by ecological integrity and largely up to forest

users to discover it.

Appropriateness analysis offers a potentially promising way to reconcile conflicts between

aesthetic and biodiversity values. However, it is a short-term fix that sidesteps 

fundamental problems in the way we think about and deal with aesthetic issues in 

forestry. Failing to address these problems will perpetuate the conflict, and compromise

ecosystem management as an approach to effectively serve the best interests of the 

public and the environment.

Changing the situation calls for no less than changing our perception of the aesthetics of

forest landscapes. This task is difficult but not impossible, and there is evidence that 

aesthetic ideas about landscapes can evolve when guided (or forced) by agents of

change. One case in point has been the rise in popularity of “xeriscaping” in the

Southwestern U.S. A decreased reliance on shade trees for cooling, combined with water

shortage threats, has increased the popularity of arid-adaptive landscape design in

Tucson and other urban centers. According to McPherson and Haip (1989) “Once the

change began, the rapidity of its acceptance was striking. This rapid shift from 

horticultural to desert landscape illustrates how strong sociocultural traditions like a grassy

front lawn can be modified if people are presented the right combination of incentives,

mandates, and educational materials” (pp. 447-8). A second case was in the 

interpretation of the wildfires that moved through Yellowstone National Park during the

summer of 1988. Initially, the fires were presented as a disaster of great proportions, but

later reports in such popular magazines as National Geographic communicated the 

valuable benefits and beauty resulting from the fires (Jeffery 1989).

Landscape architects and other resource managers need to act like similar agents of

change to move the public towards adoption of an ecological aesthetic for forest 

management. By understanding the ideas of ecological aesthetics and how they differ

from scenic aesthetics, managers and planners can begin to think in different ways of how

to design and portray ecosystem management practices to the public. Programs,

90

Conclusion

Toward Adoption

of an Ecological

Aesthetic
materials, and on-site experiences can help acquaint people with the multisensory,

dynamic qualities of a biologically diverse forest, and show how places that may at first

glance appear messy and uncared for can yield deeper aesthetic values upon closer

inspection. First and foremost, however, if ecosystem management is to become the 

driving paradigm behind landscape management of national forests and other areas, 

managers need to portray, interpret, and even celebrate change rather than conceal it.

Showing this change to the public through landscape design and through information was

discussed previously (in the section on appropriateness analysis); these same guidelines

hold true as applied to ecological aesthetics. In this light, we should also recognize that

scenic aesthetics has a proper place in forest management, and management practices

should be sensitive to the settings to which they are applied.

Researchers, too, must play an integral role in deepening our understanding of ecological

aesthetics’. We must expand our repertoire of methods to identify the full spectrum of 

aesthetic values, to move out of the laboratory and beyond studies of visual preferences

for photographic surrogates, and move into field studies where we can uncover the subtle,

symbolic, and deeper values of ecological aesthetics. Studies of hunters, birders, native

plant enthusiasts, and others who have an intimate knowledge of natural environments

would help us to understand how “a refined taste for natural objects” (Leopold 1949) is

acquired, and how ecological beauty is “seen” by people. In a study of aesthetic 

experiences in natural landscapes (Gobster and Chenoweth 1990), we developed and

refined our research instrument (questionnaire) using a focus group methodology. This

qualitative research method yielded many important insights into the nature of aesthetic

experiences, as did Nassauer’s (1988) use of in-depth interviews in understanding 

people’s perceptions of landscape care. Such techniques could be fruitfully applied to an

analysis of ecological aesthetics. Transferring this information into specific guidelines for

forest management and planning is not always possible, but such knowledge can help us

understand how people value and interact with forest environments.

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98
Defining the Social Acceptability 

of Forest Management Practices and Conditions:

lntegrating Science and Social Choice

George H. Stankey

99

Stankey, George H. 1996. Defining the social acceptability of forest management

practices and conditions: integrating science and social choice. In: Brunson, Mark W.;

Kruger, Linda E.; Tyler, Catherine B.; Schroeder, Susan A., tech. eds. Defining social

acceptability in ecosystem management: a workshop proceedings; 1992 June 23-25;

Kelso, WA. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-369. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of

Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station: 99-111.

At the 1993 Forest Conference in Portland, Oregon, Ted Strong, representing Native

American interests, remarked “we must understand that status quo management is 

completely unacceptable.” His remark embraces the central feature of the forest 

management crisis facing the Pacific Northwest as well as elsewhere: the current 

situation, characterized by uncertainty, acrimony, and distrust, leaves few, if any, satisfied.

And it implies the need for a search for an alternative that is characterized as 

“acceptable.”

What is there about the current situation that makes it unacceptable? To whom? What

would characterize an acceptable alternative? Is an acceptable alternative one that is

supported by a majority; if so, what is the relationship between such a judgment and longterm ecological sustainability?

Such questions are central to defining an acceptable forest management program. In this

paper I first focus on the acceptability concept and its underlying rationale and role in 

forest management. I then turn to a framework proposed by sociologist Walter Firey

defining the relationship between social acceptability and other decision factors. I 

conclude by outlining four basic questions that require attention if the potential of the

acceptability concept is to be fulfilled.

Keywords: Social values, acceptability, decisionmaking, informed discourse, role of

knowledge, cultural adaptability.

GEORGE H. STANKEY is a research social scientist, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research

Station, University of Oregon, Peavy Hall, Corvallis, OR, 97331.

Abstract
Following the Forest Conference, President Clinton instructed his administration to 

prepare a plan to “break the gridlock” that has paralyzed forest management in the region

in recent years. The resulting report (FEMAT 1993) represents the fifth analysis prepared

since 1990 in an effort to resolve the seemingly intractable conflicts between interests

favoring protection of endangered species, old growth, and a variety of other values and

interests (Thomas and Verner 19921).

Other efforts to find a “solution” to the crisis in forest management have occurred. Such

ideas as new forestry (Franklin 1989), New Perspectives (Salwasser 19902), and 

ecosystem management (Robertson 19923) are attempts to respond not only to increased

scientific knowledge of forest ecosystems, but to the need as well for a management

approach that accommodates a wider, more diverse range of values.

These efforts share a common belief in the capacity of science to help shape and 

formulate public policy regarding forestry. The view derives from a century of forestry 

philosophy and practice, rooted in the Progressive Era of Conservation. At the close of 

the 19th century, the rampant depletion and waste of resources drew increased scrutiny,

particularly from the scientific community and a sympathetic federal administration (Hays

1959). The response to such problems was consistent with the emerging themes of the

era: a belief in science, technical competence, and nonpartisan government (Dana and

Fairfax 1980). It paralleled social reforms throughout society, advocating the rational 

application of management principles as a means of making science serve society

(Wondolleck 1988). Key elements of this movement were the view of planning as a 

“scientific endeavor” and the role of the state as the principal agent of calculation and 

control (Friedmann 1987).

These scientifically-grounded roots have served forestry well. Sophisticated knowledge

and powerful technologies have combined to bring new levels of competence and 

understanding to forestry practices and policies. But the challenges confronting forestry

today have less to do with solving complex technical questions than they do with resolving

the growing conflicts over the values of forests (Wondolleck 1988). Yet the primary 

institutions and processes of decisionmaking remain grounded firmly in a belief in 

objective, quantitative analyses and the philosophical traditions of utilitarianism, positivism,

pragmatism, and critical rationalism, cornerstones of the social reform school of planning

(see Friedmann 1987, p. 87-136).

There is growing recognition, however, of the limits of technical knowledge and 

decisionmaking processes in resolving value-based conflicts. Although such conflicts

1 Thomas, Jack Ward; Verner, Jared. 1992. Accommodation with socio-economic factors under the Endangered 

Species Act - more than meets the eye. Transactions of the 57th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources

Conference. On file with the author.

