CHANGING SOCIAL AND LEGAL FORCES AFFECTING THE 

MANAGEMENT OF NATIONAL FORESTS 

By Daina Dravnieks Apple, 1997 

The diversity, complexity, and breadth of Forest Service responsibilities for 

managing the National Forests are greater than the scope of responsibilities 

assigned to any other Federal land management agency. 

The U.S.D.A. Forest Service has been cited as one of the best managed agencies 

in the government. The Forest Service gained national respect during the Great 

Depression and emerged from World War I1 expanding its mission from primarily 

custodial management to supplier of natural resource commodities such as timber. Its 

budget grew and so did its numbers of employees (Reich, 1962; Sabatier, Loomis, and 

McCarthy, 1995). It was also a professional monoculture largely made up of white male 

foresters, and was soon to encounter strong sociopolitical pressures to accommodate 

environmental values and more open, democratic decision making. 

As the country's largest, oldest, and most powerful land management agency, the Forest 

Service has often been praised for its professionalism, effectiveness, and esprit de corps 

(Clarke and McCool, 1985; Culhane, 1981; Kaufman, 1960). In the 1950's and 1960's the 

Forest Service experienced relatively little public or Congressional criticism. Agency 

professionals wrote much of the legislation regulating its own behavior, such as the 

Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960 (Dana and Fairfax, 1980). Forest recreation 

users and environmentalists had not yet voiced their interests and the agency had rarely 

been taken to court to defend its policies. But its defense of its clearcutting and other 

forest management controversies on National Forests, and the passage of National 

Environmental Policy Act in 1969 signaled a change. 

The Forest Service since 1969 has been criticized for focusing too much on the 

management and development of the national forests' commodity values, especially 

timber and grazing, and for insufficient attention to non-cornmodity values such as 

wildlife, wilderness, and recreation (Anderson, 1993-94; Twight, 1983; Wilkinson, 

1987). It has also been criticized for not responding to shifting societal demands 

concerning these values (Twight, 1983; Twight and Lyden, 1988; Twight and Lyden, 

1989). 

Nevertheless, a number of observers argued that the Forest Service had been changing 

(Brown and Harris, 1992; Kennedy, 1988; Tipple and Wellman, 1991). They point to 

sustained pressure on the agency over the past several decades, from growing 

environmental awareness in the country and increased public attention to the national 

forests and other public lands. Significant new legislation emerged during this period, 

including the Wilderness Act of 1964, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 

(NEPA), the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the National Forest Management Act of 

1976 (NFMA), and others. Some argue that these laws, as well as a number of important 

court decisions, have made the Forest Service pay closer attention to the non-commodity 
and environmental values of the national forests. Such laws have also increased 

opportunities for the public to become involved in, and to hold the agency accountable 

for, national forest planning decisions. Very recently, several authors concluded that 

Forest Service planning decisions are now more strongly influenced by local "amenity 

coalitions" than even by hierarchical controls from Congress, or the Forest Service 

national office (Sabatier, Loomis, and McCarthy, 1995). 

These external pressures have, in turn, led to internal pressures. Interdisciplinary planning 

and decision making required by NEPA and NFMA, as well as affirmative action 

decisions made by the courts, led the agency to hire and promote greater numbers of 

women, minorities, and non-forestry professionals (Brown and Harris, 1993). Some argue 

that the increased presence of nontraditional employees has resulted in a greater diversity 

of ideas and perspectives, which is likely to affect the agency's world view and eventual 

management and policy decisions. 

Background: Evolution and Impact of Forest Service Culture 

The Forest Service officially began as a land management agency in 1905. In that year, 

the Transfer Act gave this small agency responsibility for 60 million acres of remote 

western land. In the years since 1905, the agency has seen its land base more than triple 

to 191 million acres, and its personnel increase in number to rival that of many large 

federal departments (full-time employees currently number just over 30,000). It also 

developed a reputation for being a "superstar" agency (Clarke and McCool, 1985). 

