Managing Multiple Uses on National Forests, 1905-1995 A 90-year Learning Experience and It Isn't Finished Yet

The early 1990's were marked by the Forest Service's commitment to adopt an ecosystem approach to managing multiple uses on national forest lands. This commitment emerged on June 4, 1992, when the 12th Chief of the Forest Service, F. Dale Robertson announced that:

An ecological approach will be used to achieve the multiple-use management of the national forests and grasslands. It means that we must blend the needs of people and environmental values in such a way that national forests and grasslands represent diverse, healthy, productive, and sustainable ecosystems. (USDA Forest Service 1994b)

The commitment was announced to coincide with the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) (the Earth Summit), held in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, in July 1992. The Administration hoped that the timing of this announcement would add a constructive note to the international view of American forestry which, at that time, had become somewhat critical of U.S. forestry practices, including clearcutting (Sirmon 1995).

The 1992 commitment to implement an ecosystem approach throughout the National Forest System echoed Chief Ed Cliff's:

I am convinced that, with an ecosystem approach to multiple-use management, our national forests and rangelands can contribute to a better living for present and future generations.... (USDA Forest Service 1970)

Chief Robertson activated his announcement with a directive to each of the regional foresters and station directors that they develop an ecosystem management plan (Robertson 1994):

I am asking each regional forester and station director to work together in evaluating their regional situation and within 90 days develop a strategy for implementing the above policy, principles, and guidelines. We need to make good progress at a reasonably rapid pace without disrupting programs, recycling project decisions, or redoing project field work. Also, you will need to take advantage of the flexibility within existing forest plans to practice ecosystem management. As forest plans need to be amended or revised they should reflect the above policy on ecosystem management.

Chief Robertson's announcement followed the 2-year "New Perspectives" initiative that evaluated ecological approaches to management. But the roots of ecosystem management go far deeper. They draw strongly upon the 90-year learning experience of managing multiple uses on national forests. They are also strongly shaped by the policy influences of the Organic Act, the Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act, the National Environment Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other laws. They are strengthened by advances in science and influenced by the changing values and preferences of the American people. Ecosystem management with today's state of knowledge and ecological science nevertheless remains as much a learning experience as it is an approach to managing multiple uses on national forests.

In November 1993, the Acting Chief of the Forest Service, Dave Unger, directed regional foresters, station directors, and area directors to begin using the national hierarchical framework of ecological units in land management planning and related assessment work, research programs, and cooperative efforts with other agencies and partners. In 1993, nationwide ecoregion-scale maps were readily available and work was being completed on maps at the subregional scale (Unger 1993).

In February 1994, Chief Jack Ward Thomas issued a national action plan, Implementation of Ecosystem Management. Its goals were to:

• Adopt an ecosystem approach to management throughout the Forest Service.

• Integrate ecosystem management in all activities.

• Strengthen collaboration and innovation.

• Ensure that management actions are ecologically responsible, economically viable, and socially acceptable.

This action plan shifted the ecosystem approach to management of national forests from a testing and demonstration approach toward full implementation. In taking this step, Chief Thomas recognized that ecosystems were complex systems and that our knowledge of them was far from complete or adequate. Nevertheless, there was "no option but to continue to move forward in natural resource management on the basis of what we know or think we know" (Thomas 1994).

The new action plan calls for protecting ecosystems, affording people multiple-use benefits within the capabilities of those ecosystems, and ensuring organizational responsiveness. The plan's successful implementation will be evidenced by three primary outcomes:

• Healthy ecosystems.

• Vital communities.

• An effective multidisciplinary, multicultural organization (USDA Forest Service 1994a).

Forest Service Ethics and Course to the Future

The Forest Service commitment to the future management of National Forest System lands was expressed in its brochure "The Forest Service Ethics and Course to the Future." It was endorsed by Chief Thomas in these words:

Together we will strive to make the Forest Service the world's foremost conservation leader for the 21st century. Together we will raise the Forest Service's already high standards (USDA Forest Service 1996).