2 Salwasser, Hal. 1990. New perspectives for managing the National Forest system -- what is new perspectives

and why are we doing it? Unpublished paper. Washington, DC: Forest Service. On file with the author.

3 Robertson, Dale. 1992. Memorandum issued to regional foresters and research station directors. June 4, 1992.

On file with the author.

100

The Frustrating

Search for an

Acceptable

Forestry
often involve “questions of fact and can be stated in the language of science, ... [they] are

unanswerable by science” (emphasis added); they are “trans-science” problems 

Weinberg 1972). Rittel and Webber (1973) and Allen and Gould (1986) describe a similar

notion. The problems confronting foresters and the whole of society today are more than

complex; they are wicked. A central characteristic of wicked problems is that they have 

no answers, in the sense of discrete, unequivocal outcomes; only more or less useful

solutions can be found. They are typically symptomatic of higher order problems, and,

given their idiosyncratic nature, only partially subject to trial-and-error learning.

The conflicts dominating forest management today exemplify wicked problems; their origin

lies in differing conceptions of public interest held by citizens and land managers, in

changing power relationships among various interests, and in the growing importance of

preservation and amenity values (Wondolleck 1988). Complex ecological problems 

continue to confront forest managers; they require more and better science, not less. But,

good science is a necessary, not sufficient, condition to resolve such problems. What is

currently missing, I propose, is the present incapacity (philosophically, cognitively, and

structurally) to define and integrate public judgments of acceptability in decisionmaking

processes. It is a central premise of this paper that the conflicts among competing social

values and meanings of forests (between and among both resource professionals and the

public) confound our ability to frame effective solutions and define societal direction. Yet,

current forest management paradigms continue to frame forestry as a technical-scientific

endeavor, leading to the predilection to seek technical solutions. If the underlying roots of

crisis lie elsewhere, however, then an alternative conception and framework for problem

definition and resolution are required.

The central question before us, then, is how to frame an approach to forest management

that is both ecologically responsible (i.e., founded upon good science) and socially

acceptable (i.e., it commands the understanding and support of the community). While

ecological issues have commanded considerable attention, however, the issue of defining

socially acceptable forest management practices and conditions has received scant 

attention. Thus, we next turn attention to a discussion of the acceptability concept and to 

a framework for understanding its relationship to the technical aspects of forest 

management.

The concept of acceptability has an alluring simplicity to it. With regard to forest 

management practices and conditions, we wish to promote those activities and states that

are acceptable, and to avoid those that are not. But beyond this obvious, common sense

proposition, what does such a concept imply?

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary reveals a major philosophical dimension which we must

engage if the term is to be of value. On the one hand, acceptability suggests being 

“capable or worthy of being accepted”; i.e., it implies a condition for which we strive. On

the other hand, acceptability can be defined as “barely satisfactory or adequate”; i.e, it

defines a threshold of tolerance that is only “good enough.”

Both notions can be found in resource management. For example, in the Limits of

Acceptable Change (LAC) (Stankey and others 1985), used to define the levels of change

in resource and social conditions permitted in wilderness, the latter conception of

101

The Concept 

of 

Acceptability
acceptability is implied. That is, the LAC defines the maximum levels of change allowed 

to occur before action is taken. The former definition is implied in a statement concerning

the research goals for the Forest Service’s New Perspectives in Forestry program: “The

research goal for New Perspectives is to enhance the scientific basis for managing the

National Forests and Grasslands in an ecologically sound and socially acceptable

manner” (emphasis added) (Kessler 1991, p. 14).

The concept of acceptability rests on several premises. First, the natural resources are

social constructs, defined by their utility to society (Field and Burch 1988). The perception

of utility is dynamic, varying both spatially and temporally. What society values, and the

management regimes judged appropriate to realize those values, can change. Conditions

and practices defined as acceptable at one time or place cannot be expected to 

necessarily remain the same.

A second premise is that society possesses political power to achieve its conceptions of

acceptability or to override those conceptions of acceptability prescribed by the technical

elite. Political power is distinguished from legal power held by administrative 

organizations, such as the USDA Forest Service; it rests in the body politic and it is from

political power that legal power derives. Because public judgments of social acceptability

have the force of political power behind them, they have the potential to be implemented,

even if ecological and/or economic factors jeopardize their long-term sustainability.

Third, acceptability judgments are informed by a variety of factors in addition to science.

These factors -- personal experience and knowledge (Friedmann 1987), ethical concerns

(Callicott 1989), values, attitudes, and beliefs -- help shape public conceptions of 

acceptability; they cannot be expected to change solely in response to changes in the

level of technical understanding.

Fourth, an acceptability judgment carries with it a need for action. If a situation is 

evaluated as acceptable, what steps are required to maintain it as such (or possibly to

make it “more acceptable”)? Conversely, if a situation is evaluated as unacceptable, what

steps are required to improve it to at least satisfy minimum standards? Thus,

acceptability judgments carry important implications for social choices regarding what

should be done, when, at what costs, and by whom.

Fifth, the judgment of acceptability implies a willingness to bear the costs and risks of

something less than perfect, or conversely, an unwillingness to bear the costs of 

perfection. For instance, the decision to build a dam capable of withstanding a 100-year

flood implies an acceptance of the risk of a 1000-year flood occurring or, again, the 

unwillingness to bear the costs of the more extensive protection.

The willingness to bear costs and risks is not evenly distributed across society. Those

most likely to bear these costs will likely be those with the narrowest conception of 

acceptability; they will be most concerned with setting standards that minimize impact

upon themselves or upon those values to which they accord priority. This differential 

distribution of costs, and the consequent perception of their seriousness, might underlie

the variability regarding acceptability found across society.

102
In his text Man. Mind and Land, Firey proposed a theory of resource use to identify

*mechanisms operating in every social order that forever sift and sort the resource

processes...possible in a given habitat or...conceivable in a given culture’ (Firey 1960, pp.

19-20). In other words, what factors influence the adoption and successful implementation

of certain resource activities? Firey (1960) hypothesized three broad groupings of 

knowledge required to answer such a question. Successful resource activities (or 

processes, as he called them) must be (1) physically possible, (2) economically

gainful, and (3) culturally adoptable. Each criterion serves a mutually constraining role 

on the others; for example, a given practice (e.g., clearcutting) cannot persist if it is 

inconsistent with cultural perceptions of appropriateness, irrespective of being scientifically

sound or economically justifiable (note that these fundamental criteria underlie discussions

regarding ecosystem management; see Robertson 19923).

Firey’s model of resource use provides insight as to the reasons underlying the failure of

technical analyses to contend adequately with many natural resource management 

problems. The predominant emphasis on the technical dimensions of these problems has

occurred at the expense of adequate attention to the question of cultural adoptability or

what we more commonly refer to as social acceptability.

This is by no means an argument that the scientific dimensions of forestry problems are

not important. As Schwarz and Thompson note (1990, p. 148), “that which is socially

desirable cannot be achieved if it is physically impossible.” The biophysical sciences and

associated technologies help define the realm of the possible; however, within this realm,

options and choices exist. Yet, the social system also imposes constraints on choice and

sets boundaries on the range of feasible alternatives (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982); 

decisionmaking is, in the final analysis, a social process. How, in a system of pluralistic

values and multiple options, many inconsistent with one another, does society make

choices about acceptable ends and means to those ends?

The previous discussion has outlined background to the acceptability issue, suggested

some of the premises that underlie its use, and identified how the concept is related to

other decision factors. Given such background, however, how does one employ the 

concept in such a manner so as to, if not ensure, at least enhance, the likelihood of

engendering implementable outcomes?