In 1960, Kaufman sought to answer the question of how the Forest Service overcame the 

multitude of "centrifugal forces," including distance, variety of settings, and an ideology 

of decentralization, to function as a model of bureaucratic effectiveness. He thought a 

high degree of unity was maintained because employees performed tasks with 

compliance and conformity. Kaufman described the ranger as a pivotal player in national 

forest administration: executive planner, the woodsman whose chief responsibility was to 

shape elaborate, detailed directions from above to meet the needs of the local situation. In 

doing so, the rangers felt as though they were exercising large amounts of discretion, yet 

their actions were generally approved of by the organization (Tipple and Wellman, 1991). 

According to Kaufman, the Forest Service successfully used administrative procedures 

not only for their stated administrative purposes but also to reinforce a culture of 

voluntary conformity. For example, he described the frequent movement of field 

personnel as designed to provide employees with a wide range of experience, and make 

rangers less subject to local pressure, in keeping with agency policy for advancement 

through the ranks. Yet, he noted, this had the added effect of making the Forest Service 

the primary factor in an individual's life, the only continuity and structure in an otherwise 

always changing world. To these he added standardized recruitment, selection, and 

staffing, reporting requirements, training, and the use of language and symbols. Yet, 

despite the picture of strong socialization efforts and numerous control mechanisms, 

Kaufman concluded that the organization remained flexible and open- to new ideas. 
Line and Staff 

Forest Service employees traditionally have defined themselves into two broad 

categories: Line and Staff. National Forest System line officers are those with policy 

making authority. Included in this category are the chief, associate chief, deputy chiefs, 

regional foresters, deputy regional foresters, forest supervisors, deputy forest supervisors, 

and district rangers. Staff include all employees not considered to be part of the 

management line. (The Forest Service research and state and private organization has an 

analogous structure, but is not included in this discussion.) 

Line employees have usually been in the agency longer and are more likely to hold a 

degree in forestry. Thus, they may be more likely than staff to be socialized into the 

agency's traditional norms and worldview. Additionally, line officers may face greater 

pressures to conform by the promotion and reward system, as there are far fewer line than 

staff positions in the Forest Service since only one of each 35 employees holds a line 

position (Mohai and Jakes, 1996). 

Institutionalization 

In "The Role of Institutionalization in Cultural Persistence" (1977), L.G. Zucker 

described institutionalization as "some sort of establishment of relative permanence 

of a distinctly social sort," which has to do with cultural persistence, i.e., becomes 

adopted as part of the mind map circumscribing behavior. He found that the greater the 

degree of institutionalization, the greater the uniformity, maintenance, and resistance to 

change of cultural understandings. The Forest Service and the forestry profession both 

involve commitment to a social establishment intended to do permanent things, and thus 

to be relatively permanent themselves. 

While Zucker found that institutionalization can occur in a relatively short time, forestry 

has had many decades to become institutionalized. The more than 90 years of forestry 

training and bureaucracy in this country derives from over a century and a quarter of 

professional and bureaucratic development in Prussia and Germany. Prussia's first 

forestry bureaucracy regulating government forests was established by Frederick the 

Great in 1740, followed about 30 years later by professional forestry schools (Brown, 

1887; Fernow, 1894). The adoption of the elite organizational model used in the 

Prussian Forest Service was urged here in the United States, first by Baron Von 

Steuben at the 1882 American Forestry Congress in Cincinnati and again in 1893 at the 

Chicago World's Fair with its special German forestry exhibit and building. Prussian 

forester Bernard Fernow helped organize both of these events along with the American 

Forestry Association, and he wrote the 1888 Hale Bill, which proposed an organization 

resembling both the Prussian Forest Service and the present-day USDA Forest Service 

(Steen. 1976). 

Gifford Pinchot not only studied the organization of the Prussian Forest Service in 

Germany, but corresponded at length with his old German professor Detrich 
Brandis about the details for establishing a U.S. Forest Service. (Pinchot, 1891). 

Brandis's step-by-step recommendations clearly outline the establishment of a specific 

pattern of organizational behavior first for a single ranger district, then gradual 

replication of the model into additional districts. This is similar to the deliberate 

institutionalization pattern demonstrated by Zucker. The subsequent training of the first 

U.S. professional staff using German instructors, texts, and technology was also 

influential in cultural development and maintenance of the organization. 