The "ethic" was expressed on two dimensions:

Our land ethic is to promote the sustainability of ecosystems by ensuring their health, diversity, and productivity . . .

Our service ethic is to: Tell the truth, obey the law, work collaboratively, and use appropriate scientific information in caring for the land and serving people . . . (USDA Forest Service 1996).

The "Course to the Future" expresses the Forest Service's work commitment to ensure ecosystem health, diversity, and productivity while it responds to the forest resource needs and uses of the American people:

• It includes understanding the role of fire, insects and disease, and drought cycles in shaping ecosystems and bringing that understanding to bear in national forest management decisions and actions.

• It requires developing and using measures of ecosystem sustainability while supporting the quality of life in those ecosystems (in rural, suburban, and urban settings). The effects of human use and habitation on ecosystem sustainability must be evaluated.

• It manages ecosystems to provide the uses, values, products, and services sought by the American people from national forest and grassland resources, including water, recreation opportunities, timber, minerals, fish, wildlife, forage, wilderness, cultural heritage, and aesthetics, while maintaining ecosystem health and diversity.

• Its workforce reflects the cultural and disciplinary diversity needed to provide the skills and abilities as well as the public partnerships and collaboration required for the effective interdisciplinary application of the ecosystem approach to managing multiple uses. The workforce is empowered to carry out the mission of the national forests and grasslands with accountability for achieving negotiated objectives (USDA Forest Service 1994b).

In 1994, the "Course to the Future" was strongly evidenced in the implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan and in the PACFISH initiative in eastern Oregon and Washington, Idaho, and parts of California.

For national forests and other Federal lands in the Pacific Northwest, the Northwest Forest Plan provided resolution to the longstanding impasse between timber harvesting activities and the need to protect noncommodity resources. The Northwest Forest Plan during 1994 took transitional steps necessary to move the Forest Service toward the ecosystem approach. It scheduled a billion board feet of timber sales for 1994, but due to increased stream protection requirements, only 333 million board feet were actually prepared for sale. It emphasized the economic adjustment assistance to 147 communities affected by the Plan's reduced timber harvest levels. Watershed analyses were completed on 23 out of 59 watersheds to identify restoration needs and begin to implement the "Jobs in the Woods" program to assist communities. Adaptive management areas (AMA's) were defined and public participation plans were completed for eight AMA's. (AMA's are quasi-experimental or demonstration areas for evaluating resource management results and effectiveness). These areas are suitable for timber harvesting and other resource activities for which best management practices have been developed and are applied, monitored, and modified (adapted) as needed to meet each area's management objectives (USDA Forest Service 1995a).

In 1994, under PACFISH, the Forest Service and BLM prepared an EA that developed interim watershed management strategies to improve anadromous fish production on the Federal lands and waters of eastern Oregon and Washington, Idaho, and parts of California. It evaluated the ecological conditions of the upper Columbia River Basin. The Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP) was designed to amend existing forest plans, goals, objectives, standards, and guidelines for anadromous fish habitat. The decision notice and decision record, signed by the BLM Director and the Forest Service Chief in February 1995, implemented interim strategies, while long-term strategies were being developed. The interim strategic objective was to avoid the extinction and any further endangerment of anadromous fish stocks onto otherwise limit the consideration of options to those ensuring their long-term viability. PACFISH did not consider areas within the northern spotted owl's range because the Northwest Forest Plan provided its own comprehensive aquatic conservation strategy (USDA Forest Service 1995a; USDA Forest Service and USDI Bureau of Land Management 1995).

Breaking New Ground Once More

Thus, national forest managers once more are "breaking new ground" — managing multiple uses on national forest lands, fitting multiple uses and their benefits into ecosystems according to the ecosystems' capability to support them. "For the greatest good for the greatest number" in the Gifford Pinchot tradition continues to be a national forest management commitment. But it is being pursued within the new framework of the ecosystem approach to resource management. In this framework, the beneficial uses and services that national forest ecosystems provide are balanced with sustaining the long-term health, biodiversity, and productivity of the ecosystem.