The answer, it seems, lies in specifying the types of key issues that must be addressed.

Only through posing the proper questions will it be possible to find those solutions that will

prove “more or less useful.” In this final section, I outline four basic questions that require

attention. These questions carry implications not only for who and what we ask, but for 

the nature of the institutions that respond to the answers, and the nature of the continuing

dialogue between forest management professionals and citizens. Within these questions

lie a host of specific hypotheses that form the basis of a systematic body of research

designed to enhance understanding of acceptability. It is clear, however, that the division

between these questions is not always clear and the implications of answers to one question will often be significant for those to another.

103

Joining Biophysical and

Economic

Factors with

Social

Acceptability

Defining

Acceptability:

How Do We 

Ask the Right

Questions
The first fundamental question concerns the definition of the attributes to which 

acceptability refers. In the case of forestry, acceptability questions have focused on two

distinctive, yet related, aspects: practices and conditions. Practices refer to specific 

management prescriptions, such as clearcutting. Conditions are somewhat self-defined:

they are the outcomes resulting from practices.

Although this is a convenient categorization, it may contribute more to confusion than 

clarification. For instance, people might express great opposition to the practice of

clearcutting, but at the same time support the conditions that result from it (e.g., wildlife

habitat, wildflowers). Such a relationship raises questions related to public understanding

of the consequences of given practices and the effect of such understanding upon the

evaluation of these practices. I shall return to this issue shortly. For the moment, 

however, it is enough to hypothesize that such knowledge does bear upon the evaluative

stance people take, and that as knowledge of consequences increases, evaluations can

change. For instance, studies of wilderness users have shown that increased knowledge

about the role of fire in forest ecosystems is positively associated with support for policies

advocating an enhanced role for fire (McCool and Stankey 1986, Stankey 1976). This, it

should be noted, can operate both ways; increased knowledge can lead to a diminished

level of acceptability.

Acceptability requires that we identify specific situational attributes that influence 

judgments. This has implications for such things as project planning, inventory, and 

monitoring. ldentifying these attributes, however, is complex. Certain specific qualities 

can account for differences in acceptability judgments. For many people, clearcutting in

any shape or form is unacceptable; for others, situationally specific features will have an

effect on these judgments. Clark and others (1984) found that campers were strongly

opposed (69%) to “large” clearcuts near dispersed roaded recreation areas, but only 17%

were opposed to “small” clearcuts. Although the definition of what constitutes large or

small is problematic, such results nonetheless remind us that people recognize 

distinctions that can lead to different outcomes regarding acceptability.

It is also likely that judgments of acceptability form in relation to the symbolic meaning

assigned natural resources. The meaning attached to “special places” (e.g., the place

where one’s family camped for many years) might constitute the most significant attribute

influencing decisions about acceptability. How such meanings are tapped and

incorporated in decisions represents a major challenge (Mitchell and others 1993).

In a pluralistic society, holding varying knowledge, interests, values, and levels of 

commitment regarding forest management, there will be a concomitant variation in the

definitions of acceptability. The central question underlying this aspect of acceptability is

“In what ways, and why, do judgments of acceptability vary among stakeholders and other

political actors?”

A key feature of the current political environment within which decisions about forest 

management are made is its increasing complexity. Whereas in the past, relatively few

interests commanded attention and power in decisions about forest management, today a

host of values demand access and consideration in decisionmaking. There is a need to

consider how this increasingly varied spectrum of interests can be taken into account,

104

Acceptability 

of What?

Acceptability to

Whom?
particularly in cases where these interests are nontraditional, nonlocal, or, in the case of

intergenerational interests, those not yet born (Niemi and others 1990). Because forest

managers have a limited ability to know what the public wants or will accept, an effort to

tap a broader spectrum of interests to derive measures of social acceptability is needed.

What is the appropriate unit of analysis from which assessments of social acceptability are

sought? The individual, group, community,or what? In what ways do such judgments

arise? Earlier, I outlined the premise that judgments of social acceptability derive from a

variety of factors in addition to science. What are these other factors,and what is their 

relative influence upon acceptability judgments? When judgments of acceptability lead to

conditions that do not meet the criteria of physical possibility or economic gainfulness,

how can such judgments be changed? How is it possible to enhance public 

understanding for, and appreciation of, the highly complex and often ambiguous nature of

many environmental processes and functions in such a manner so as to increase the 

likelihood of sustainable social choices (Yankelovich 1991)? Although increased 

knowledge can play a role in changing public conceptions of acceptability, we lack 

understanding of how this process functions; e.g., the role of credibility, the timing of 

information dispersal, and the linkage of scientific knowledge to other forms of knowledge

(Friedmann 1987).

Finally, it is important to have an improved understanding of how alternative conceptions

of acceptability affect the distribution of costs and benefits associated with these 

decisions,and how an awareness of this distribution affects subsequent judgments. Given

a particular stream of consequences, upon whom in society do the benefits and costs fall

and, especially for those who bear the costs, what are the possibilities for mitigation or

other compensatory measures?

The third basic question addresses the institutional aspects of decisions regarding 

acceptability. What structures and processes are required to facilitate and inform public

discourse about acceptability? To what extent are current structures and processes 

capable of achieving such goals,and to what extent are innovative and nontraditional 

institutions required? What are the implications and consequences of alternative 

arrangements relative to the role and capacity of various stakeholders?

Socolow (1976) has criticized contemporary resource management for its preoccupation

with technical analyses. But it is not just this preoccupation with analyses that is of 

concern, but also the failure to attend to those aspects of resource management that do

not achieve the level of attention they require and which are of concern to the community

(Mohai and Verbyla 1987). Hence, technical analyses that command attention and

resources may contribute little to some acceptable resolution. In sum, there is a need for

institutional processes that increase the likelihood that decisions about the “acceptability

of what” embrace relevant measures.

The question of how society organizes itself to make choices about its future and the 

various means to attain a desired end has been the focus of much attention. In the case

of forest management and the formulation of public judgments regarding acceptability, the

question takes on added complexity. Pierce and others (1992) describe this as “the 

technical information quandary”, engendered by the intersection of (1) value changes that

105

Who Makes the

Decisions about

Acceptability?
lead to changes in policy demands and claims for influence upon decisionmaking 

processes, and (2) technological and scientific content being imparted to old issues and

new policy conflict centered on technologies and their impact. The central question that

emerges from these conditions is “How can the democratic ideal of public control be made

consistent with the realities of a society dominated by technically complex policy 

questions” (Pierce and Lovrich 1983, p. 1)?

A variety of frameworks and theories have been posited to address the ways in which

society might organize to address such a question, to define the idea of public interest,

and to formulate action to achieve desired ends.

Among students of sociology, planning, political science, and public administration, the

ideas of rationalism, idealism, and realism have been advanced (Pierce and others 1992,

Rothman 1979, Schubert 1960, Wondolleck 1988). Rationalism rests on the notion of 

efficiency; efficient management coincides with the public interest. Through mechanisms

such as Congress, the “common good” is determined as an expression of various majority

interests. Idealists, on the other hand, call for an active role on the part of public 

administrators in defining the public interest (which they see as something of substance

and absolute in its terms [Schubert 19601), using technically knowledgeable and 

compassionate advocates to achieve it. Not all interests are directly involved. Indeed, 

idealists argue that it is a waste of time to attempt to educate the public in the complexity

of modern-day issues, either because of the lnability or unwillingness to become

informed (Pierce and others 1992). Instead, a small professional or political elite, utilizing

scientific knowledge, higher analytical skills, and a “steadfast moral position,” work to

implement decisions on behalf of the public interest (Rothman 1979).