Over time, then, both through institutional patterning and through repetition of personnel 

practices noted by Kaufman, Forest Service cultural persistence and uniformity became 

well established. The Forest Service developed into a well-run, effective agency, and 

continued relatively unchanged for most of its history. Each of its first five decades was 

dedicated only to refining its self concept of tree-farming, with little pressure to rethink 

its direction or goals. Not until the rise of the environmental movement in the 1960's and 

1970's did it face any serious challenges to its management or purpose. 

 

What is Organizational Culture? 

James Q. Wilson states that every organization has a culture-a persistent way of thinking 

about the central tasks and human relations within an organization. "Culture is to an 

organization what personality is to an individual. Like human culture generally, it is 

passed on from one generation to the next. It changes slowly, if at all" (Wilson, 1989). 

According to Wilson, a definition of organizational culture includes: "the process of 

inculcating points of view fundamental attitudes, loyalties, to the organization ... that will 

result in subordinating individual interests ... to the good of the whole." An organization 

acquires a distinctive competence (what it actually does better than any other) or sense of 

mission when it has not only answered the question "What shall we do?, but also the 

question "What shall we be?' Wilson notes that this leads to the establishment of core 

tasks that are linked to distinctive competence of the organization. It is the core of the 

organization's self-concept - of what it is there to do. When an organization's goals are 

vague, different definitions of core tasks develop for different people. This results in the 

development of different subunits, and organizations can have several cultures. (While 

the goals of the Forest Service are clear, the priorities for achieving them often are not 

clear, thus leading to a similar dynamic described by Wilson.) 

Both Wilson and E.H. Schein (1988), discuss the powerful impact of strong founders in 

shaping organizational cultures. They can instill a sense of mission in an organization 

which confers a feeling of special worth on the members, provides a basis for recruiting 

and socializing new members, and enables administrators to economize on the use of 

other incentives. Wilson cites the creation of the Forest Service in 1905 as an example of 

how a leader successfully developed a sense of mission that persists to this day. 

The Leader, Gifford Pinchot 

Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the Forest Service, was a charismatic man, and a 

personal friend of President Theodore Roosevelt. After returning from France where he 
received professional training in forestry, and subsequent exposure to German and Swiss 

forestry, he founded the Forest Service in 1905 (Pinchot, 1910). The predecessor to the 

Forest Service, the Department of Agriculture's Division of Forestry, was created in 188 

1, but had no forest lands under its management. Only with the 

Transfer Act of 1905 were the federal forest reserves given to the Department of 

Agriculture to administer under the theory that growing trees was comparable to growing 

agricultural crops (Steen, 1976). 

Pinchot recruited very selectively and considered it an elite service whose members were 

expected to conform to a strict code of conduct. He stated that because the agency's 350 

foresters were "...so few, they should stand closely together ..." and that "...American 

foresters are united as probably the members of no other profession" (Pinchot, 1947). The 

organization was hierarchical and had strong management controls, and was able to 

manage millions of acres all across the United States without succumbing to local 

dominant political influence groups (Frome, 1984). 

The first Forest Service Manual was written by Gifford Pinchot and describes an agency 

of public responsiveness and professional service (Frome, 1984). The manager role 

model in that publication was a rugged professional individual: hard working men, selfsufficient, competent, with benign, long-term public concern. This helped to justify the 

Forest Service tradition of trust and decentralized power given to local Forest Service 

officers. Such an individualistic, experienced and benign district ranger image was 

dominant for most of this century, when professionalism in general, and 

Forest Service professionals in particular, enjoyed more blanket public trust and 

respect than they do currently (Frankel, 1969; Frome, 1984; Kaufman, 1960). 

Importance of Loyalty 

J.J. Kennedy and J.A. Mincolla (1982,1985) found the values most rewarded by the 

Forest Service were: loyalty to the Forest Service; production or the work ethic; and 

getting along with people in interdisciplinary teams (which is a value much elevated in 

importance since the passing of NEPA). Organizational loyalty, however, embodies 

potential problems when such loyalty becomes excessive and discourages questioning of 

agency decisions or practices. Professional versus agency loyalty issues were a bigger 

problem for entry level biologists than foresters, according to results of employee surveys 

conducted by Kennedy and Mincolla. Wildlife biologists and fisheries biologists were 

relatively new to the Forest Service, and were not hired because the Forest Service power 

structure decided it was a good idea, but because NEPA largely forced these new 

employees into the Forest Service to help priorities and management practices to reflect 

better the needs and values of post-industrial American society (Kennedy, 1985b; 