The current state-of-the-art in resource management — the existing science, knowledge, and experience — will have much to contribute to this approach. However, more specific management standards, guidelines, and practices will be needed for sustaining ecosystem health and biodiversity. Obtaining decisions on mutually compatible management goals and objectives across the multiple ownerships, public and private interests, and multiple government jurisdictions and across the wide scope of ecosystem regions and their components will be a much broadened and more complex challenge. Thus, the ecosystem approach to resource use and management will continue to be as much a learning experience as a management experience. National forest managers will continue to learn from the responses of nature, the successes and shortfalls of management, and scientific research and to adapt management to their new knowledge, the evolving ecosystem conditions, and the diverse and evolving public preferences for resource use and management.

Scientific research can do much to enlighten the dimensions and solutions of resource management challenges, but it cannot offer holistic solutions for the social, political, and biological aspects of ecosystem decisionmaking. Scientific research can define the biological and physical decision space for ecosystem decisionmaking, but it cannot determine the management decisions that must also reflect the values of society, its interest groups, landowners, and managers.

Thus, the ecosystem approach in many ways is like a riddle wrapped in an enigma — it will require effective societal and human processes as well as biological and the technical processes, informed with the best available science and experience from the ecosystem approach to management to achieve sound, sustainable solutions. Indeed, the national forest managers commitment to the ecosystem approach is once again "breaking new ground."

References

Robertson, F. Dale. 1994. "Ecosystem Management of National Forests and Grasslands." Letter dated June 4, 1992. USDA Forest Service, Washington, DC. 3 pp. plus attachments: (1) Working Guidelines for Ecosystem Management and (2) Reduce Clearcutting on National Forests.

Sirmon, Jeff. 1995. Direct communication in review notes dated December 12, 1995. Former Deputy Chief for International Forestry, USDA Forest Service, Washington, DC.

Society of American Foresters. 1993. Task Force Report on Sustaining Long-Term Forest Health and Productivity. Bethesda, MD. 83 pp.

Thomas, Jack Ward. 1994. Statement Concerning Implementation of Ecosystem Management Strategies before the Subcommittee on Agricultural Research, Conservation, and Forest and General Legislation, Committee on Agriculture, U.S. Senate, April 14, 1994.

Unger, David G. 1993. National Hierarchical Framework of Ecological Units. Directive to Regional Foresters, Station Directors, IITF, and Area Directors dated November 5, 1993. USDA Forest Service, Washington, DC.

USDA Forest Service. 1970. Management Practices of the Bitterroot National Forest: A Task Force Analysis dated May 1969-April 1970. USDA Forest Service, Northern Region, Missoula, MT. 100 pp.

USDA Forest Service. 1994a. The Forest Service Ethics and Course to the Future. FS-567. Administrative document for internal distribution. Washington, DC. 9 pp.

USDA Forest Service. 1994b. Ecosystem Management: A National Framework. Washington, DC. 50 pp.

USDA Forest Service. 1995a. Report of the Forest Service for Fiscal Year 1994. Washington, DC.

USDA Forest Service. 1995b. The Forest Service Program for Forest and Rangeland Resources: A Long-Term Strategic Plan. Draft 1995 RPA Program. Washington, DC. pp. I-1 to IV-7 plus appendixes.

USDA Forest Service. 1996. The Forest Service Ethics and Course to the Future. Public brochure. FS-567. Washington, DC. 10 pp.

USDA Forest Service and USDI Bureau of Land Management. 1995. Record Notice/Decision Record Finding No Significant Impact: Environmental Assessment for the Interim Strategies for Managing Anadromous Fish-producing Watersheds in Eastern Oregon and Washington, Idaho, and Portions of California. Washington, DC. 72 pp. plus appendixes.