Realists reject the very idea of “the public interest”; the role of administrative organizations

is to accommodate the “babel of voices” in the public arena and manage the endless 

conflict among opposing interests. In theory, if not in practice, realists advocate 

widespread citizen participation in a search for a consensus that constitutes some 

workable approximation of “the public interest” (Schubert 1960). Whatever “public 

interest” exists is transitory, changing as power relationships among contending interests

shift.

The realist’s perspective is consistent with the emerging interest in a “social learning”

approach to planning. Social learning departs radically from other planning perspectives 

in that it conceives of knowledge as a product of experience, constantly reforming in the

face of application (Friedmann 1987). Through knowledge comes the capacity to act; by

acting, new knowledge is acquired; indeed, this iterative relationship between knowledge

and action is the foundation of the growing interest in adaptive management (Lee 1993).

It is not the purpose of the preceding discussion to provide detailed elaboration regarding

these various schema. Rather, it is included to indicate that efforts to establish an 

appropriate and useful framework for linking science and social judgment, expert and 

citizen, and bureaucracies and the wider society have attracted much discussion and

attention, if not consensus. However, irrespective of the disciplinary focus taken, it is 

clear that policymaking processes in forestry have been characterized by concern with

technical issues, centralized control of knowledge and action, efficiency, and rationality.

106
It is equally clear that such an approach is increasingly ill-equipped to deal with the

emerging sociopolitical environment within which choices are made. Its apparent inability

to deal with such questions, in turn, leads to the perception of an unwillingness to do so.

As a consequence, we see an increasing reliance upon the executive and judicial branches of government as a means of seeking redress (Dunlap 1991).

The barriers to openness within organizations and in their capacity to engage wider 

community concerns are substantial. Given form and endurance through organizational

socialization processes, education systems and the like, such barriers operate to sustain

organizational survival rather than to facilitate debate, discussion, and openness. The

irony is that in striving to protect “turf,” the blindness to the need to open discussion to the

wider community of interests might, in fact, lead to a loss of that treasured turf. As

Paehlke and Torgerson (1990) comment: “ln practice, the positions and interests of 

central organizational actors screen out the perception of relevant features of situations

and problems. Conventional orientations are thus limited, ironically, in the very realm they

take to be their own: knowledge” (p. 9).

In order for ecologically and economically informed discourse to occur in the formulation of

public judgments regarding acceptability, new institutional structures must be examined. 

In particular, there is a need to look for those structures capable of achieving what

Yankelovich (1991) calls “working through;” i.e, establishing forums in which the 

community can consider the consequences of its views. Unfortunately, society is not wellequipped with the institutions required to achieve this facilitative role. Dryzek (1987), in a

review of seven major existing social choice mechanisms (e.g., markets, administrative

systems, moral persuasion), concludes “any ‘winner’ among the seven types of social

choice would, then, be little more than the best of a poor bunch” (p. 181).

Defining acceptability is, in the final analysis, a choice of tolerance as to what society

accepts as the bounds of the environmental conditions with which it is surrounded and the

practices it undertakes to maintain or restore those conditions. Scant research attention

has been devoted to the institutional structures and processes required to enact such

decisions, a failure that could affect both the ability to achieve consensus regarding

acceptability or to implement those choices once made.

This final question calls for a greater understanding of the decisionmaking environment

within which judgments about acceptability are derived. In essence, the question 

presumes that such judgments are prefaced with the conditional notion: “it depends”. The

substantive focus of this question, then, becomes one of understanding the nature of

those conditional factors.

A host of factors influence acceptability judgments. Clearly, technical knowledge is one

such factor. As the level of technical knowledge increases, it is likely that an awareness 

of the bounds of possibility increases as well; i.e., people gain an increased sense of the

range of choices before them. The extent, however, to which such knowledge leads to

changes in underlying values, attitudes, and preferences is less clear. Indeed, increased

technical understanding might, in fact, reinforce opposition to particular practices or 

conditions.

107

What is the

Context Within

Which

Acceptability is

Defined?
Associated with the role of technical knowledge is the question of how an increased

awareness of consequences (physical, social, economic, political) of various management

practices and conditions affects society. Much attention is paid to the role of the NlMBY

syndrome (not in my backyard) and its closely related cousin, LULU’s (locally unwanted

land uses); particular practices or conditions are all right as long as they are not next door.

There is evidence to support such a view (e.g., Johnson and others 1994). The reaction

seems to embrace much of the conditional nature of acceptability judgments; it’s all right

to clearcut or dispose of toxic wastes as long as they do not affect me.

However, it can be argued that the NlMBY syndrome reflects an important first step in

public judgments about the acceptability or lack thereof of a particular resource practice.

In other words, it represents more than a selfish view (Paehlke and Torgerson 1990). The

NlMBY movement may represent the first step in an eventual view advocating NIABY: not

in anybody’s backyard. Such movements reflect a growing awareness of the adverse 

consequences of different resource management programs and practices and of the 

formation of public judgments about their relative acceptability.

The spatial and temporal context within which acceptability judgments are framed is

important. For example, the silvicultural prescriptions typically associated with new 

forestry might be underlain by sound biological principles and knowledge. Their social

acceptability, however, may be judged less by these facts and more by the situational 

context, which sees the area as just one more logged stand in a drainage; in essence, it is

a judgment that says “how you harvest is immaterial, you’ve already cut too much!”

To what extent are public judgments about acceptability subject to negotiation among 

various interests, in a quid pro quo sense? Is there evidence that such judgments can be

altered by formal or informal negotiations with other interests? For instance, would 

negative judgments currently held by industry about the acceptability of new forestry 

practices be affected by an agreement on the part of environmentalists to accept such

practices in roadless areas? If such negotiative relationships do occur, what types of 

information are required and what institutional processes are needed to enable them to

occur?

Finally, what is the role of ethical and moral considerations in the formation of acceptability

judgments? The paper by List in these proceedings addresses this issue in more detail;

such considerations are likely of growing significance. The assignment of a judgment of

acceptability to a practice or condition reflects a significant normative prescription.

Evolving conceptions of the proper role of society as a steward of natural resources, and

the associated ethical and moral structures that underlie these conceptions, may prove to

be one of the most significant influences upon such judgments.

The issue of defining the social acceptability of forest management practices and 

conditions is a major challenge facing society. In order that ecologically informed, 

intelligent decisions are made, it is essential that such judgments be seen as social 

choices reflecting both technical/scientific dimensions as well as the values and beliefs of

the wider community. It is also necessary that a broader discourse involving citizen and

108

Conclusion
scientist be encouraged. Only by joining these perspectives is it possible to formulate

appropriate and implementable decisions.

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111
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112
Brunson, Mark W. 1996. The social context of ecosystem management: unanswered 

questions and unresolved issues. In: Brunson, Mark W.; Kruger, Linda E.; Tyler,

Catherine B.; Schroeder, Susan A., tech. eds. Defining social acceptability in ecosystem

management: a workshop proceedings; 1992 June 23-25; Kelso, WA. PNW-GTR-369.

Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest

Research Station: 113-126.

Among the emerging problems associated with the social context of ecosystem 

management are questions about ecosystem management as an idea, questions about its

implementability, and questions about specific aspects of ecosystem management 

practices and conditions. This paper discusses several of these issues, including ones

raised by national forest stakeholders as well as those arising from the workshop that led

to this proceedings. The most fundamental question concerns the acceptability of the

ecosystem management concept itself -- a question that largely has been ignored by 

those who seek to adopt ecosystem management. Reasons are discussed for this 

omission, as well as potential answers to the question. A key element of that discussion,

and a theme that reverberates through this problem analysis, is the issue of scientific

uncertainty and risk -- the overriding public and professional concern identified during this

research.