Kennedy, 1986). Functioning thus as agents of change, wildlife biologists and fisheries 

biologists often challenged agency decisions and traditions. Sometimes such behavior 

was perceived as disloyal. 
Recent Challenges to Traditional Forest Service Culture and Management 

The last 20 years have been a time of transformation of the Forest Service. The National 

Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), signed in 1969, and the National Forest Management 

Act of 1976 (NFMA), coincided with the most significant period of change that the 

Forest Service has undergone since it was established at the turn of the century. While 

many of the forces that have transformed the Forest Service are the same forces that led 

to the passage of NEPA, NFMA, and the Endangered Species Act (as well as other 

environmental legislation passed during the 1960's and 1970's), these three laws have 

accelerated and stimulated the Forest Service to change. 

Although Kaufman described the management of the national forests in the late 1950's as 

complex and guided by a multiple-use mission, legislation enacted in the 1960's, 1970's 

and 1980's made the challenge even more complex by expanding the agency's 

responsibilities. The Multiple Use-Sustained Yield Act of 1960, the Wilderness Act of 

1964, the Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, the 

National Trails System Act of 1968, the Clean Air Act amendments of 1970 and 1977, 

the Surface Mining and Minerals Act of 197 1, the Clean Water Act amendments of 1972 

and 1977, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and other less well known pieces of 

legislation such as the Federal Cave Protection Resources Act of 1989 all served to 

broaden the scope of activities and objectives for which land is to be managed. They 

reflect public demands, especially from the urban sector. No longer are timber, range, 

and fire the dominant resource concerns of the Forest Service. Nor are uses of the 

National Forests for recreation and wildlife management merely secondary purposes, 

as they were into the late 1950's. Timber, range, and fire have been fully joined by 

wildlife, minerals, soils, water, air, human resources, recreation, wilderness, cultural 

resources, caves, and a number of other concerns. The result has been a broadening 

of the mission regarding national forest management from multiple-use management of a 

few key commodity resources, to a much broader policy of management and protection 

of biologically diverse areas in the National Forests. This expanded charge has greatly 

complicated the work of the organization. 

As the content areas of work have expanded, so have the processes by which the Forest 

Service is directed to manage them. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the 

Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act (RPA), and the National Forest 

Management Act (NFMA) all impose process requirements on the Forest Service that did 

not exist at the time of Kaufman's book. For example, NEPA requires the Forest Service 

to conduct analyses of proposed actions to determine their environmental consequences 

and to do so in a way which involves the public. Further, the Forest Service developed 

prescriptive management planning requirements through formal rule making and internal 

directives. RPA and NFMA require the Forest Service to plan at the national, regional, 

and forest levels, and to develop proposed long-range programs of work with full public 

participation. This opened up the decision making process and made it more complex. 
Because of these changes in mission and process, and because of external political and 

economic forces, the organizational culture evolved to emphasize responsiveness and 

representativeness as well as efficiency and economy. Field line officers, such as Forest 

Supervisors and Rangers, in the past interacted with the public in two primary ways: first, 

through information and education programs, and, second, during transactions of 

business that directly affected a member or group of the public, e.g., setting limits on the 

amount of grazing allowed on a rancher's allotment. These forms of interaction were 

primarily one-way and tended to portray the ranger as the expert, the local authority, and 

manager-in-charge. 

In today's post-NEPA, RPA, and NFMA era, the ranger is being asked to play a larger 

role. Although the ranger is still a line manager overseeing and setting policy for projects 

on the ground, the district ranger is also serving as facilitator of public dialogue about 

forest management policy within the local community. Communications have become 

more two-way in this era of interdisciplinary planning and extensive public involvement. 

Accordingly, these executives in the field must today have stronger skills in small group 

facilitation, negotiation, and dispute resolution than ever before (Tipple and Wellman, 

1991). 

Perpetual Dilemmas Initiate Signs of Organizational Change 

In their study of attitudes of district rangers, Twight and Lyden (1988) concluded that 

multiple commitments to several user constituencies are absent among Forest Service 

district rangers, the line officials closest to the forest users. This suggests a difficulty 

with production of the multiple outputs relevant to the goals of these competing groups. 