Keywords: Ecosystem management, acceptability, scientific uncertainty, risk perception,

biocentrism, public participation, values of knowledge.

A frequent consequence of intensive research on a new topic is that we discover not only

new knowledge, but also how much more we do not know. The articles in this report go a

long way toward addressing Stankey and Clark’s (1991) concern that “there is inadequate

understanding of what constitutes ‘acceptability’ with regard to the practice of New

Perspectives and of the associated impacts of these differing conceptions” (p. 23). We

have seen how that understanding can be enhanced by examining the literatures of 

sociology, social psychology, history, anthropology, philosophy and political theory. We

also have seen how disciplines as diverse as psychology, political science, landscape

architecture and forestry can offer tools for studying the social context of forestry and

MARK BRUNSON is an assistant professor of forest resources at Utah State University, Logan, Utah, 83442.

113

Abstract

lntroduction 

The Social Context of Ecosystem Management: 

Unanswered Questions and Unresolved lssues

Mark W. Brunson
incorporating social concerns into forest management. A working definition of social

acceptability in ecosystem management has also been offered.

Yet this research has also helped us to identify other, emerging issues: questions about

ecosystem management as an idea, about its implementability, and about specific aspects

of ecosystem management practices and conditions. This final paper describes some of

the more critical of these emerging problems, including ones that are central to the future

of the ecosystem management concept as well as those most likely to elicit public 

expressions of concern about the forests being managed using an ecosystem approach.

The analysis draws on two principal sources: academic and political writings and 

discussions, and comments made by members of various national forest constituencies.

The first category includes discussions at the June 1992 workshop which led to this

report, as well as the rapidly growing literature on ecosystem management, “new 

forestry,” New Perspectives and related concepts. The second category of sources

encompasses a large number of statements made by interested persons as they learned

about new approaches to forestry during the period from September 1990 to June 1992.

Although the research was conducted in the Pacific Northwest, the questions that arose

are likely to be applicable throughout the United States and Canada.

As momentum built up in the New Perspectives initiative (1990-92) and related “new

forestry” movement, forestry entities began to develop research and demonstration areas

highlighting ecosystem management concepts. In the Northwest, locations for these 

projects included the Forest Service’s H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest near Blue River,

Ore.; the Oregon State University (OSU) research forest at Corvallis; Seattle’s city 

watershed near North Bend, Wash.; and several Plum Creek Timber Co. tracts in western

Washington. As forest interest groups became aware of these efforts, they often asked 

(or were invited) to attend ecosystem management demonstration tours of those sites. A

sampling of these tours provided the research setting for this phase of the study.

On several tours, I asked participants to complete questionnaires about their reactions to

tour stops or topics. Questions and comments directed to tour leaders were recorded on

those same tours as well as several others where surveys were not administered.

Additional data came from interviews of visitors at the OSU research forest and from 

audience questions and comments at public forums in Corvallis and Eugene, Ore. The

study was in some ways analogous to the “scoping” process in federal environmental

impact assessments; its objective was to describe in ideographic fashion the broad range

of social values that might be affected by the implementation of what we now call 

ecosystem management.

Data gathering and analysis combined qualitative and quantitative methods, with 

emphasis on the former. Open and axial coding processes (Strauss and Corbin 1990)

were used to develop a typology of reactions to ecosystem management practices, 

conditions, and objectives. The primary intent was not to measure the depth of support or

opposition, nor to rank the importance of issues or concerns, but to catalog and categorize

issues that arose and to identify ones that arose most frequently and/or crossed 

constituency group boundaries.

114

Gathering

Public

Reactions
Foresters and scientists in related fields made up the primary audience for field tours and

off-site forums. Participants, however, also included public school teachers, liberal arts

and science students at Oregon State University and Linfield College, and environmental

group members. Respondents typically lived in the Northwest, visited forests regularly for

recreation, and had some post-high school coursework in forestry or biology. Responses

to an attitude scale (McCool and others 1986) showed that tour groups ranged from 

moderately commodity-oriented to highly amenity-oriented in their beliefs about the proper

role of forestry. Post-tour questions found generally positive attitudes toward ecosystem

management concepts and practices. Nearly half of the respondents preferred alternative

techniques to standard silvicultural and timber harvest methods. Further details about

methods and the research sample are given in Brunson (1992).

The most basic question surrounding the social acceptability of ecosystem management 

is whether the ecosystem management concept itself is socially acceptable. As Franklin

(1989) recounted, the architects of what we now call ecosystem management were 

initially interested in biophysical questions: How does timber cutting affect streams? What

is the role of woody debris in forest ecosystems? How diverse is invertebrate life in old

growth forest canopies? Only after a complex picture of forest ecosystems began to

emerge, and the search began for a unified theory of management for ecosystem 

components, did they realize their “new forestry” might also offer an answer to a 

sociopolitical question: Is there an alternative to the stark choice between tree farms and 

total preservation?

The belief of forest ecologists was (and is) that the answer to that question would be yes:

Yes, such an alternative exists; yes, ecosystem science can offer that alternative. And

most relevant to this discussion: yes, the public will welcome the scientists’ alternative.

This last assumption needs testing. The underlying acceptability of the ecosystem 

management ideal has been largely unconsidered. In this section, I will first discuss some

reasons why it has not been tested, and then discuss reasons why there might be 

variation in public attitudes toward the concept of ecosystem management.

Surely there are several reasons why agency professionals and forest scientists have

largely ignored the overriding question of whether ecosystem management itself is a

socially acceptable concept. Perhaps the simplest one is that it is obvious something

different must be done, and ecosystem management seems the most palatable known

alternative. Moreover, as the concept has evolved, it has acquired a number of socially

responsive trappings -- e.g., a commitment to more substantive public participation earlier

in the decisionmaking process -- which are clearly designed to meet public criticisms of

forest management. But the addition of these sociopolitical mechanisms serves to 

disguise the original question of whether the biophysical basis of ecosystem management

is socially acceptable.

When fundamental assumptions go unquestioned, it is most often because the assumer

cannot conceive of an alternative. In other words, the assumption is rooted in 

paradigmatic and/or ideological characteristics of the group (professional discipline, 

culture, etc.) making the assumption. Stankey (this proceedings) offered a detailed and

115

A Fundamental

Acceptability

Question

Ecosystem

Management

as Moral

lmperative
illuminating perspective on how the natural resource professions have adhered to a

“rational-technical paradigm.” Given this professional orientation, it is not hard to see how

forest managers might accept on faith the notion that the current problem confronting

forestry can only be addressed through a scientifically derived, technologically based 

solution.

Further ideological explanation can be found in the growing adherence of resource 

managers, as well as natural scientists and environmentalists, to a biocentric ethic (Brown

and Harris 1992). In the ideology of modern conservation, “biocentric” management -- 

that which sets the needs of the human species no higher than those of any other species

within a given ecosystem -- occupies a kind of moral high ground. This idea can be traced

to Aldo Leopold’s (1966) essay “The Land Ethic,” often cited as a primary intellectual 

influence by both applied and basic natural scientists. Leopold saw ethics, which he

defined as the impetus for individuals to cooperate with others in a community, following

an evolutionary progression. He described how “community” has widened over the 

centuries from its original application (an adult male power structure) to encompass wives,

slaves, children, and people of other races. The land ethic “simply enlarges the 

boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively:

the land” (p. 239). By describing this extension of ethics as both an “ecological necessity”

and as the next step in an evolutionary sequence, Leopold presented biocentrism as an

inevitable advancement to a higher moral plain.

By implication, those who espouse biocentrism can be seen as morally superior to those

who do not. A corollary to this viewpoint is that initiatives rooted in biocentrism similarly

may be preferable based on moral or ethical grounds. In such case, one can conclude

that it is neither necessary nor socially beneficial to ask the larger society whether it wants

to adopt a biocentrically driven stratagem. (After all, we no longer ask if society wants to

own slaves, or to send its children to work in sweatshops.) Ecosystem management has

as its twin pillars the biocentric ideals of biodiversity and sustainability, so it may not be

obvious to biocentric scientists that anyone who understands it could ethically object to it.

But large segments of American society see humans and their destiny differently. Many

people see humans as having been set apart from other organisms by Biblical fiat; they

may not believe that ecosystem management fits their obligations toward the earth. Many

others simply doubt that humanity has progressed very far along any moral or intellectual

continuum. The central idea of ecosystem management is that natural resource 

professionals can manipulate forests, grasslands, and other environmental systems in a

way that mimics natural biophysical processes so that those systems can function as evolution intended, with all of their diverse components intact, while the human society

obtains a suitably wide range of socially desirable products. By adopting ecosystem 

management as a guiding principle, the Forest Service is expressing its confidence that

such a thing both can be done and will be done. Not everyone is so convinced.

Beliefs about the ecosystem management concept are dependent on issues of trust and

risk. To support ecosystem management requires trust -- trust in fundamental concepts of

resource management, in government employees, in science itself. Many people believe

the Forest Service is uninterested in preserving ecosystems or biological diversity. Such

116

Alternative Models

of Forest

Management
distrust is clear in the environmental advocacy literature: e.g., Zuckerman’s (1992) 

characterization of the new approach to forestry as “new hype,” or Kerr’s (1990) 

memorable description: “a kinder, gentler form of rape” (p. 22). Even in academic writing

we find statements such as this from Frissell and others (1992) in the journal

Conservation Biology: “Recent court decisions and congressional hearings have 

gruesomely exposed that the drive to extract timber subjugates virtually all other 

considerations within the U.S. Forest Service” (p. 461).

Beyond the question of agency intent is the question of scientific fallibility and risk. To

again quote Frissell and others (1992): “The argument for the role of wilderness in 

conservation does not derive simply from the assumption that ‘nature-knows-best.’ It

springs from the assumption that despite good intentions (and a few bad ones), humans,

and bureaucratic systems like the Forest Service, do not always know what is best” (p.

462). In essence, two questions are being posed here: Do forest managers have the 

political will to manipulate forests in ways that truly mimic natural processes? And do they

have the scientific knowledge to do so? Based on the earlier discussion of underlying 

ideologies, we must add a third question: Is a biocentric model of natural resource 

management the proper one for forestry to follow? Only if the answer to all three

questions is yes will ecosystem management appear to be the most appropriate path for

foresters to follow.

Figure 1 displays how differing responses to those three questions can lead to five or

more different preferred models of future resource management. We begin by 

considering the ideological question: Should society manage significant portions of public

forest land for the production of timber or other high-value commodities even if such 

production reduces the land’s capability to provide unpriced or amenity resources? If the

answer is yes, an anthropocentric track (left side of diagram) will be followed. If not, a 

biocentric track will be chosen. The second question concerns ecological risk: Do we 

possess sufficient scientific knowledge about forests to successfully implement strategies

that permit acceptable flows of nonemphasized resources while maintaining optimal flows

of commodities? And the final question concerns political trust: Do the agencies have the

ability or desire to withstand interest group pressures that may shift management away

from an optimal path?

No matter whether one prefers an anthropocentric or biocentric approach to management,

acceptance of ecosystem management is less likely if one has little faith in agency 

capabilities. If an individual believes commodity primacy is appropriate in some locations,

but does not have faith in the agency’s capacity to practice a scientifically defensible

brand of integrative forestry (i.e, a “new and improved” multiple use), he or she may 

prefer a New Zealand-style “segregated management” approach where lands are divided

into single-resource units for timber production, recreation, biological reserves, etc.

117
Conversely, those who believe neither in commodity primacy nor the agency’s capacity to

practice integrative forestry may well opt for a hands-off policy, one which environmental

ethicist Peter List described at the Kelso workshop as “silvicultural silence” The 

silvicultural silence approach is consistent with strong environmentalist perspectives such

as that of the deep ecologists (Devall and Sessions 1985), who see human degradation of

the nonhuman world as excessive and rapidly worsening as a result of intrinsic negative

aspects of the human condition. Such people place higher value on those aspects of

nature in which man’s role is largely invisible or nonexistent. This is reflected in the 

statements of Frissell and others (1992) as noted above, and also in aesthetic orientations

such as those expressed by Rolston and Coufal (1991): “Forests are never ugly; they are

only more or less beautiful; the scale runs from zero upward with no negative domain.

Even the ‘ruined’ forest, regenerating itself, has positive esthetic qualities, when trees rise

to fill the space against the sky” (p. 39). Thus, even if a forest is ‘ruined’ by humans, it

reacquires beauty through the simple means of its innate restorative capacity, 

“regenerating itself” without human aid.

Even if one has faith in the scientific capacities of the agencies and associated applied

sciences, one still may not decide that ecosystem management is the most acceptable

solution to the current socially defined problem in forestry. A biocentrist might opt for

ecosystem management. But an anthropocentrist may prefer a fine-tuning of the 

traditional multiple use approach, wherein commodity primacy remains the principal tenet

while noncommodity values are somehow given a more cosmetic level of attention. And if

one doesn’t trust the agencies to have sufficient political will to manage in the “right” way

(whatever one thinks that way is), the preferred approach is likely to be some sort of 

prescriptive legislation that limits managerial flexibility and forces the agencies to manage

in a particular way. The legislative prescription approach might lead to any one of the

118

Figure 1 -- Typology of preferences for alternative models of public forest management.
other four models. Or, perhaps more likely, it could lead to a fifth “hybrid” model arising

from a politically negotiated compromise. This model would probably contain elements of

all four of the others, but in an as-yet-unknown (and perhaps unrecognizable) form.

All of these approaches have adherents both within and outside the forestry profession. It

is not clear, however, which approach the “general public” prefers. Research on the New

Environmental Paradigm (Catton and Dunlap 1980) suggests that the public is moving

away from a preference for commodity-oriented management and toward a more 

biocentric approach. Several recent surveys by Steel and his colleagues (e.g., Brunson

and Steel 1994; Shindler and others 1993) have included a question asking members of

the public to choose among three models of natural resource management: an agricultural

approach that emphasizes commodity production, a multiple benefits approach 

emphasizing “a long-term sustainable balance between human and ecological concerns,”

and a preservation approach where human interference is minimized. Typically, twothirds of respondents choose the multiple benefits approach; of the remainder, twice as

many generally favor the preservation model as favor the agricultural one.

These results may tend to suggest that the public will react favorably to ecosystem 

management if they believe it is possible. Clearly a multiple-benefits approach is favored

over either timber primacy or silvicultural silence in theory. Moreover, statements during

the field tours suggest that positive reactions to ecosystem management are positively

associated with knowledge about ecosystems. Similarly, in a study of scenic impacts of

alternative silviculture (Brunson 1991), knowledge about the purposes of silvicultural 

practices appeared to mitigate, though not alleviate, adverse reactions to their scenic

impacts. Yet if lingering doubts about science are reinforced by early failures, the political

debate may shift toward greater acceptance of “silvicultural silence.