At the same time, the authors propose, the lack of managerial commitment to the 

spectrum of Forest Service constituencies suggests that citizen participation in agency 

planning by many of those groups may go unheeded. 

Organizations frequently pursue multiple, competing sets of goals and values, espoused 

by a variety of relevant constituency groups. They compete very directly in an 

organization that has what are often mutually exclusive objectives. When organizational 

commitment is divided among constituencies with incompatible goals, the partial 

identifications with those groups among agency managers should reflect those conflicting 

goals. Members of the organization develop dissonant beliefs and values, and overall 

organizational commitment is lower (Reichers, 1985). The Forest Service, in other words, 

could not maintain itself in a social environment of combative constituencies without 

reflecting those conflicts within its own organizational culture. Consequently, the Forest 

Service cannot avoid exhibiting both lower organizational commitment and reduced 

effectiveness in achieving all the various organizational goals, if it is actually responsive 

to or equitably serving groups with competing and/or incompatible goals. 

In their study of forest rangers, Twight and Lyden (1988) found that culturally ingrained 

agency socialization practices and personnel procedures yield such a high level of 

organizational commitment among these federal land managers that they avoid pursuing 

the conflicting goals of multiple constituencies. A.E Reichers' work on organizational 
commitment in 1985 indicates that organizations that provide services to groups that 

espouse goals that are in conflict with each other will exhibit decreased levels of 

organizational commitment. This occurs because organization members develop internal 

conflicts over where to direct their energies and loyalties. When two or more 

commitments clash in such a way that the individual must choose to endorse the goals of 

one constituency at the expense of another, the conflict generated by this choice may 

reduce the individual's commitment to the organization as a whole (Reichers, 1986). 

Conflict does this by lessening the member's overall identification with the organization 

and shifting the identification partially to a constituent group. 

The Mohai and Jakes study (1996) assessed employees' views about the direction in 

which the agency is headed, and how the agency is handling important issues addressed 

in its 1990 Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act (RPA) Strategic 

Plan. This plan defines the Forest Service's mission, roles, and program direction for a 

five-year period and addresses the most salient issues currently facing the agency. These 

issues include: loss of biological diversity; effects on riparian areas; maintaining water 

quality; global climate change; threats to wilderness areas; meeting the public's 

recreational needs; loss of threatened, endangered, and sensitive species; condition of 

national forest rangelands; loss of old-growth forests; below-cost timber sales; and 

clearcutting. 

While the majority of both Line and Staff felt that a significant change has occurred over 

the last 10 years, 60 percent of the Line felt that further actions on these issues are 

needed. Ninety percent of both Line and Staff employees believed that the agency's 

emphasis on wildlife and fish and recreation has increased (Mohai and Jakes, 1996). 

Further, the study found that more than 70 percent of both Line and Staff felt that a noncommodity use (wildlife and fish, recreation, or water) should be the most important use 

of the national forests, while only a minority thought timber and grazing should be. 

Contrasting sharply with such opinions of what employees thought should be done were 

their views of what they believe actually is being done-what uses the Forest Service 

actually sees as most important. The vast majority of employees felt that timber remains 

the most important land use to the agency. 

The researchers found the positive changes perceived as most important were: increased 

responsiveness to the public, and increased emphasis on commodity uses of the National 

Forests. Negative changes most frequently mentioned were: increasing political pressure 

on the agency; loss of direction/ mission; poor leadership; the agency's overresponsiveness to political pressure; insufficient funding; and on-the-job stress. 

The Influence of NEPA and NFMA on Forest Service Management 

Interdisciplinary Teams as Change Agents 

Specific requirements of new laws such as NEPA and NFMA pushed the Forest Service 

to make further organizational changes. For example, NEPA requires a detailed statement 

of the environmental impact of proposed actions, and challenged the past policy of 
keeping Forest Service decision making totally internally controlled. The environmental 

impact statement process opened agencies to the public, the press, interest groups, and the 

courts. It changed planning from linear forecasting to multiple scenario strategy planning, 

a much more complex and open process. 