For the sociopolitical as well as the ecological aspects of ecosystem management,

acceptance is greatly influenced by perceptions of risk and uncertainty. A constant 

theme during field tours and public forums was that any changes in forestry practice may

have unforeseen consequences. Ecosystem management critics within the forestry

profession often point to a lack of scientific ground-truthing and precise objectives and

definitions. They decry the speed at which ecosystem management progressed from idea

to national policy (e.g., Atkinson 1992). As Fiedler (1992) put it, the skeptics “are unwilling

to jump on the latest bandwagon, having seen the wheels come off so many wagons

before” (p. 2).

This theme was voiced frequently on field tours, not only by those who disapproved of the

ecosystem management concept in principle, but also by those who were favorably 

disposed but preferred a more cautious shift to the new approach. Many nonforesters 

also were concerned about uncertainty. Some environmentalists believe there are 

catastrophic risks associated with human intervention that outweigh any potential benefits

(see Kerr 1990 for an expression of this view). Others simply noted that if we do not know

the risks of failure, they would prefer not to require our children or grandchildren to find out

the hard way.

119

Risk,

Uncertainty,

and Recreancy
As noted previously, risk will be a key factor in decisions about the social acceptability of

ecosystem management. Fischoff and others (1981) described the acceptable-risk 

question in terms of five problems: (1) ambiguities in how to define the problem, (2) 

difficulties in ascertaining facts about the matter, (3) uncertainty about whose values are 

to be represented and how they are to be elicited, (4) the inevitable infallibility of experts,

and (5) questions about how to evaluate the quality of the decision process.

All five of these apply to ecosystem management. The concept itself has not been 

rigorously defined. We have already seen the difficulties associated with defining public

acceptability; concepts such as biodiversity and sustainability are likewise difficult to pin

down. A Society of American Foresters task force recently opted to omit any reference to

“sustainability” in the SAF code of ethics because members could not specify exactly what

in forests should be sustained (Craig 1992). Facts are also questioned -- facts arising 

from recent research on ecological processes and conditions, as well as about the extent

to which traditional practice has harmed forest ecosystems. Equally contentious are

debates about which stakeholders and which values should be emphasized in national 

forest management.

An especially thorny issue is expert fallibility. Mistakes in slow-growing forests take a long

time to detect or correct. Scientific predictions about eventual effects of ecosystem 

management are not easily verifiable, and the public increasingly doubts whether science

can offer unbiased information or produce technologies capable of protecting natural 

systems (Brunson and Steel 1994; Steel and others 1994). The length of time between

treatment and outcome also complicates the choice of an evaluation strategy. If the 

results may not become known for a century or more, when can we decide whether

ecosystem management works?

A critical factor in risk perception associated with ecosystem management is that the risks

accrue to commonly held lands where decisions rest in the hands of a government

bureaucracy. A recent nationwide survey (Brunson and Steel 1994) found that fewer than

one-third of Americans have “a great deal” of confidence in the stewardship of the Forest

Service and Bureau of Land Management, while somewhat more than one-third had 

‘hardly any’ confidence in those agencies. Confidence levels were even lower in Oregon,

where there is more day-to-day contact with those agencies. Lack of confidence probably

arises from disagreements about the proper role of agency resource management coming

from both ends of the preservation-utilization spectrum. Nonetheless, clearly there is 

widespread public skepticism that a federal agency can manage “our” public lands.

Freudenburg (1993) refers to this problem as recreancy: the perceived failure of 

institutional actors to carry out their responsibilities with the degree of vigor necessary to

merit the societal trust they enjoy. Freudenburg argues that as societies become more

specialized, with greater division of labor, individuals must place greater responsibility for

their fates in the hands of unknown others. Responsibilities for most things are shared,

and sometimes problems can arise if any one of the responsibility-sharers fails to meet his

or her or its expectations.

120
When institutions are recreant, it is difficult to assign blame. We attribute negative causes

to government bureaucracies as surrogates for the wider network of institutions that

shared responsibility. Thus the Love Canal incident is not only the fault of corporate 

greed, but also of regulators’ failure to adequately recognize and protect society from that

greed. Moreover, the corporation has gone away but the bureaucracy remains, a living

memorial to the disaster. Similarly, forest management agencies may assume blame for

institutional failures associated with changing forest conditions. Under such 

circumstances it may be difficult for the public to believe the agency can avoid the next

institutional failure.

In surveys of community activists, Freudenberg (1984) commonly heard complaints that

government agencies failed to facilitate, or even actively blocked, access to information

about environmental hazards. Recreancy-related problems might be mitigated through

active facilitation strategies within forestry agencies -- programs for enhancing and 

maintaining communication about all aspects of ecosystem management, including risks

and failures. Indeed, a critical element in addressing all of these uncertainty-related issues

will be communication between managers who are practicing ecosystem management,

scientists who are evaluating its effects, and publics whose values and benefits are

dependent on continued health of forest ecosystems.

In the Pacific Northwest Region of the Forest Service, scientists and managers have

established several “learning centers,” the purpose of which is to provide settings and/or

infrastructure necessary to study ecosystem management methods as well as basic 

science, and to communicate their findings to managers and the public. As of this writing,

there are five such learning centers in the region1. Each differs at least slightly from the

others in its ecological system of interest, its primary research questions, and the model of

research, application, and technology transfer it employs. Given the importance of this

work, an analysis of the learning center approach should be undertaken with a goal of

answering this question: Which learning center models are able to most effectively 

maintain open communication channels between scientists, managers, and publics?

Dozens of questions about ecosystem management will occupy the attention of scientists and

managers both within and outside learning centers. Some of these questions are much more

likely than others to strike a nerve with a broader public. Once the hundreds of questions and

comments made during this study had been collated and categorized, seven issues stood out

as eliciting the most widespread interest and concern. Four of these directly pertain to the

relationship between forests and the wider society: public participation in ecosystem planning,

1 Blue Mountains Learning Center, LaGrande, Ore.; Cascade Center for Ecosystem Management, Blue River,

Ore.; Columbia Learning Center, Vancouver, Wash.; High Desert Learning Center, Bend, Ore.; and Olympic

Learning Center, Quilcene, Wash.

121

Communication as

a Risk-Reduction

Strategy

Sensitive

Aspects of

Ecosystem

Management

Practice
political ramifications of adopting an ecosystem management approach, scenic impacts of

nontraditional silviculture, and economic impacts of changing the mix of amenity and 

commodity resource outputs. The other three issues may affect the broad society less

directly, but nonetheless may be likely to influence attitudes toward the new approach:

growth and regeneration in stands harvested using nontraditional silviculture, safety of

timber workers, and agencies’ ability to monitor stand conditions and react swiftly if there

is evidence of unanticipated problems.

Each of these issues can be described in terms of research questions that should be near

the top of the scientific agenda for ecosystem managers because of their widespread

interest and increased probability of affecting public attitudes toward ecosystem 

management. They involve a variety of social and biological sciences, and are offered in

no particular order of importance:

1. How can private citizens’ participation be routinely incorporated into the complex business

of landscape-level planning? One of the key tenets of ecosystem management is that

planning and management should occur at scales larger than the stand or site.

Geographic context affects biophysical components of ecosystems just as it affects social

1 components. However, landscape-level planning is more complex than stand-level or

project-specific planning. Given the difficulties agencies have experienced in obtaining

public involvement at these smaller scales, how can we expect to do it effectively at a

larger scale?

2. Where does ecosystem management fit in the shifting “landscape” of political affiliations?

Much of ecosystem management’s appeal, especially for nonforesters and agency 

managers, lies in its perceived position as a compromise between preservationism and

timber primacy. Yet even if the new approach occupies some sort of middle ground, it is

not yet clear how politically defensible that ground might be. Critics from both sides of the

environmental spectrum disparage ecosystem management in political terms, saying it’s

either too similar or too dissimilar to current practice. Research is needed that analyzes

where support and opposition come from, and the reasons for that support or opposition.

3. How do aesthetic preferences affect the acceptability of ecosystem management? As

Gobster (this proceedings) points out, ecologically defensible forestry may not match the

naturalistic form of scenic beauty that our culture prefers. Preliminary research (Brunson

and Shelby 1992) suggests that alternative silvicultural practices are only slightly more

palatable to the public than traditional clearcutting, and sometimes may be less so.

Research is needed that compares a wide range of ecosystem management conditions to

an equally wide range of traditional conditions. Studies also are needed that examine

whether ecological knowledge can counteract negative scenic influences of ecosystem

management practices.

4. What are the safety impacts of harvesting, planting, site preparation, and intermediate

stand treatments under alternative silvicultural systems? Leaving standing snags, green

trees, and down logs can increase the likelihood of accidents to timber workers. While 

this concern was not mentioned often, some felt passionately that this was the greatest

problem associated with ecosystem management. If their outspoken opposition is borne

122
out by the deaths of timber workers, adverse public reaction could be swift and volatile,

drawing in segments of society (e.g., urban organized labor) which are otherwise 

indifferent to forest policy issues. Research on ways to ease these threats is critically

important.

5. What are the broad economic effects of ecosystem management, not only on timber

harvest but also on other market resources from recreation to grazing to understory

products? Clearly, ecosystem management will lead to reduced timber harvests, as 

evidenced by the two-thirds reduction in allowable harvest in the Clinton administration’s

proposed forest plan for the Northwest (Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment

Team 1993). Preliminary estimates have been made of the economic cost of alternative

silviculture in terms of timber production (Birch and Johnson 1992, Weigand and Burditt

1992), but other products have not been included in those calculations. As lverson and

Alston (1993) point out, economists need to broaden their focus beyond traditional 

products, “efficiency,” and present net value if they are to provide the kinds of economic

information that must be made available to ecosystem managers.

6. What are the broad silvicultural effects of ecosystem management on the growth of

future post-harvest stands? Many traditionally-trained foresters doubt that alternative silviculture

can perform as promised. They know that trees grow well using traditional methods, and

doubt that biodiversity gains can offset loss of timber productivity. If they are correct, a

public facing rising lumber costs and little evidence of endangered species protection may

turn against ecosystem management. As with the economic question, preliminary models

suggest that growth and yield of timber species will indeed decline (Birch and Johnson

1992, Long and Roberts 1992), but little has been done to incorporate the effects on other

species that may perform vital habitat functions in forest ecosystems.

7. How can we develop reliable (and reliably funded) monitoring strategies for ecosystem

management? Responses to tour surveys suggested that concerns about many of the

above uncertainties could be eased if ecosystem managers are careful to make adaptive

management (Swanson and Franklin 1992) a part of any proposal. Ecosystem managers

must be able to keep close watch on the ramifications of their practices, and to react 

swiftly to problems as they arise. This is true not only for questions of public acceptability

(as argued earlier in this paper), but also for questions about the effects on biophysical

processes.

123
In this problem analysis, I have focused on two broad problems and a series of smaller

ones. The broad ones concern our lack of knowledge about the acceptability of the 

underlying idea of ecosystem management, and the difficulties associated with facing the

inherent risks of a fundamental change in forest management. Each of these, in turn,

encompasses a number of sub-problems, only some of which are discussed here. In 

addition, research identified a set of seven issues that are especially likely to elicit concern

about ecosystem management within one or more constituency groups.

I do not mean to imply, however, that these are all of the most important or pressing 

problems associated with the social acceptability of ecosystem management. Rather they

are ones that rose to the surface most dramatically during a study in the Pacific Northwest

-- a setting where timber harvest and endangered species are the principle forestry issues,

where debate has focused on huge blocks of contiguous public lands, and where 

silvicultural manipulation has shown considerable promise for enhancement of multiple

forest values. But what of other regions, where other commodities dominate rural

economies, other patterns of land ownership predominate, or growing conditions severely

limit silvicultural options?

Perhaps the most dramatic evidence of how geography might affect this question comes

from the recent debate within the Society of American Foresters (SAF) over application of

ecosystem management or “sustainable forestry” practice to private lands. We do not

know how to effectively manage ecosystems that cross multiple ownership boundaries,

nor do we know the social implications of trying to do so. Cross-ownership issues 

(partnerships, regulation, etc.) were probably the most prominent topic at the 1993 SAF

annual meeting -- the central focus of at least 10 plenary or concurrent sessions and 

featured prominently in many other sessions. Yet the cross-ownership question was 

barely raised in the Northwest, where history and geography have tended to limit the 

interspersal of public and private lands.

Clearly there is a need to undertake problem analyses similar to this one in other parts of

the nation. One of the central tenets of ecosystem management is that practices must be

fitted to the particular landscape; we should expect no less of our social science research.

Atkinson, William A. 1992. Silvicultural correctness: the politicization of forest science. 

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Western Journal of Applied Forestry. 7(3): 65-68.

Brown, Greg; Harris, Charles C. 1992. The U.S. Forest Service: Toward the new 

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Brunson, Mark W. 1991. Effects of traditional and “new forestry” practices on

recreational and scenic quality of managed forests. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State 

University. 192 p. Ph.D. dissertation.

124

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The following bibliography was compiled by participants in the social acceptability 

workshop to provide a broad base of references for scientists, managers, and others 

interested in learning more about society’s relationship with natural resources and the

environment. The following books, articles, and journals were drawn from a wide range of

academic disciplines. This bibliography is intended to be useful, but we make no claims

that it is all-inclusive. In fact, it specifically omits the rapidly growing literature on the 

theory and practice of ecosystem management itself, but rather describes the breadth of

scientific and philosophical writings that form the underpinnings of ecosystem 

management. Also provided is a list of key journals which often publish articles 

concerning the interrelationships between natural resources and society.

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Taylor, Jonathan G.; Daniel, Terry C. 1984. Prescribed fire: public education and 

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Zube, Ervin H. 1987. Perceived land use patterns and landscape values. Landscape 

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127

Personal Values

and Attitudes

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Disciplinary Roots of Social Acceptability: A Bibliography

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142

Academic Journals of lnterest 

Ambio 

BioScience 

Conservation Biology 

Environment and Behavior 

Environmental Ethics 

Environmental Management 

lnternational Journal of Wilderness 

Journal of Environmental Management

Journal of Forestry 

Journal of Sustainable Forestry 

Landscape and Urban Planning 

Landscape Journal 

Natural Resources Journal 

Northwest Environmental Journal 

Society and Natural Resources
Brunson, Mark W.; Kruger, Linda E.; Tyler, Catherine B.; Schroeder, Susan A., 

tech eds. 1996. Defining social acceptability in ecosystem management: a 

workshop proceedings; 1992 June 23-25 Kelso, WA. Gen. Tech. Rep. 

PNW-GTR-369. Portland, OR: Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific 

Northwest Research Station. 142 p.

This compendium of papers was developed in response 16 the assumption that 

implementing an ecological approach to forest management requires an understanding of socially acceptable forestry—what it is and the implications of doing it. 

The papers in this collection bring to bear perspectives from a variety of social science 

disciplines and question whether the focus on social acceptability is an appropriate 

and useful one.

Keywords: Ecosystem management. social acceptability, environmental ethics, social 

values, landscape aesthetics, public participation.

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