It also mandated an interdisciplinary approach to ensure integrated use of natural and 

social sciences and the design arts (landscape architecture) in planning and decision 

making. This resulted in the hiring of wildlife biologists, archaeologists, and economists 

who were not traditionally employed by the Forest Service. These new and different 

professionals formed interdisciplinary teams that increased the diversity of values and 

skills in Forest Service planning and management, although initially few were decision 

makers. These new professionals also reflected the variety of National Forest values in 

the urbanizing American culture of the 1970's, and became voices of challenge and 

confrontation inside the agency (Kennedy, 1985a; Kennedy, 1986; Kennedy, 1988). 

The interdisciplinary teams developed forest management alternatives, which included 

predicting and analyzing their impacts, with involvement from the public, as required 

under NEPA. Agency values and conclusions were often challenged, both by employees 

and the public, which questioned the appropriateness of some Forest Service traditions 

and management practices. 

The Forest Service implementation of NEPA and NFMA produced not only a greater 

variety of professionals in the Forest Service with expertise beyond the traditional and 

limited forestry focus, but improved the information and analysis prepared for decisions. 

This resulted in better documentation of decisions, and more thoughtful consideration of 

impacts. 

Increased Legal Challenges to Forest Service Decision Making 

The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) established unprecedented specific 

statutory standards and procedures that directly affected the Forest Service's management 

of the National Forests. The scope and specificity of NFMA are even more remarkable 

considering that the statutory direction for management of the National Forests remained 

essentially unchanged since the passage of the Organic Act of 1897 and the Multiple-Use 

Sustained Yield Act of 1969. These statutes had provided little substantive direction. 

Over the last twenty years, there has been an increase in public awareness, public 

involvement, and public challenge to Forest Service decisions. The social forces that 

demanded increased public opportunity to participate in the management of the 

environment in general, and the National Forests in particular, led to expanded 

opportunities for the public to influence and dispute Forest Service decisions. Often, the 

very information NEPA and NFMA procedures made available supplied ammunition to 

challenge the decisions. Over time, a small but vocal fraction of the public became 

increasingly sophisticated at using these opportunities through public involvement, 

administrative appeals, lawsuits, legislative lobbying, and even influencing public 

opinion (Ackerman, 1990). 
In response to increasing scrutiny given to Forest Service decisions and increasing legal 

requirements placed on agency decision making, the Forest Service consolidated 

authority at higher levels and standardized procedures. The purpose was to better control 

variations in management that created increased vulnerability to challenges that the 

agency had inconsistent management practices that were applied subjectively. As federal 

legislation established more agency-wide standards, and as Forest Service decisions 

became more politicized, the Forest Service's Washington Office role increased 

correspondingly. The agency now recognized that the key to its success was not just 

dealing with local interests, as in the past, but dealing with regional and national lobbying 

groups and pressures (Ackerman, 1990). 

Use of Technical Analyses to Justify Political Decisions 

 These problems were compounded by the increasingly political nature of Forest Service 

decisions and the fundamental inability of the Forest Service decision making process (of 

which NEPA procedures are an integral part) to result in effective and permanent 

solutions to broad public issues, such as wilderness management. Similar situations may 

be developing currently in relation to management of the Northern Spotted Owl and 

adoption of forest plans for certain controversial National Forests. To the extent that these 

decisions involve the allocation of scarce resources, extraordinarily complex procedures, 

protracted preparation time, and political decisions in technical wrappings, they create a 

difficult problem for the agency because they do not lend themselves to manageable, 

easily defensible, and permanent agency decisions. 

When they were first established, the management of individual National Forests was 

based primarily on local needs and interests because of the autonomy forest supervisors 

held in the agency's decentralized organization and because National Forests were used 

almost exclusively by local people. This local focus has changed significantly in recent 

years. Changing political, social, and economic realities shifted the kens of Forest Service 

decision making from the local level to the regional and national levels. In response to 

these new realities, Congress placed additional constraints on how the Forest Service 

manages the National Forests. 

 With the adoption of the NFMA regulations, the Forest Service was called upon to 

reconcile competing interests. The new statutes with their detailed attention to the proper 

standards for multiple resource management did not resolve questions of competing uses. 

Decisions about how to distribute scarce resources involve political choices and tradeoffs. Yet the Forest Service is expected to address these decisions as if they were 

technical questions with technical solutions. While the Forest Service makes its decisions 

by evaluating all resources and in an analytical way optimizing their use, such a decision 

making process is unlikely to result in a widely accepted resolution of the allocation 

issues, and may eventually lead to challenges to the decisions. Because these are political 

decisions involving the balancing of competing public interests, they should be made in a 

political forum, such as Congress, or through the equivalent of a national referendum 

such as the 7th American Forest Congress, held in February 1996, where thousands of 
individuals and organizations provided input on future management of all U.S. forestsstate, private, and federal. 

To complicate matters further, one of the main decisions in a forest plan is the 

establishment of the National Forest's allowable sale quantity-the maximum quantity of 

timber available for sale during the plan period. The stated timber sale level (i.e. quantity 

to be harvested), however, is subject to Congressional funding and direction, 

environmental constraints, and appeals. As part of its annual appropriation process, 

Congress usually influenced by members from high timber producing states-directs the 

timber sale levels for the fiscal year with great precision. Even though consideration is 

given to the forest-based recommendations, Congressional sale levels sometimes differ 

from the levels established through either the strategic planning process or existing forest 

plans. Nevertheless, it is the Congressionaly mandated timber sale levels established 

through appropriations that establish what should be harvested. 

A possible solution to the political and management nightmare of trying to develop and 

adopt a new forest plan (with its attendant reevaluation of all program decisions and new 

opportunities for appeal) may be to make planning decisions through incremental 

changes to existing direction based upon an environmental analysis that regularly 

identifies needed decisions through a scoping process that involves the public in 

identifying issues. Such a solution would shift emphasis away from the forest plan as a 

once-in-a-decade product (where all battles must be won or lost) toward viewing the 

decision making process as a means to dynamically and flexibly address issues in a more 

manageable, incremental and less absolute way (either there will be grazing or not; there 

will be timber cutting or not). In the final analysis, the decision making process may be 

more important than the product. 

The diversity, complexity, and breadth of Forest Service responsibilities for managing the 

National Forests are greater than the scope of responsibilities assigned to any other 

federal land management agency. Coupled with increasingly broad and prescriptive 

environmental laws, the Forest Service is currently saddled with a complex, multi-level 

decision making process that has taken more than a decade to produce the first level 

programmatic documents-forest plans. Additional time is needed to produce intermediate 

and project level decisions. This raises the question of whether such a decision making 

process can ever be effective. To be effective, the process must be more timely and final, 

and major programmatic planning decisions should be elevated to the political arena, and 

be based on the original concept of providing the greatest good for the greatest number, 

in the long run. 

Summary

The Forest Service became a successful and cohesive agency in the first part of this 

century because it was located in rural areas, and combined the utilitarian values of a 

rural, industrializing American society with the progressive political ideals of 

scientifically trained professionals, who could objectively manage natural resources for 

long-term social welfare (Clarke and McCool, 1985; Hays, 1959). The agency's 

successful evolution developed an organizational culture with resistance to incorporating 
the non-utilitarian, amenity values of a postindustrial urban nation, and a reluctance to 

share power with the public and with other professionals (Kennedy, 1985a; Duerr, 

1986). NEPA was the first major legislative challenge to these utilitarian, development 

values and on agency tendencies to resist change. NEPA and its personnel change 

consequences made .the Forest Service organizational culture more open to internal and 

external politics. Subsequent legislation, such as the National Forest Management Act of 

1976, formalized the "rules of the game" in National Forest planning and management 

decisions (Cortner and Schweitzer, 1981; Mohai, 1987). 

Great changes in the Forest Service culture and its management guidelines also occurred 

since the 1950's. The 

traditional, respected role model then was a male forester, generally of "John Wayne" 

omnipotence and style, who objectively and scientifically managed forest resources for 

the public, and did it largely alone (Miller and Gale, 1986). This contrasts with today's 

"teamwork" guidelines of the Forest Service, where men and women from various 

professions are expected to work together and to respect the public (USDAFS, 1985). 

The period of the 1960's and 1970's was also a time of increasing demands on the 

national forests for a growing spectrum of consumptive and non-consumptive uses; 

demands that cannot be met simultaneously. It was a period when users of the 

National Forests demanded to participate in Forest Service decision making, not only 

within the agency's processes, but also through administrative appeals, lawsuits, and 

political action. The combination of increased, often conflicting demands for goods and 

services from the National Forests, scrutiny of agency processes and decision making, 

and administrative appeals and legal challenges, all served to force the Forest Service to 

transform in order to survive the changing economic and social conditions of this time. 

And as the social climate changed, so did the Forest Service. Politically astute since the 

time of its first Chief, Gifford Pinchot, Forest Service administrators read the political 

winds and began modifying its policies in the 1950's and 1960's to react to the changing 

public values. In response to criticism that it was too preoccupied with managing the 

National Forests for timber production, the Forest Service gave increased attention to 

non-consumptive resources such as recreation and protection of wildlife. The Forest 

Service proposed the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act to codify agency policy, sent a 

signal to the grazing and the timber industry that the National Forests would be managed 

for resources other than timber, and countered attempts to transfer all recreational 

responsibilities for National Forests to the National Park Service (Dana and Fairfax, 

1980). As a result of these social changes, the Forest Service emerged from an earlier 

isolation to find itself at the forefront of public attention, particularly in the Pacific 

Northwest (Ackerman, 1990). 

These post-NEPA changes had both advantages and disadvantages. The liability of a 

professionally and gender integrated agency, open to environmental values and public 

involvement, could become an agency without belief in itself and its mission; an 

organization unable to find mutual respect, trust, and cohesion within its diverse 

workforce. In addition, the Forest Service could become so politically and legally 
vulnerable as to abandon the strengths of its traditional professionalism and instead 

vacillate with the political winds-spending more time "looking over its shoulder " than to 

the horizon (Behan, 1990). 

In spite of these observations, others argue that change is not likely to come easily, if at 

all, in a large, established bureaucracy like the Forest Service. Twight and Lyden, point 

out in their study that the promotion and reward system and the socialization and identitybuilding mechanisms first described by Kaufman in his classic analysis of the 

administrative behavior of the Forest Service have changed little over time. These 

mechanisms are very effective in perpetuating conformity to established norms and 

traditions and in resisting external pressures on the agency. Early evidence of agency 

change has come from a number of recent surveys of employee attitudes and values 

(Brown and Harris, 1992b; McCarthy, Sabatier, and Loomis, 1991). 

Some researchers presumed that such attitude changes would translate, eventually, 

into management and policy changes. Very recently, a number of studies have analyzed 

quantitative indicators of agency activity to assess whether such management and policy 

changes have indeed occurred (Farnham and Mohai, 1995; Farnham, Taylor and 

Callaway, 1995; Jones and Callaway, 1995; Thomas and Mohai, 1995). These latter 

studies appear to support the findings of the earlier attitude surveys, offering evidence of 

change. 

In spite of the agency's progress, the fact that its priorities are still somewhat incongruent 

with what employees believe they should be suggests obstacles that constrain further 

change. The agency and its employees are greatly influenced by Congressional mandates, 

executive orders, and court decisions. Organizational customs, norms, and traditions also 

exert powerful influences on members at all levels of the organization. Many of the 

challenges facing the agency are not likely to be easily solved. It will be important for the 

Forest Service to preserve its strengths while forming a new culture, as it learns to 

accommodate the ambiguity and complexity of a diverse and more open organizational 

culture to reflect the diversity in both the ecosystems it manages and the increasingly 

urban, post-industrial American society that it serves. 

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Daina Dravnieks Apple, a natural resource economist, is a strategic planner with the 

Forest Service, Resources Program and Assessment Staff, Washington D.C. She has 

served as Assistant Regulatory Officer in the Washington Office, and as Regional 

Appeals Coordinator, and on the Engineering Staff in Region 5, San Francisco. She 

began her Forest Service career as an Economist at Pacific Southwest Research Station, 

Berkeley. Her B.Sc. in Political Economy of Natural Resources, and her M.A. in 

Geography are both from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently in the 

Environmental Science and Public Policy Ph.D. program at George Mason University in 

Virginia. She has been active in the Society of American Foresters National Capital 

Chapter, and is a member of Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society.